Divan literature is an important branch of Turkish literature developing within Islamic civilization. In this work, the living master of the classical Turkish literature, Ömer Faruk Akün examines this unique form of literature which continued without interruption for six centuries from the end of the Anatolian Seljuks to the Ottomans. The writer discusses the conditions that paved the way for divan literature and its formation process, the verse forms that founded divan poetry, the literary discipline that raised divan poets, and the context and aesthetics in divan poetry that defined the tradition.

An example of Akün’s interpretation of the verse forms of divan literature may be gleaned from the following quotation: “This literature is composed of odes by the court poets praising emperors, lyrics in each of which an unchanging and ideal beauty is described and the pains of a platonic love are singed gently, demure terci’-bend and terkib-bends, rubāīs that squeeze emotions and thoughts most densely into a small volume, and mathnavis that tell of love aff airs, the heroes and heroins of which are always the same.”