Akademik

(1207–1273)

   The most popular and influential of all Muslim poets, Rumi was a well-known Persian theologian and mystic. Rumi was a master of two kinds of poetry: the mystical lyric (in the form of both GHAZAL or short lyric, and robai or quatrain) and the didactic narrative (in the form of the masnavi or couplet).His poetry is known for its musical qualities of rhyme and meter, for its ecstatic tone, and for its everyday imagery that deepens into many layers of meaning. He is known as the founder of the Mawlawi or Mevlevi Order, a fraternal organization of mystics known for its so-called whirling dervishes, that exerted a wide influence in Turkey for hundreds of years and remains active today. Rumi was born in the city of Balkh in what is now northern Afghanistan, and was the son of the teacher and theologian Bahaoddin Valad. Forced to flee from their native city, perhaps to escape a Mongol attack, the family eventually settled in Konya, the Seljuk capital in present-day Turkey. Rumi was a student of his father until Valad’s death in 1231, and then was taught Muslim law and Sufism by his father’s disciples.He also seems to have spent some years studying in Damascus and Aleppo before ultimately receiving a teaching appointment at the Muslim university in Konya.

   A respected scholar and mystic,Rumi did not become a poet until he came under the influence of the itinerant dervish Shamsoddin (Shams) Tabrizi in 1244. A dervish was a radical ascetic in the Sufi tradition, who gave up all worldly goods and wandered about as a mendicant teacher. Rumi was so enamored of Shams that he invited him into his home and arranged his marriage to a young woman who was Rumi’s ward. Rumi saw Shams as the spokesperson for God himself, and became so devoted a disciple of Shams that his own students, jealous of the relationship, drove Shams away from Konya in 1246. Shams returned, but disappeared again in 1247, either driven away permanently by Rumi’s disciples, or, some believe, murdered by them.

   But it was his spiritual friendship with Shams that transformed Rumi from a respected teacher into an ecstatic mystical poet. He compiled, over the next few years, a huge collection of lyric poems, largely on the theme of his search for his beloved Shams.He wrote the poems in the voice of Shams, as if trying to recreate his friend and teacher within himself. His first great work is called Divân-e Shams-e Tabrizi (Collected poems of Shams Tabrizi); it consists of some 6,000 Persian lyrics in 40,000 verses.

   Apparently needing a close spiritual companion for poetic inspiration, Rumi later befriended an illiterate goldsmith named Salâhoddin Zarkub. Determined to avoid a repeat of the situation with Shams, Rumi was able to convince his disciples and family to accept Zarkub,who stayed with Rumi for many years.

   Rumi’s third and last mystical partner was Chelebi Husamoddin Hasan, who lived with Rumi for the last 10 years of his life. It was Husamoddin that inspired Rumi’s Masnaviye ma’navi (Spiritual couplets), a long didactic encyclopedia of Sufi mystical thought, containing stories and parables introduced from many sources (somewhat in the tradition of ATTAR). It consists of some 26,000 couplets in Persian. Among the Sufis the Masnaviye is considered second only to the KORAN in importance. By the middle of the 14th century, the Masnavi was being read throughout the Muslim world. Eventually it was translated into Turkish, Sindhi, Pashto, and, of course, Arabic. Upon Rumi’s death, Husamoddin became his successor and, with Rumi’s son Soltan Valad, became leader of the Mevleviya order of mystics, the whirling dervishes whose ritual dance, the sema, was designed to put the dancer into an ecstatic state of mystical union with the divine. As a mystic Rumi presents the reader with no coherent system of thought in his poetry. Rather he expresses traditional Sufi themes. He symbolically expresses the yearning for mystical union with God, and emphasizes the need to withdraw from the world to engage in deeper and deeper states of meditation. For Sufi mystics, the place to find God is within oneself, and Rumi’s poetry is intended to guide the reader on that inward journey. Such themes have struck a responsive chord in the contemporary world, and Rumi’s popularity has extended into the West, with a plethora of translations into English, while he still remains the greatest of mystical poets in the Muslim world.

   Bibliography

   ■ Keshavarz, Fatemah. Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Studies in Comparative Religion. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

   ■ Rumi, Jalaloddin. The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks. San Francisco: Harper, 1997.

   ■ ———.Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing. Translated by Coleman Barks. San Franciso: Harper, 2003.

   ■ Schimel, Annemarie. The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi. Persian Studies Series 8. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980.