As a poet and a statesman Ali Shir Navayi (9 February 1441-3 January 1501), has contributed greatly to Turkish language and culture. Ali Shir Navayi has combined his expertice of various science and his poetic ability in his works which were splendid as form and content. So he is one of the greatest poet of Turkish-Islamic literature. Ali Shir Navayi’s works contain remarkable materials in fields such as history, sociology, cosmology and folk medicine, as well as linguistic and literary riches. This rich content in his works has attracted the attention of researchers and his poems have become an important part of interdisciplinary studies in recent years. From this point of view, in this article, information about the relationship between poetry and medicine in classical Turkish literature will be given and the usages related to jaundice in Ali Şhir Navayi’s Turkish diwans will be examined. The aim of this study is to determine how and to what extent the folk beliefs and folk medicine practices, which are reflected in Navayî’s Turkish diwans about jaundice, have transformed into today’s beliefs and practices.

Ali Şhir Navayi, Chagatai literature, the art of medicine, folk medicine, jaundice.