The extremely fabulous Biblical-Koranic story about Joseph/Yousuf and his brothers drew attentions of authors of different times and nations. The first Turkic-Muslim poets who had taken up the story to write their narrative poems appear to be, as we find out now, the poets of XIII с Mahmud Kirimli, a Crimean, and a certain Ali, a Turk. Ali's poem is called "Qissa-i Yusuf" (the Tale about Yousuf), while Mahmud's one is named "Hikayet-i Yusuf ve Zeliha" (The Story of Yousuf and Zeliha).

We know almost nothing about these two poets. The one thing known about Ali is that he had written his poem in 1233. There is no data about where Ali had been born and lived. Having studied the vocabulary and the grammatical forms of his literary work different lurcologists have supposed him to be of Turkish, Trans-Volgine, the Crimean or the Middle Asian origin. Now it's almost a century that the Kazan Tatars insist upon the affirmation that Ali was of Kazan born and therefore is the initiator of their national literature.

As for Mahmud Kirimli, his second name indicates to his Crimean origin. And that's all! We don't know the most important thing about his poem – the year when it was written. And what is more, Mahmud's narrative poem came to us not in the form of he author's original text. What came to us is a translation of the poem to Turkish, carried out by Ali – the son of Khalil.

Up to our days there existed only one manuscript of Mahmud's poem – the one kept in the Duke's Library in Gota. The text of the poem had never been published before and the only scientific research concerning the poem was an article by a Russian orientalist N.A.Falev, written in 1913.

Fortunately in late 50-es there was found another manuscript of Mahmud's Turkish translation of the poem, the faximily of which, in Arab letters was published in 1960 in Istanbul by I.H.Ertaylan. We here transcribed it into Latin script which gave us the opportunity to learn the poem preliminarily and to come to certain conclusions.

If one reads Ali's poem, the "Qissa" and Mahmud's "Hikayet" in any successive order he'll be puzzled over their astonishing resemblance. The likeness between the two poems is so close that one can't get rid of the impression that they are copied from one another. Such a similarity verging on plagiarism can be satisfactorily explained only through the assumption that one and the same author worked on both of the poems. Striking parallelisms are seen not only in the developments of the plots of the poems, in the succession of events but also in author's additions to the text and their stylistic ornamentations. Another plan of "strange" coincedences lie in the characteristic word-stock of the two poems.

All those enumerated correspondences between the poems speak in favour of the supposition that the translator of Mahmud Kirimli's poem into Turkish and the author of the original poem "Qissa-i Yusuf" written in Turkish is one and the same author - Khalil's son Ali.

Then who might that Ali have been? If we take into concideration the fact that Ali had finished his original poem in 1233 then he might have come to the Crimea earlier. That date brings us back to the years 1221-22 when Selchuk Turks under the leadership of Husametdin Choban-bey crossed the Black Sea and took over the town Sudak. The Turks left a military garrison in the town. Later, after the Mongol invasion these Turkish soldiers mixed up with the local Crimean population and became a part of the bearers of the southern dialect of the Crimean Tatars.

We presume that Ali had been a religiously learned person. Up to the date 1233 there were no Turkish poets in Anatolia. Having come to the Crimea he got aquaintanced with the Crimean poet Mahmud, who somewhere in 1220-ies had finished a narrative poem about Joseph written in the vernacular Kuman/Crimean Turkic. Ali firstly translated the poem into Turkish to assist his fellow countrimen to understand it. Later, after Mahmud's death, assured that he is versed better in the art of verse he decided to write his own original narrative poem about Yousuf/Joseph. Living in the Crimea he had been forced by the circumstances to colour his poem richly with the Crimean-Turkic vocabulary. From that we conclude that Mahmud Kirimli and Ali are the fore-runners, the heralds of the Crimean Tatar literature.