Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi

Öz

Letters have taken place in Turkish literature with their form, pronunciation, string, and appearance, and accordingly, some understandings and approaches have emerged over time. Considering the characteristics of the letters in the Arabic alphabet and the beliefs formed around letters in Islamic culture, the poets carried out some experimental applications based on letters. One of them is elifname. The poems written by ordering the letters in the Arabic alphabet from “elif” to “yâ” or vice versa based on certain systems are called elifname. As divans and journals were analyzed, it was revealed that elifnames have attracted attention in Turkish literature in every period.

One of the poets who gave the most place to elifnames in his divan is İsmail Hikmetî. Including practices based on various rhetoric, letters, and genres in his poems, Hikmetî is the second poet to write the most elifnames in classical Turkish literature among the samples analyzed. The poet has a total of seven elifnames. In the study, firstly, elifnames were examined as a tradition of poetry, and then the relationship of Hikmetî with letters was emphasized, and the elifnames in his Divan were emphasized. In the analysis made on these elifnames, it was seen that the poet is an original and important name in the tradition of elifname in terms of the use of title, verse form, number of units, choice of meter, subject and arrangement.