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Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207 - 1273) |
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The greatest mystical poet of Persia, famous for his didactic epic Mathnawi (or Masnavi-ye Ma'navi; Spiritual Couplets), a treasure-house of Sufi mysticism. The theme of Rumi's ghazals is sacred love. After Rumi's death his disciples were organized as the Mawlawiyah order, called in the West the "Whirling Dervishes".
Jalal al-Din Rumi, known to his disciples as Mawlana Rumi, "the learned master of Anatolia", was born in Balkh, Ghurid empire on the eastern boundaries of the Persian world (today situated at the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan). His father, Baha'uddin Walad, was a Muslim preacher and jurist. He named his son Muhammad but later called him by the additional name Jalalu-'d-din (The Glory of the Faith). In the West, he is usually known as Rumi, Rum referring to the Anatolian peninsula, "the Greek-occupied lands". The family moved from place to place, perhaps because political reasons or because Baha'uddin Walad did not have success as a preacher. Also the times were violent. The Mongols had turned against the Islamic states. They destroyed Balkh in 1221, and eventually conquered Baghdad in 1258. Some sources tell
that Rumi was visiting Baghdad just before it was sacked by the
Mongols. The family lived for some time in Aleppo and Damascus, where
Rumi is said to have studied. Rumi was educated in the
traditional Islamic sciences. He perhaps met the great mystic Ibn
al-Arabi (d.1240) or his students. From Syria the family travelled to
Laranda, where Rumi's mother, Mu'mine Khatun, died. Eventually they
settled in Konya, in Anatolia, a rare haven during the Mongol invasion.
According to an Arab legend, the remains of the Greek philosopher Plato
were buried in the city. Existential nonbelonging defined Rumi's life,
or as he said in a ghazal attributed to him: "What solution is there, o
Muslims? As I don't know myself / I am no Christian, nor am I Jewish,
nor Zoroastrian, nor Muslim. / Neither am I of the East, nor the West,
neither am I of the Earth nor the sea; / Neither am I of natural
elements, nor am I of the rotation skies." Rumi married at the age of eighteen. His first son, Sultan Walad, was born in Larada. After the death of his father in Konya, Rumi continued there as a teacher and religious authority issuing opinions (fatwas) pertaining to the Islamic law (Shariah). Although Baha'uddin Walad had been known for his visionary powers, and he had written about spiritual love, at that time Rumi was not interested in the mystical tradition. Late in October 1244 (in some sources on November 30), Rumi met the wandering dervish called Shamsuddin of Tabriz (Shams ad-Din). Shams did not observe the Shariah, and he believed that he is united with the Muhammadan Light. The encounter was the turning point in Rumi's life. Shams asked, "Who was greater, Mohammad the Prophet or the Persian mystic Bayezid Bistami?" Bistami could cry in ecstasy that he and the Godhead were one; Mohammad was the Messenger of God. "You are either the light of God or God," Rumi wrote of Shams later in one poem. To the horror of his family, he neglected his teaching duties, and spent all his time with the dervish, whom he would compare to Jesus. The holy man left the town as mysteriously as he had appeared. "But suddenly God's jealousy appeared, / And whispering filled all the mouths around," explained Sultan Walad in his book Waladnama. The disappearance of Shams turned Rumi into a poet. Shams returned again to Konya, was married to a young girl who had been brought up in Rumi's family, but in 1248 he vanished completely. It was rumored that he was murdered with the connivance of Rumi' second son Ala'uddin (Alaeddin). Rumi searched his friend without results, and went again to Damascus. Describing this period as the search of his own identity he wrote: "Indeed I sought my own self, that is sure, / Fermenting in the vat, just like the must." Rumi saw himself as a man who was created from the wine of Love, but Love was also something that was beyond letters, it was eternal life, fire, tower of light, black lion, an ocean with invisible waves – love was limitless. "Pass beyond form, escape from names!" he said. "Flee titles and names toward meaning!" Rumi's poetry is full of images of Love. Rumi's association with Shams has been compared to the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but it also has psychological similarities with the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist – or even with James Boswell's worship of Dr. Johnson. Rumi wrote some 30,000 verses about his love, longing, and loneliness. They were collected in Diwan-i Shams-i Tabriz (Divan of Shams of Tabriz), in which he appended Shams's name as the author. Rumi used often the traditional form of love lyric, the ghazal, which consists generally of five to twelve lines and employs one single rhyme through the poem. After the death of Shams, Rumi met an illiterate goldsmith,
Salahuddin Zarkub (Salah ad-Din Zarkub), and wrote some poems under
Salahuddin's name. This was another scandal but in spite of the public
reaction Rumi also married Sultan Walad to Salahuddin's daughter. After
the death of his first wife, Rumi married Kira Khatum of Christian
background; they had two children. Rumi had cordial relations with
Christians, but in accordance with the Qur'an, he did not belive that Jesus is a God: "How could it be allowed as a possibility that a frail person . . . with
a bodfy shorter that two cubits could be the keeper and preserved of
the seven heavens . . .?" According to John Renard, who has surveyed
the role of Jesus and other Gospel figures in Rumi's works, "Jesus'
importance for Rūmī was slightly below that of Moses, about equal to
that of Abraham, and slightly greater than that of David, Solomon, and
Noah." (Images of Jesus Christ in Islam: 2nd Edition by Oddbjørn Leirvik, 2010, p. 91) Salahuddin Zarkub died in 1258. Hasamuddin Chelebi (Husam ad-Din
Chelebi), one of Rumi's students, became for him a new mirror of Love
in the world, which is the mirror of God. "The wine is one; only the
vessel's changed – " Rumi said in a poem. During the following years, he composed the nearly 26,000 couplets of the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, but he did not mention Shams's name anymore. The work, published in six volumes, was never completed. His other major works include Ruba'iyyat, whose Istanbul edition consists of 3318 verses, Fihi ma fihi (The Discourses), Makatib (a collection of letters), and Majalis-i sab-ah, which consists of sermons and lectures. Rumi died in Konya on December 17, 1273. Christians and Jews joined his funeral procession, too. Rumi's cat died a week later and was buried close to his master. Rumi remained a major influence upon Sufism. His followers have sometimes claimed to have experienced his nearness. Rumi's first translation were made at the end of the 18th century. Jacques van Wallenberg, an Austrian diplomat in Istanbul in the 1790s, carried out the first modern edition of Mathnawi. In the English-speaking world, The Mathnawi of Jalalud'din Rumi (1925-40) by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson was the first major edition. Nicholson's student, A.J. Arberry, translated its stories in lucid prose (Tales from the Masnavi, 1968). The translations of the American free verse poets Robert Bly and Coleman Barks have been immensely popular. Kabir Helminki's and Daniel Liebert's collections embrace Rumi's ecstatic experience in free verse. It is believed that Rumi created his poems in a state of ecstasy, accompanying his verses by a whirling dance. After Shams's death Rumi had started in his grief to circle a pole in his garden, and speak the poetry, which was written down by scribes. However, listening to music and ecstatic prayer rituals were already before Rumi features of Sufism. In the 12th century dervishes emerged throughout the Islamic world. Dance was a rhythmic expression of dhikr, an Arabic word meaning 'remembrance'. The repetition of religious formulas, the dhkir, was based on Gur'an: "O believers, remember God often and give him glory at dawn and in the evening." In the simple reed flute Rumi saw the metaphor for himself: "Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale, complaining of separateness." The sama', the mystical dance, was for Rumi more than a technique for meditation, it was the cosmic truth, the manifestation of the secret power of God. The sun dances on the sky, the Eternal is the axis, and the entire universe is dancing and whirling around Him. "Whatever there is, is only He, / your foot steps there in dancing: / The whirling, see, belongs to you, / and you belong to the whirling." Some of Rumi's poems refer to the effects of hashish: "God has put into the form of hashish a power to deliver the taster from self-consciousness."
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