linguistic:voice_change, linguistic:translation, quality:corruption, quality:correction
Ismail's poetry

Ismail is also known for his poetry using the pen name Khaṭāʾī (Arabic: خطائي, lit. ' the wrongful '). He wrote in the Turkish of Safavid Iran and Persian, although his extant verses in the former vastly outnumber the latter. The (Turkoman) Turkish spoken in Iran, which was commonly known as Turki, was not the Turkish of Istanbul, but a sort of precursor (i.e "proto" form) of modern-day Azerbaijani or Azeri Turkic (see also; Ajem-Turkic).

Vladimir Minorsky characterized Ismail's divan as written in a "Southern Turkish (Turcoman) dialect directly associated with the so-called ʻʻĀzarbāyjān Turkishʼʼ, and noted that his Turkish "already shows traces of decomposition due to the influence of the Iranian milieu". Minorsky also added that Chaghatai words are found (as well as other words and forms of unknown origin) in Ismail I's poems. Stephen Dale describes the language used by Ismail in his well-known propagandistic verse directed at the Turkoman tribesmen in Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia as the same precursor of Azeri Turkish (i.e. proto-Azeri) that he was able to converse in.

Ismail is considered an important figure in the literary history of Azerbaijani language. According to Encyclopædia Iranica, "Ismail was a skillful poet who used prevalent themes and images in lyric and didactic-religious poetry with ease and some degree of originality". He was also deeply influenced by the Persian literary tradition of Iran, particularly by the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, which probably explains the fact that he named all of his sons after Shahnameh -characters. Dickson and Welch suggest that Ismail's "Shāhnāmaye Shāhī" was intended as a present to his young son Tahmasp. After defeating Muhammad Shaybani 's Uzbeks, Ismail asked Hatefi, a famous poet from Jam (Khorasan), to write a Shahnameh-like epic about his victories and his newly established dynasty. Although the epic was left unfinished, it was an example of mathnawis in the heroic style of the Shahnameh written later on for the Safavid kings.

Most of the poems are concerned with love—particularly of the mystical Sufi kind—though there are also poems propagating Shi'i doctrine and Safavi politics. His other serious works include the Nasihatnāme, a book of advice, and the unfinished Dahnāme, a book which extols the virtues of love—both written in the same Turkoman Turkish (i.e. proto-Azeri Turkic).

Along with the poet Imadaddin Nasimi, Khatā'ī is considered to be among the first proponents of using a simpler Azerbaijani language in verse that would appeal to a broader audience. His work is most popular in Azerbaijan, as well as among the Bektashis of Turkey. There is a large body of Alevi and Bektashi poetry that has been attributed to him. The major impact of his religious writings, in the long run, was the conversion of Persia from Sunni to Shia Islam.

Examples of his poems are: