Oxford World’s Classics
The Masnavi
Rumi , known in Iran and Central Asia as Mowlana Jalaloddin Balkhi, was born in 1207 in the province of Balkh, now the border region between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. His family emigrated when he was still a child, shortly before Genghis Khan and his Mongol army arrived in Balkh. They settled permanently in Konya, central Anatolia, which was formerly part of the Eastern Roman Empire (Rum). Rumi was probably introduced to Sufism originally through his father, Baha Valad, a popular preacher who also taught Sufi piety to a group of disciples. However, the turning-point in Rumi’s life came in 1244, when he met in Konya a mysterious wandering Sufi called Shamsoddin of Tabriz. Shams, as he is most often referred to by Rumi, taught him the profoundest levels of Sufism, transforming him from a pious religious scholar to an ecstatic mystic. Rumi expressed his new vision of reality in volumes of mystical poetry. His enormous collection of lyrical poetry is considered one of the best that has ever been produced, while his poem in rhyming couplets, the Masnavi , is so revered as the most consummate expression of Sufi mysticism that it is commonly referred to as ‘the Qur’an in Persian’.
When Rumi died, on 17 December 1273, shortly after having completed his work on the Masnavi , his passing was deeply mourned by the citizens of Konya, including the Christian and Jewish communities. His disciples formed the Mevlevi Sufi order, which was named after Rumi, whom they referred to as ‘Our Lord’ (Turkish ‘Mevlana’, Persian ‘Mowlana’). They are better known in Europe and North America as the Whirling Dervishes, because of the distinctive dance that they now perform as one of their central rituals. Rumi’s death is commemorated annually in Konya, attracting pilgrims from all corners of the globe and every religion. The popularity of his poetry has risen so much in the last couple of decades that the Christian Science Monitor identified Rumi as the most published poet in America in 1997. The popularity of Rumi’s poetry in English translation has spread to Europe more recently, and UNESCO designated the commemoration of the eight hundredth anniversary of Rumi’s birth in 2007 as an event of major international importance.
Jawid Mojaddedi , a native of Afghanistan, is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University. He was a 2014–15 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow. Dr Mojaddedi’s translation, The Masnavi: Book One (Oxford, 2004), was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books include Beyond Dogma: Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (Oxford, 2012) and The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (Richmond, 2001).
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Oxford World’s Classics
Jalal Al-Din Rumi
The Masnavi
Book Four
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
Jawid Mojaddedi
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This volume is dedicated to the memory of
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(d. 25 February 2016)
Acknowledgements
I should like to express my gratitude to my family, my friends, and all of the teachers I have studied under. Time spent with Dr Alireza Nurbakhsh and the late Paul E. Weber served as an inspiring reminder of the living reality of what Rumi points to in his thirteenth-century poem. I am indebted to the National Endowment for the Arts for awarding me a literature translation fellowship in 2014–15, during which time most of this translation was completed. I alone am responsible for any flaws.
Contents
Introduction
Note on the Translation
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Rumi
THE MASNAVI
Book Four
Prose Introduction
Exordium
The union of the lover who was not true
The preacher who prayed for oppressors, unbelievers, and the hard-hearted
Jesus on the hardest thing to face
The Sufi who found his wife with another man
Why God is called ‘the Hearing One’ and ‘the Seeing One’
The world is a bath-stove, piety the public baths
The tanner who fainted and felt sick due to perfumes
The unbeliever’s challenge to Ali to jump off a building
The Furthest Place of Worship
The unity between the Prophets David and Solomon
Caliph Osman and practising what you preach
The difference between philosophers and mystics
Explanation of ‘My community is like Noah’s ark’
The Queen of Sheba’s gift to Solomon
The miracles of Abdollah Maghrebi
The pharmacist and the clay-eater
The reason why Ebn-e Adham gave up his kingdom
The thirsty man and sama‘
When Halima lost Mohammad
Man’s desire for this world
A poet’s expectations
How a demon sat on Solomon’s throne
How Cain learnt grave-digging
Meditating with your head lowered onto your knee
Knowledge in the hands of the unworthy
‘O you who wrap yourself in your garment ’
Silence is itself an answer
The differences between angels, humans, and animals
How
God can increase disgrace and erring
The soul and the intellect, Majnun and his she-camel
The turban snatcher’s disappointment
The world’s advice to the worldly
The mystic’s nourishment from the light of God
Why Moses should not have felt fear
The command and prohibition for the false claimant
The praiser’s falseness
The spies of hearts
Bayazid’s prediction of the birth of Kharaqani
Reduction of God’s allowance of food for hearts
Solomon and the wind
Consult the right kind of person!
Why the Prophet Mohammad made a young man commander
Story about Abu Yazid’s saying: ‘Glory be to me! How magnificent my rank is!’
The wise, the half-wise, and the wretch
Prayers for different stages of ablutions
The captive bird’s advice about regret
The fool’s vow is worthless
Moses, possessor of wisdom, and Pharaoh, possessor of imaginings
The paradoxes of cultivation, concentration, soundness, and attainment
The senses and their perceptions
How worldly people attack other-worldly people
The potential of Man’s earthly body
Moses and Pharaoh
The door of repentance
‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known.’
Man’s delusion and ignorance about the Unseen
‘Speak to people according to their level of intelligence.’
The Prophet and news about the coming of the time of his death
The king’s falcon and the decrepit crone
How Ali helped a child come down safely from a waterspout
The dispute of Arab leaders with Mohammad
Why someone who knows God’s power wouldn’t ask: ‘Where are heaven and hell?’
The response to a materialist philosopher
‘We did not create the heavens and the earth and what is between them other than with reality.’
Why someone was annoyed at another’s intercession on his behalf
Abraham and the Angel Gabriel
The butter in buttermilk and other parables
The king who sought a wife for his ailing crown prince
The ascetic who laughed during a drought
Some of the sons of Ozayr have trouble recognizing him
‘I ask God for forgiveness seventy times every day.’
The particular intellect’s dependency on Prophets and Friends of God
‘ You who believe, don’t put yourself before God and His messenger.’
The camel and the mule
The thirsty Egyptian and his Israelite friend
Cuckolding under a pear tree
The stages of the creation of Man
The appeal from people in hell
Zo ’l-Qarnayn asks Mount Qaf about God
Ants see a pen writing
The Prophet Mohammad and the Angel Gabriel
Explanatory Notes
Glossary
Introduction
Rumi and Sufism
Rumi has long been recognized within the Sufi tradition as one of the most important Sufis to have lived. He not only produced the finest Sufi poetry in Persian, but was also the master of disciples who later named their order after him. Moreover, by virtue of the intense devotion he expressed towards his own master, Shams-e Tabriz, Rumi has become the archetypal Sufi disciple. From that perspective, the unprecedented level of interest in Rumi’s poetry over the last couple of decades in North America and Europe does not come as a total surprise.
Rumi lived some 300 years after the first writings of Muslim mystics were produced. A distinct mystical path called ‘Sufism’ became clearly identifiable in the ninth century and was systematized from the late tenth and eleventh centuries. The authors of these works, who were mostly from north-eastern Persia, traced the origins of the Sufi tradition back to the Prophet Mohammad, while at the same time acknowledging the existence of comparable forms of mysticism before his mission. They mapped out a mystical path, by which the Sufi ascends towards the ultimate goal of union with God and knowledge of reality. More than two centuries before the time of the eminent Sufi theosopher Ebn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), Sufis began to describe their experience of annihilation in God and the realization that only God truly exists. The illusion of one’s own independent existence began to be regarded as the main obstacle to achieving this realization, so that early Sufis like Abu Yazid Bestami (d. 874) are frequently quoted as belittling the value of the asceticism of some of their contemporaries on the grounds that it merely increased attention to themselves. An increasing number of Sufis began to regard love of God as the means of overcoming the root problem of one’s own sense of being, rather than piety and asceticism. The most influential of these men was al-Hallaj, who was the most prolific Sufi poet of his time and was executed for heresy in 922. 1
The Sufi practice discussed the most in the early manuals of Sufism is that of listening to music (sama‘ ; see Glossary ). Listening, while immersed in the remembrance of God and unaware of oneself, to love poetry and the mystical poetry that Sufis themselves had begun to write, often with musical accompaniment, induced ecstasy in worshippers. The discussions in Sufi manuals of spontaneous movements by Sufis in ecstasy while listening to music, and the efforts made to distinguish this from ordinary dance, suggest that this practice had already started to cause a great deal of controversy. Most of the Sufi orders that were eventually formed developed the practice of surrendering to spontaneous movements while listening to music, but the whirling ceremony in white costumes of the followers of Rumi is a unique phenomenon. 2 Although it is traditionally traced back to Rumi’s own propensity for spinning around in ecstasy, the elaborate ceremony in the form in which it has become famous today was established only centuries later.
The characteristics of the Sufi mystic who has completed the path to enlightenment is one of the most recurrent topics in Sufi writings of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Students of Sufism at that time would tend to associate with several such individuals rather than form an exclusive bond with one master. By the twelfth century, however, the master–disciple relationship became increasingly emphasized, as the first Sufi orders began to be formed. It was also during this century that the relationship between love of God and His manifestation in creation became a focus of interest, especially among Sufis of Persian origin, such as Ahmad Ghazali (d. 1126) and Ruzbehan Baqli (d. 1209), both of whom drew inspiration from the aforementioned al-Hallaj. The former’s more famous brother Abu Hamed was responsible for integrating Sufism with mainstream Sunni Islam, as a practical form of Muslim piety that can provide irrefutable knowledge of religious truths through direct mystical experience. 3
In this way, by the thirteenth century diverse forms of Sufism had developed and become increasingly popular. Rumi was introduced to Sufism by his father, Baha Valad, who followed a more conservative tradition of Muslim piety, but his life was transformed when he encountered the profound mystic Shams-e Tabriz. Although many of the followers of the tradition of his father considered Shams to be totally unworthy of Rumi’s time and attention, Rumi considered Shams to be the most complete manifestation of God. He expressed his complete love and devotion for his master Shams, with whom he spent only about two years in total, through thousands of ecstatic lyrical poems. Towards the end of his life he presented the fruit of his experience of Sufism in the form of the Masnavi , which has been judged by many commentators, both within the Sufi tradition and outside it, to be the greatest mystical poem ever written.
Rumi and His Times
The century in which Rumi lived was one of the most tumultous in the history of the Middle East and Central Asia. When he was about 10 years old the region was invaded by the Mongols, who, under the leadership of Genghis Khan, left death and destruction in their wake. Arriving through Cen
tral Asia and north-eastern Persia, the Mongols soon took over almost the entire region, conquering Baghdad in 1258. The collapse of the once glorious Abbasid caliphate, the symbolic capital of the entire Muslim world, at the hands of an infidel army was felt throughout the region as a tremendous shock. Soon afterwards, there was a sign that the map of the region would continue to change, when the Mongols suffered a major defeat in Syria, at Ayn Jalut in 1260. Rumi’s life was directly affected by the military and political developments of the time, beginning with his family’s emigration from north-eastern Persia just a couple of years before the Mongols arrived to conquer that region. Although they eventually relocated to Konya (ancient Iconium) in central Anatolia, Rumi witnessed the spread of Mongol authority across that region too when he was still a young man.
In spite of the upheaval and destruction across the region during this century, there were many outstanding Sufi authors among Rumi’s contemporaries. The most important Sufi theosopher ever to have lived, Ebn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), produced his highly influential works during the first half of the century. His student and foremost interpreter, Sadroddin Qunyavi (d. 1273), settled in Konya some fifteen years after his master’s death and became associated with Rumi. This could have been one channel through which Rumi gained familiarity with Ebn ‘Arabi’s theosophical system, although his poetry does not clearly suggest the direct influence of the latter’s works.
The lives of two of the most revered Sufi poets also overlapped with Rumi’s life: the most celebrated Arab Sufi poet, Ebn al-Fared (d. 1235), whose poetry holds a position of supreme importance comparable with that of Rumi in the Persian canon; and Faridoddin ‘Attar (d. c. 1220), who was Rumi’s direct predecessor in the composition of Persian mystical masnavis (see below), including the highly popular work which has been translated as The Conference of the Birds . 4 It is perhaps not surprising that the Sufi poet Jami (d. 1492) should want to link Rumi with ‘Attar directly by claiming that they met when Rumi’s family migrated from Balkh; ‘Attar is said to have recognized his future successor in the composition of works in the mystical masnavi genre during that visit, when Rumi was still a young boy. Soon afterwards ‘Attar was killed by the Mongols during their conquest of Nishapur.
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