Muhammad, Ummah and Collectivity in the Earliest Turkish Mesnevis Written in Anatolia

This thesis aims to interpret various aspects of Prophet-centered piety discourse in Turkish mesnevis that are known or estimated to have been written in the fourteenth century, a period marked by significant turning points in the demographic and religious transformation of Anatolia. To achieve this goal, anonymous texts like Dâsitân-ı İbrâhîm, Dâsitân-ı Güvercin and authored texts like Gülşennâme, Garibnâme were preferred for the study. These texts have been examined from diverse disciplinary perspectives, including literary analysis, historical contextualization and phenomenology yielding varied, yet interrelated insights. The most important common feature of the texts in question is that they address social themes and priorities. In the first Turkish mesnevis, Muhammad sometimes appears as the spirit of the ummah, sometimes as the body that signifies the community of believers, sometimes as its spiritual shelter and often as a sovereign lawgiver. These diverse roles notwithstanding, the most important claim of this thesis is that the religious-social discourse reflected in the first Turkish mesnevis is centered on the charisma of Muhammad. This claim is demonstrated through an examination of the doctrine of "Light of Muhammad" in the Mesnevi of İslâmî; the motif and theme of sacrifice in texts such as Sehâvet-i İmam Alî and Vefât-ı İbrâhîm; and the normative religious discourse emphasizing sharia in Gülşennâme and Garibnâme.