à Âeyyad Ḥamza (thirteenth-century CE) was mystical poet of Turkish ethnicity, particularly noted for his playwriting.
The evidence for à Âeyyad's life comes from sixteenth-century CE biographical scholarship, but this reveals little certain about his life. He seems to have lived most of his life around Akà Âehir and Sivrihisar. He supposedly had a daughter, Aá¹£lë KhÃÂtà «n, whose tombstone was believed to be found in Akà Âehir.
The first modern scholar to study à Âeyyad was Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, who published fifteen lines of a methnewë by à Âeyyad which he had found in JÃÂmiÿ al-neáºÂÃÂþir by Egerdirli ḤÃÂjjr KemÃÂl. Mehmed saw à Âeyyad as typical of bÃÂá¹Âiniyya thought during the period of the Mongol invasions of Anatolia. Thereafter, scholarship identified a number of works by à Âeyyad, and suggested 'his importance as a predecessor of Yà «nus Emre [...] and his place in the early experimental period of Ottoman literature'. Some were in the tradition identified by Kathleen Burrill as 'folk poems'; some of these 'contain coarse elements and reflect the turmoil of 7th/13th-century Anatolia. In general, however, they express with simple lyricism his moral and religious views'. à Âeyyad also composed literary poetry, including religious pieces contemplating death and avoiding worldly entrapments, work in the naÿt genre, amatory verse, and a naáºÂëre responding to one of Rà «më's ghazals.
Probably à Âeyyad's best known work is a 1529-line morality play DestÃÂn-ñ Yà «suf ('Tale of Joseph'), an adaptation of the Qur'ÃÂn's Sà «rat Yà «suf, about Joseph son of Jacob, which introduces mystic elements into a traditional Islamic telling of Joseph's life. According to Burrill, 'the format, while adhering in general to the Persian ma<u>th</u>nawë tradition, replaces interspersed <u>gh</u>azels with five nükte or moral commentaries. The poem's general tone is strongly reminiscent of folk narrative. The Turkish (largely free of Arab- or Persianisms) requires frequent prosodic licence to achieve the chosen (remel) metre, and the rhyme structure lacks polish'.
à Âeyyad also composed the 76-line methnewë called HÃÂdhàdÃÂsitÃÂn-iàSulá¹ÂÃÂn Mahmà «d ('This is the tale of Sultan Maḥmà «d'), referring to Mahmud of Ghazni. In the poem, Maḥmà «d meets a poor dervish, and the two debate how best to win a place in Paradise. This topic was a traditional one in Persian poetry.