RŪMĪ, JALĀL AL-DĪN

RŪMĪ, JALĀL AL-DĪN (ah 604–672/1207–1273 ce), Muslim mystic and poet. No Ṣūfī poet has exerted a vaster influence on Muslim East and Christian West than Jalāl al-Dīn, called Mawlānā, or Mawlawī, "our master." His Persian works are considered the most eloquent expression of Islamic mystical thought, and his long mystico-didactic poem, the Mathnavī, has been called "the Qurʾān in the Persian tongue" by the great fifteenth-century poet Jāmī of Herat.

Life

Muḥammad Jalāl al-Dīn was born in Balkh, now Afghanistan; the Afghans therefore prefer to call him "Balkhī," not "Rūmī," as he became known after settling in Anatolia, or Rūm. Although the date of his birth seems well established, he may have been born some years earlier. His father, Bahaʾ al-Dīn Walad, a noted mystical theologian, left the city some time before the Mongol invasion of 1220 and took his family via Iran to Syria, where Jalāl al-Dīn studied Arabic history and literature. They then proceeded to Anatolia, an area that had not yet been reached by the Mongol hordes and thus offered shelter to numerous mystics and scholars from the eastern lands of Islam. They enjoyed the liberal patronage of the Seljuk Sulṭān ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kaykōbād. After Bahāʾ al-Dīn's family settled in Laranda (now Karaman), Jalāl al-Dīn married, and in 1226 his first son, Sulṭān Walad, was born. The aged Bahaʾ al-Dīn was invited to Konya (ancient Iconium), the capital of the Anatolian Seljuks, to teach in one of the city's numerous theological colleges. After his death in early 1231, Jalāl al-Dīn succeeded him in the chair.

A disciple of Rūmī's father, Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaiqqiq, reached Konya in the early 1230s and introduced Jalāl al-Dīn into the mystical life and to the ideas of his father, whose Maʿārif, a collection of sermons and a spiritual diary, were later to form an important source of inspiration for Rūmī. He also studied the Persian poetry of Ḥakim Sanāʾī of Ghazna (d. 1131), the first poet to use the form of mathnavī, "rhyming couplets," for mystical instruction. Rūmī may have visited Syria in the 1230s, but nothing definite is known. His teacher later left Konya for Kayseri (Caesarea), where he died about 1242.

Shams al-Dīn

After ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn's death in 1236, the Mongols invaded Anatolia, and the internal situation deteriorated owing to the incompetence of his successors. In the midst of the upheavals and troubles in eastern and central Anatolia Jalāl al-Dīn underwent an experience that transformed him into a mystical poet. In October 1244 he met the wandering dervish Shams al-Dīn, "Sun of Religion," of Tabriz, and, if the sources are to be believed, the two mystics spent days and weeks together without eating, drinking, or experiencing any bodily needs. The discussions of Rūmī and Shams, who must have been about the same age, led Jalāl al-Dīn into the depths of mystical love but also caused anger and jealousy among his students and his family. Shams left Konya, and in the pangs of separation, Mawlānā suddenly turned into a poet who sang of his love and longing while whirling around to the sound of music. He himself could not understand the secret of this transformation and expressed his feelings in ever-new verses, declaring that it was the spirit of the beloved that made him sing, not his own will. There was no question of seeking a fitting rhyme or meter—they came to him spontaneously, triggered by a casual sound, a word, or a sight. The poems of this early period, which excel in their daring paradoxes and sometimes eccentric imagery, do not mention the name of the beloved but allude to it with frequent mention of the sun, which became Rūmī's favorite symbol to express the beautiful and destructive but always transforming power of love. In addition to classical Persian, he sometimes used the Turkish or Greek vernacular as it was spoken in Konya.

When news reached Konya that Shams al-Dīn had been seen in Damascus, Mawlānā's elder son, Sulṭān Walad, traveled there and succeeded in bringing his father's friend back. As Sulṭān Walad says in his poetical account of his father's life, "They fell at each other's feet, and no one knew who was the lover and who the beloved." This time, Shams stayed in Mawlānā's home, married to one of the young women there, and the intense spiritual conversation between the two mystics continued. Again jealousy built up, and Shams disappeared in December 1248. It seems certain that he was assassinated with the connivance of Mawlānā's younger son. Rūmī knew what had happened but refused to believe it; his poetry expressed the certitude that "the sun cannot die," and he even went to Syria to seek the lost friend. But eventually he "found him in himself, radiant as the moon," as Sulṭān Walad says, and most of his lyrical poetry came to be written in the name of Shams al-Dīn.

Friends and disciples

After reaching complete annihilation (fanāʾ ) in Shams, who had claimed to have attained the stage of being "the Beloved" and who appeared as the true interpreter of the secrets of the Prophet, Mawlānā found spiritual peace in his friendship with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, an illiterate goldsmith with whom he had long-standing relations through his own spiritual teacher, Burhān al-Dīn. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn became, as it were, Rūmī's mirror; in his pure simplicity he understood the friend without questioning. To cement the relationship, Mawlānā married Sulṭān Walad to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn's daughter, and his letters to his beloved daughter-in-law are beautiful proofs of his humanity.

The number of disciples that gathered around Rūmī grew steadily. They came from different layers of society, for he was a friend of some of the powerful ministers who, for all practical purposes, ruled the country; but there were also greengrocers and craftsmen among them. A number of women belonged to his circle, some of whom arranged musical sessions for him in their homes. Outstanding in piety and obedience among his disciples was the youthful Ḥusām al-Dīn Chelebī, who now became Rūmī's third source of inspiration.

A poem dated November 1256 reveals the moment when Ḥusām al-Dīn first assumed his new role. About that time, he had asked the master to compose a mystical mathnavī for the benefit of his students so that they would no longer need to go back to the epics of Sanāʾī and ʿAṭṭar. Rūmī began by reciting the famous "Song of the Reed," the eighteen introductory verses of the Mathnavī, which express the soul's longing for home, and from that time Ḥusām al-Dīn wrote down whatever inspirational teaching came from the master. The composition of the Mathnavī was interrupted in 1258 when Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn died after a protracted illness and Ḥusām al-Dīn lost his wife; the poems attributed to the next four years are usually didactic in character though lyrical in form. The dictation of the Mathnavī resumed in 1262, when Ḥusām al-Dīn was designated as Rūmī's spiritual successor (khalīfah ), and continued almost to the master's death on December 17, 1273. His death was lamented not only by the Muslims but also by the numerous Christians and Jews of Konya, for he had friendly relations with all of them (and his verse at times shows a remarkable awareness of Christian thought and ritual).

Ḥusām al-Dīn, his first successor, died in 1284; then Sulṭān Walad, the obedient son, assumed the leadership of the disciples and shaped them into a Ṣūfī fraternity proper. He institutionalized the mystical dance, samāʿ, in the form that has remained current through the centuries. By the time he died in 1312, the Mevlevi order (called Whirling Dervishes in the West) was firmly established and continued to exert great influence on Turkish culture, particularly music and poetry. The order was abolished, like all mystical fraternities, in 1925 by Kemal Atatürk; but since 1954 the anniversary of Rūmī's death is again being celebrated in Konya, and the performers of the samāʿ have toured Western countries under the label of a "tourist attraction."

Works

Mawlānā's writings can be divided into two distinct parts: the lyrical poetry that was born out of his encounter with Shams and is collected in the more than thirty-six thousand verses of the so-called Dīvāni Shams-i Tabrīz, and the didactic Mathnavī-yi maʿnavī with about twenty-six thousand verses, written in a simple meter that had already been used for similar purposes by ʿAṭṭar. Mawlānā's "table talks" have been collected under the title Fīhi mā fīhi ; these prose pieces sometimes supplement the poetry, since the same stories are used at times in both works. More than a hundred letters, written to dignitaries and family members, have also survived; they show that Mawlānā was also practically-minded and looked well after those who entrusted themselves to him.

Dīvān-i Shams

The Dīvān is a remarkable piece of literature in that it translates the author's ecstatic experiences directly into poetry. The form is the traditional ghazal with its monorhyme. The rhythm is strong, and often the verses invite scanning by stress rather than by the rules of quantitative classical Persian prosody, although Rūmī uses the traditional meters most skillfully. He is also a master of rhetorical plays, puns, and unexpected ambiguities, and his allusions show that he had mastered Arabic and Persian classical literatures and history as well as religious writings completely. In some poems one can almost follow the flow of inspiration: Beginning from a seemingly trivial event, such as a strange sight in the street, the mystic is carried away by the music of the words and the strength of his rapture until, at least in some longish poems, the inspiration tapers off even though the rhyme continues to carry him through some more (not too good) verses.

Mathnavī

As the Dīvān was largely born out of an ecstatic experience that was expressed in unusual and extremely rich imagery, it is difficult to analyze. The Mathnavī is somewhat more accessible, and it has been a source for mystical instruction ever since it was written. For the Western reader, the book is still not easy to understand, for stories grow out of stories to lead to a mystical adage or a highly lyrical passage, and after long digressions the poet may return to the original anecdote only to be carried away by a verbal association or, as we may surmise, by the interruption of a listener who set him on a different train of thought. The Mathnavī is a storehouse not only of Ṣūfī lore but also of folklore, proverbs, and sometimes very crude, even obscene stories that, again, turn into surprising symbols of spiritual experiences. The book contains so little technical terminology of the Ṣūfīs and so few theoretical discussions of "stages," "states," and so forth that some listeners objected to the master's simple "storytelling," as becomes evident from scattered remarks in the Mathnavī itself.

Content

The subject of Mawlānā's work is always love, the true moving power in life. Those verses in the Dīvān that can be assigned with some certainty to the early years (c. 1245–1250) use especially strong images to describe the mystery of love, the encounter between lover and beloved, the secrets of seeking and finding, of happiness in despair. They carry the reader away even though the logical sequence is not always very clear. Love is personified under different guises—Rūmī sees it as a police officer who enacts confiscation of humanity's goods or as a carpenter who builds a ladder to heaven, as a ragpicker who carries away everything old from the house of the heart, or as a loving mother, as a dragon or a unicorn, as an ocean of fire or a white falcon, to mention only a few of the images of this strongest power of life. God's preeternal address to the not-yet-created souls, "Alastu bi-rabbikum" ("Am I not your Lord?" Qurʾān 7:171), is interpreted as the first music, which caused creation to dance out of not-being and to unfold in flowers, trees, and stars. Everything created participates in the eternal dance, of which the Mevlevi ritual is only a "branch." In this ritual, the true mystery of love, namely "to die before dying," of sacrificing oneself in order to acquire a new spiritual life, is symbolized by the dervishes casting off their black gowns to emerge in their white dancing dresses, symbols of the luminous "body of resurrection." For the idea of suffering and dying for the sake of transformation permeates all of Rūmī's work, and he expresses it in ever-new images: not only the moth that casts itself into the candle, or the snow that melts when the sun enters the sign of Aries, but even the chickpeas that are boiled in order to be eaten, and thus to reach a higher level of existence in becoming part of the human body, speak of this mystery of transformation, as does the image of the treasure that can only be found in ruins; for the heart must be broken in order to find in itself the "hidden treasure," which is God.

Most interpreters, including the leading European expert, Reynold A. Nicholson, have understood Rūmī's work almost exclusively in the light of Ibn al-ʿArabī's theosophy. Although on friendly terms with Ibn al-ʿArabī's stepson and foremost interpreter, Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī, Mawlānā was not fond of the "great master's" theoretical approach and his ingenious systematization. To explain everything in the Mathnavī in the light of waḥdat al-wujūd, "unity of being," as systematized by Ibn al-ʿArabī, would be wrong. Of course, Rūmī was deeply convinced, as is every true Muslim, that the multiplicity of phenomena is a veil before the absolute Divine Unity: God's creative command, "Kun!" ("Be!"), with its two letters (kn ), is like a two-colored rope that makes people forget the unity of God who created it. The end of the ascending ladder of manifestations through which the creatures have to pass in their constant attempt to return to their beginning (symbolized by the reed bed out of which the complaining flute was once cut) lies in ʿadam, "positive nothingness," the divine essence that is absolutely hidden and beyond any qualifications. But Rūmī's experience of unity is not based on mere speculations of a gnostic approach to life; rather, it develops out of the experience of love, for the lover believes that everything he sees, hears, or feels merely points to the one Beloved with whom he experiences an ever-growing proximity until his own "I" has been burned away in the fire of separation, and he feels that only the Friend exists, who has taught him that "there is no room for two I's in the house."

This loving relationship is also expressed in prayer. Among all Muslim mystics, Rūmī has expressed the mystery of prayer most eloquently: Prayer is the language of the soul, and the poor shepherd's prayer in which he offers his beloved God "to sweep his little room, to comb his hair, to pick his lice, and to bring him a little bit of milk" is more acceptable to God than learned words uttered without feeling or with pride, for it is the expression of true love. More importantly, prayer is a gift of God: The man who called "God" ever so long and was finally seduced by Satan to refrain from calling is informed by God himself that "in every 'O God' of yours there are a hundred 'Here am I' of mine." Without divine grace, people would not be able to pray—how could a rose grow out of mere dust?

It was out of this life of constant prayer that Mawlānā was able to teach and to inspire later generations. But one must not forget that he was well aware of this world, even though he considered it "like the dream of a sleeping person." Yet, the actions that occur in this dreaming life will be interpreted in the "morning light of eternity," and Mawlānā never tired of teaching his disciples that, as the Prophet had stated, "this world is the seedbed of the other world," for each action—rather, each thought—brings its fruits for spiritual development. Death, therefore, is the true mirror that will show everyone his real face.

This awareness of the world makes Rūmī's poetry especially powerful. There is nothing abstract in his verse, and he does not shun to mention the lowliest manifestations of life, since for him everything turns into a symbol of some higher reality. Spring is the time of resurrection, when the frozen material world suddenly becomes a paradise thanks to the thunder's "trumpet of Isrāfīl," and the trees, donning green paradisical garments, dance in the spring breeze of eternal love. Animals and plants, the arts and crafts of the citizens of Konya (sewing, weaving, calligraphy, pottery, and the like), and the skills of gypsy rope dancers inspired him as much as the legends of the Ṣūfī saints of yore, or the traditions of the Prophet. Allusions to and quotations from the Qurʾān form the warp and woof of his work. Just as the sun, according to Eastern folklore, is able to transform pebbles into rubies, so too Rūmī, touched by the "Sun of Tabrīz," who was for him the locus of manifestation of the divine sun of love, was able to transform everything into a poetical symbol. It goes without saying that not all his verse is on the same level, but the spirit is the same everywhere. Even though Rūmī, in a moment of anger, claimed that he thoroughly disliked poetry, he knew that he was forced by the mystical Friend:

I think of rhymes, but my Beloved says: "Don't think of anything but of my face!"

The allusions to philosophical problems in some of the later lyrics, and especially in the fourth book of the Mathnavī, show that during the mid-1260s Rūmī developed some interest in more theoretical aspects of Sufism, but this period apparently did not last long.

Mawlānā's life can be seen as the ideal model of the mystic's progress: After the experience of the love of Shams, which, like a high-rising flame, burned him to complete annihilation, there followed a period of comparative quietude in his relationship with the goldsmith, a time of finding his transformed self. Finally, in the descending semicircle of his life, he returned to the world and its creatures by teaching Ḥusām al-Dīn the mysteries he had experienced through the medium of the Mathnavī. This sequence explains the stylistic differences between the Dīvān and the Mathnavī; it also explains why the Mathnavī became the centerpiece of mystical education wherever Persian was understood, from Ottoman Turkey to the borders of Bengal.

Legacy

In the East, the Mathnavī has been translated into many languages, and hundreds of commentaries have been composed; it has been a source of inspiration for mystics and kings alike. In the West, Rūmī's work was studied from about 1800 onward and inspired poets such as Rückert in Germany, whose free adaptations of some ghazal s are still the best introduction to Rūmī's style and thought. Through Rückert, Hegel learned of "the excellent Rūmī," in whom he saw a distant forerunner of his own thought. Numerous partial translations of Mawlānā's lyrics exist, but to do full justice to him is next to impossible because of the multicolored imagery of his verse, and the innumerable allusions would require a running commentary. Simple prose translations, again, cannot convey the delight that the reader feels when carried away by the rhythmical flow of these poems, which mark the high point of mystical verse in Islam.

See Also

Sufism.

Bibliography

The most important Rūmī scholarship in the West has been carried out by Reynold A. Nicholson, whose Selected Poems from the Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabriz (1898; reprint, Cambridge, 1952) is the first major study of the Dīvān with useful notes, even though the tendency toward a Neoplatonic interpretation is somewhat too strong. Nicholson edited and translated The Mathnawi of Jalaluʾddin Rūmī (London, 1925–1940) in six volumes with two additional volumes of a most welcome commentary.

The Dīvān, which has been published often in the East, was critically edited in ten volumes by Badiʿ al-Zaman Furuzanfar (1957; reprint, Tehran, 1977). Fihi ma fihi, Mawlānā's prose work, is likewise available in several Eastern editions and in a translation by A. J. Arberry as Discourses of Rūmī (London, 1961). Arberry has published other translations of Rūmī's work, including Tales from the Masnavi (London, 1961) and Mystical Poems of Rūmī (Chicago, 1968, selections 1–200; Boulder, 1975, selections 201–400). Earlier translations of parts of the Mathnavī by James W. Redhouse, The Mesnevi (London, 1881), and E. H. Whinfield, Masnavi i maʾnavi (1887; reprint, London, 1973), may be used for reference.

Afzal Iqbal's The Life and Thought of Mohammad Jalālud-Dīn Rūmī (Lahore, 1956), enlarged in later editions, provides an introduction to Rūmī's life and work, as does William Chittick's excellent book The Sufi Path of Love (Albany, N.Y., 1983). Most valuable are the studies of the Turkish scholar Abdülbâki Gölpinarli, who has not only written a fine biography of Rūmī, Mevlânâ Celâlettin, hayati, felsefesi, eserlerinden seçmeleri (Istanbul, 1952), and a history of the Mevlevi order, Mevlânâ'dan sonra Mevelivïlik (Istanbul, 1953), but has also translated the Dīvān (Divan-i kebir, 7 vols., Istanbul, 1957–1960) and the letters (Mevlânâʾnin mektuplari, Istanbul, 1963) into Turkish. For a general survey, with emphasis on the poetical aspects of Rūmī's work, see my study The Triumphal Sun (London and The Hague, 1978), with extensive bibliography.

One of the oldest biographies of Mawlānā, his friends, and his family, Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad Aflākī's two-volume Manāqib al-ʿārifin, was published in the Persian original by Tahsin Yazici (Ankara, 1959–1961) and translated by him into Turkish (Âriflerin menkibeleri, Ankara, 1964). The French version by Clément Huart, Les saints des derviches tourneurs (Paris, 1918–1922), is not very reliable.

There is a considerable literature on Rūmī, and (partly very free) translations of his poems, in German, the latest ones being Aus dem Diwan (Stuttgart, 1963) and Rumi: Ich bin Wind und du bist Feuer (Cologne, 1982) by me and Licht und Reigen (Bern, 1974) by J. Christoph Bürgel. Important for the serious scholar are Helmut Ritter's numerous studies, including "Philologika XI: Maulānā Ğalāladdīn Rūmī und sein Kreis," Der Islam 26 (1942): 116–158, 221–249, and "Neuere Literatur über Maulānā Calāluddīn Rūmī und seinen Orden," Oriens 13–14 (1960–1961).

Annemarie Schimmel (1987)