Sufi thought in the diwan of the French Christian poet Charles Vernay

This article examines how the French Christian poet Charles Vernay (1842–1866) engaged with Ottoman Sufi poetic discourse in his Divan-ı Verne (1858), a collection of poems written in Ottoman Turkish and Persian. While openly preserving his Christian identity, Vernay frequently employs key Sufi concepts, including ‘tevhid’ (divine unity), ‘aşk-ı hakiki’ (mystical love), ‘irfan’ (gnosis), ‘hakikat’ (truth) and the ‘tarik’ (spiritual path). Through a close textual analysis of selected poems, this study explores the relationship between Vernay’s Christian identity and the Sufi vocabulary that shapes his poetic imagination. The findings demonstrate that Vernay’s use of Sufi terminology extends beyond conventional imitation of classical Ottoman poetry. He employs these concepts to articulate his own spiritual worldview while simultaneously referring to the Bible, Jesus Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. Although Vernay adopts the metaphysical language of Ottoman Sufism, he does not reproduce its Prophet Muhammad-centred framework. Instead, he reinterprets Sufi concepts within a Christian religious horizon and constructs a spiritual discourse shaped by unity, love, truth and faith. Divan-ı Verne thus reveals how Ottoman Sufi poetic language could be appropriated across religious boundaries and provides new insight into intercultural literary exchange in the nineteenth-century Ottoman world.