As the Mongols advanced westwards, Anatolia became an increasingly attractive destination for the inhabitants of central parts of the Middle East who wished to flee. A number of important Sufis and influential scholars chose this option, including Hajji Bektash (d. c.1272), the eponym of the Bektashi order, which became one of the most influential Sufi orders in Anatolia in subsequent centuries, and Najmoddin Razi (d. 1256), whose teacher, Najmoddin Kobra (d. 1221), the eponym of the Kobravi order, had been killed during the Mongol invasion of Transoxiana.
From shortly after his death many works have been written about Rumi’s life in Konya, but contradictions in these sources, and the hagiographic nature of most of the material compiled, mean that a number of important details remain uncertain. The recent landmark study by Franklin Lewis, entitled Rumi, Past and Present, East and West (Oxford, 2000), has considered this problem at length. By examining the sources critically, Lewis has clarified what precisely can be learned from them and what still cannot be confirmed beyond any doubt. His study is therefore indispensable for any serious academic investigation, and is likely to inspire many revisionist accounts in the future. None the less, the general outline of the life of Rumi seems to be presented relatively consistently in the sources, and remains helpful for putting the Masnavi into context.
Rumi was born in September 1207 in the province of Balkh, in what is now the border region between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.8 His father, Baha Valad, was a preacher and religious scholar who also led a group of Sufi disciples. When Rumi was about 10 years old his family emigrated to Anatolia, having already relocated a few years earlier to Samarkand in Transoxiana. This emigration seems to have been motivated primarily by the approach of Genghis Khan’s Mongol army, although rivalries between Baha Valad and various religious scholars in the region may have also played a part. Instead of moving westwards directly, Rumi’s family first made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and it was only a few years after arriving in Anatolia that they decided to settle permanently in Konya. By this time, Rumi had already married (1224) and seen the birth of his son and eventual successor in Sufism, Soltan Valad (1226).
In Konya Baha Valad found the opportunity, under the patronage of the Seljuk ruler Alaoddin Kay Qobad I (r. 1219–36), to continue his work as a preacher and to teach students in a religious school. He had been grooming Rumi to be his successor, but died only a couple of years after settling in Konya, in 1231. Although the original reasons for his arrival remain unclear, it seems that one of Baha Valad’s students, called Borhanoddin Mohaqqeq, arrived in Konya from north-eastern Persia soon afterwards to take over the management of his school. He also took responsibility for overseeing the continuation of Rumi’s education and training. Within a few years, Borhanoddin sent Rumi to Aleppo and Damascus to continue his education in the religious sciences. It is possible that during his stay in Damascus he may have heard the lectures of Ebn ‘Arabi, who was living there at the time. Rumi returned to Konya in about 1237 as a highly accomplished young scholar, and took over leadership of Baha Valad’s school from Borhanoddin.
After his return to Konya Rumi’s reputation as an authority on religious matters became firmly established there, and he reached the peak of his career as a scholar, achieving what his father seems to have hoped for him. In November 1244, after seven years of excelling as a highly respected religious teacher, Rumi experienced a challenging encounter that would prove to be the most significant event of his life. As one would expect, an event as important as this has generated many competing accounts.9 However, most versions at least share the same basic element. According to one popular and relatively simple account, Rumi is asked about his books by an uneducated-looking stranger, and responds by snapping back dismissively, ‘They are something that you do not understand!’ The books then suddenly catch fire, so Rumi asks the stranger to explain what has happened. His reply is: ‘Something you do not understand.’
Rumi was immediately drawn to this mysterious figure, who turned out to be a wandering mystic called Shamsoddin from Tabriz (known popularly as Shams, or Shams-e Tabriz) in north-western Persia. The two began to spend endless hours together in retreat. What was shared by the pair during this time remains a mystery that can only be guessed from the volumes of poetry that it inspired. Even in the Masnavi, where Rumi makes painstaking efforts to communicate his teachings as clearly as possible for the benefit of his students, he none the less expresses his unwillingness to disclose anything about his experiences with Shams, despite the persistent requests from his deputy at that time, Hosamoddin Chalabi; Rumi explains that those experiences were beyond the capacity of others to understand: ‘Please don’t request what you can’t tolerate | A blade of straw can’t hold a mountain’s weight’ (v. 140).
What is reported consistently about the period of about a year and a half that Rumi spent with Shams is that it provoked intense jealousy and resentment among his disciples, who also feared that their highly respected master was risking his reputation by mixing with someone so unworthy in their eyes. These disciples eventually drove Shams away, but, on hearing reports of sightings of him in Syria, Rumi sent his own son, Soltan Valad, to ask him to come back. Although Shams did return a year later, in 1247, he soon disappeared forever. According to tradition, Shams was killed by Rumi’s disciples after they had seen that driving him away had failed to separate him permanently from their master, but, as Lewis has pointed out, there is little external evidence to substantiate this claim.10
The transformation of Rumi as a result of his relationship with Shams cannot be emphasized enough. Although he was already a respected religious authority in Konya and had trained in a tradition of Sufi piety under his father, whom he had even succeeded as master, Rumi was led by Shams to a far loftier level of Sufi mysticism. His poetry, for instance, emphasizes the importance of love to transcend attachments to the world, and dismisses concerns for worldly reputation, literal-mindedness and intellectualism. From dry scholarship and popular piety, Rumi turned his attention to mystical poetry, and he became known for his propensity to fall into an ecstatic trance and spin around in public. It is clear that Rumi recognized Shams as a profound mystic, the like of whom he had never encountered before, and that for him Shams was the most complete manifestation of God. Rumi innovatively named his own collection of ghazals, or lyrical poems, as ‘The Collection of Shams’ (Divan-e Shams) rather than as his own collection, and also included Shams’s name in place of his own at the end of many of his individual ghazals, where by convention the poet would identify himself. This can be seen as Rumi’s acknowledgement of the all-important inspiration that Shams had provided for him to write such poetry.11 Rumi chose a plain, descriptive name for his Masnavi (masnavi is the name of the rhyming couplet verse form used; see further below), which he started composing some fifteen years after Shams had disappeared, but it does not take long before he digresses in this work to his praise, at the mention of the word shams, which means ‘sun’ in Arabic (vv. 124–42).
After the final disappearance of Shams, Rumi remained in Konya and continued to direct his father’s school. However, he chose to appoint as deputy, whose responsibility was to manage many of the affairs of the school in his place, a goldsmith called Salahoddin. Like Shams, he was disliked by many of Rumi’s disciples, who considered him uneducated. A colourful story about the first encounter between the two describes Rumi as falling into ecstasy and whirling, on hearing the rhythmic beating of Salahoddin at work in his market stall. After Salahoddin’s death in 1258, Rumi appointed Hosamoddin Chalabi in his place. At the time when Hosamoddin had become a disciple of Rumi he was already the head of a local order for the training of young men in chivalry. He had brought with him his own disciples, the wealth of his order, and the expertise he had acquired in running such an institution. However, the most important contribution of Hosamoddin was serving as Rumi’s scribe and putting the Masnavi into writing as Rumi recited it aloud. Rumi praises Hosamoddin profusely in the introduction to the Masnav
i, which on occasion he even calls ‘the Hosam book’, indicating the vital importance of his role for this work.
In addition to Rumi’s poetry, three prose works have also survived. They reveal much about aspects of his life that have been neglected by most biographers. The collection of Rumi’s letters testifies to his influence among the local political rulers and his efforts to secure positions of importance for his disciples through letters of recommendation. This contradicts the popular image of Rumi withdrawing completely from public life after the disappearance of Shams. His collection of seven sermons attests to the fact that he was highly esteemed by the local Muslim population. It reveals that he delivered sermons at the main congregational mosque on important occasions, and that he used such opportunities to give Sufi teachings, albeit within the rigid constraints of a formal sermon.12 Rumi’s most important prose work, however, is the written record of his teaching sessions, which was compiled after his death by his students as seventy-one discourses. This work, called ‘In it is what is in it’, probably on account of its diverse and unclassified contents, provides intimate glimpses of Rumi as a Sufi master. The content of this work is comparable with his didactic poem, the Masnavi, in that it contains many of the same teachings. A reference to a specific verse in the second book of the Masnavi confirms that the discourses represent Rumi’s teaching activity towards the end of his life.13 However, a relatively long time-span seems to be represented in this work, for another of its component discourses refers to the opposition faced by Salahoddin when he was serving as Rumi’s deputy.14
Rumi died on 17 December 1273, probably very soon after the completion of the Masnavi. Tradition tells us that physicians could not identify the illness from which he was suffering, and that they suspected he had decided to embrace his physical death, fulfilling sentiments often expressed in his poetry. His death was mourned not only by his disciples but also by the large and diverse community in Konya, including Christians and Jews, who converged as his body was carried through the city. Many of the non-Muslims had not only admired him as outsiders, but had also attended his teaching sessions. The ‘Green Dome’, where his mausoleum is found today, was constructed soon after Rumi’s death. It has become probably the most popular site of pilgrimage in the world to be visited regularly by members of every major religion.
Hosamoddin Chalabi served as the leader of Rumi’s school for the first twelve years after Rumi’s death, and was succeeded by Soltan Valad. Rumi’s disciples named their school ‘the Mevlevi order’ after him, for they used to refer to him by the title ‘Mevlana’ (in Arabic Mawlana, meaning Our Master). It became widespread and influential, especially under the Ottoman empire, and remains an active Sufi order in Turkey as well as many other countries across the world. The Mevlevis are better known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes because of the distinctive dance that they perform to music as the central ritual of the order.
The Masnavi
Rumi’s Masnavi holds an exalted status in the rich canon of Persian Sufi literature as the greatest mystical poem ever written. It is even referred to commonly as ‘the Koran in Persian’. As already mentioned, the title Rumi himself chose for it is simply the name of the form of poetry adopted for it, the masnavi form. Each half-line, or hemistich, of a masnavi poem follows the same metre, in common with other forms of classical Persian poetry. The metre of Rumi’s Masnavi is the ramal metre in apocopated form (---/---/--/), a highly popular metre which was used also by ‘Attar for his Conference of the Birds. What distinguishes the masnavi form from other Persian verse forms is the internal rhyme, which changes in successive couplets according to the pattern aa bb cc dd etc. Thus, in contrast to the other verse forms, which require a restrictive monorhyme, the masnavi form enables poets to compose long works consisting of thousands of verses. Rumi’s Masnavi amounts to about 26,000 verses altogether.
The masnavi form satisfied the need felt by Persians to compose narrative and didactic poems, of which there was already before the Islamic period a long and rich tradition. By Rumi’s time a number of Sufis had already made use of the masnavi form to compose mystical poems, the most celebrated among which are Sana’i’s (d. 1138) Hadiqato’l-haqiqat, or Garden of Truth, and Faridoddin ‘Attar’s (d. 1220) Manteqo’t-tayr, or Conference of the Birds.15 According to tradition, it was the popularity of these works amongst Rumi’s disciples that prompted Hosamoddin, Rumi’s deputy, to ask him to compose his own mystical masnavi for their benefit.
Hosamoddin served as Rumi’s scribe in a process of text-production that is described as being similar to the way in which the Koran was produced. However, while the Sufi poet Rumi recited the Masnavi orally when he felt inspired to do so, with Hosamoddin always ready to record those recitations in writing for him as well as to assist him in revising and editing the final poem, the illiterate Prophet Mohammad is said to have recited aloud divine revelation in piecemeal fashion, in exactly the form that God’s words were revealed to him through the Archangel Gabriel; those companions of the Prophet who were present at such occasions would write down the revelations and memorize them, and these written and mental records eventually formed the basis of the compilation of the Koran many years after his death.
The process of producing the Masnavi was started probably around 1262, although tradition relates that Rumi had already composed the first eighteen couplets by the time Hosamoddin made his request; we are told that he responded by pulling a sheet of paper out of his turban with the first part of the prologue, often called ‘The Song of the Reed’ (see below), already written on it. References to their system of production can be found in the text of the Masnavi itself (e.g. v. 2947). They seem to have worked on the Masnavi during the evenings in particular, and in one instance Rumi begs forgiveness for having kept Hosamoddin up for an entire night with it (v. 1817). After Hosamoddin had written down Rumi’s recitations, they were read back to him to be checked and corrected.
The crucial role played by Hosamoddin as Rumi’s assistant in this process, as well as an inspiration, is highlighted not only by the fact that Rumi refers to the Masnavi on occasion as ‘the Hosam book’, but also by the fact that its production was halted completely after Book One was finished because of the death of Hosamoddin’s wife, as indicated at the beginning of Book Two. The devastated Hosamoddin spent almost a year, between 1263 and 1264, mourning his deep loss before they could resume their work. However, the hyperbolic praise that Rumi lavishes on Hosamoddin in the prose introduction to Book One, the very start of the Masnavi (pp. 3–4), should be understood as a token of his generosity in extolling the virtues of his deputy, rather than at face value.
Rumi’s Masnavi belongs to the group of works written in this verse form that do not have a frame narrative. In this way, it contrasts with the more cohesively structured Conference of the Birds, which is already well known in translation. It is also much longer; the Conference is roughly the same length as just one of the six component books of the Masnavi. Each of the six books consists of about 4,000 verses and has its own prose introduction and prologue. There are, however, no epilogues, and the fact that the sixth volume ends somewhat inconclusively has prompted suggestions that the work may never have been completed, as well as claims that there was a seventh volume. Book One stands apart from the rest, because of the pause for approximately a year before work was started on Book Two.
The component narratives, homilies, and commentaries on citations which make up the body of the Masnavi are signalled by their own separate headings. The text of longer narratives tends to be broken up into sections by further headings. Sometimes the headings are positioned inappropriately, such as in the middle of continuous speech (e.g. vv. 348–9), revealing that they were inserted only after the text had been prepared and therefore do not represent some form of organizational framework. The tendency for the given headings to refer only to the immediate start of the subsequent passage of text suggests that they were designed to serve primarily as markers for the benefit
of reciters. However, occasionally the headings are actually longer than the passage that they represent (e.g. vv. 2813–16), and serve to explain and contextualize what follows. It is as if, on rereading the text, further explanation was felt necessary in the form of an expanded heading.
The diversity of the contents of Book One of the Masnavi is representative of the work as a whole. It includes stories with characters ranging from prophets and kings to beggars and tramps, as well as animals. The citations which receive commentary are taken primarily from the Koran, the traditions of the Prophet (hadith), and the works of Rumi’s precursors in Sufism. The homilies cover, in addition to specifically Sufi issues, general ethical concerns based on traditional wisdom. Rumi drew on his knowledge of a vast range of both oral and literary sources in the composition of his work,16 as well as his familiarity with a wide range of disciplines, including theology, philosophy, the exegesis of the Koran and hadith, philology, literature, jurisprudence, and medicine. Most of his stories are very humorous at least in parts, and he does not hesitate to use whatever may convey his point in as memorable a way as possible to his contemporaries, including jokes about sexuality and ethnic and gender stereotypes.
The Masnavi, Book One: Bk. 1 (Oxford World's Classics) Page 2