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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
JALAL AL-DIN RUMI
The Masnavi
BOOK THREE
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
JAWID MOJADDEDI
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 Sufipiety to a group of disciples. However, the turning-point in Rumi’s life came in 1244, when he met in Konya a mysterious wandering Suficalled 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 Sufimysticism 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 recent decades that the Christian Science Monitor identified Rumi as the most published poet in America in 1997.
JAWID MOJADDEDI, a native of Afghanistan, is currently Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Religion, Rutgers University. 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).
For Janajan
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I SHOULD like to express my gratitude to my immediate family, my friends, and all the teachers I have studied under. Time spent with Dr Alireza Nurbakhsh and Paul Weber has served as an instructive reminder of the living reality of what Rumi points to in his thirteenth-century poem. Gregory Angus’s comments about mystical knowledge at a meeting in Washington DC in 2012 helped shape the introduction to Book Three presented here. Once again, I have been very fortunate to work with an editor as supportive and cooperative as Judith Luna. I am also grateful for the comments and criticisms offered by readers of initial drafts of this translation, especially Dick Davis, and for the encouragement I have received from readers to continue this project. I alone am responsible for any flaws.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Note on the Translation
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Rumi
THE MASNAVI
BOOK THREE
Prose Introduction
Exordium
Don’t eat baby elephants!
A lover’s mistake is better than the stranger’s correct act
Prayer and the pure mouth
The answer to prayers
The townsman and the villager
The People of Sheba and the Prophets
Jesus’ healing of the sick
The falcon and the ducks
The Zarwan nation
Majnun and Layli’s dog
The jackal who pretended to be a peacock
The man who greased his moustache to show off
Bal‘am ben Ba’ur
Exegesis of ‘You will know them through the corruption of their speech’
Harut and Marut
Pharaoh’s attempts to prevent Moses’ birth
The frozen snake that came back to life
Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians
The elephant in the dark
Infidelity and God’s decree
The barber and the man with grizzled hair
The companions of the Prophet and the Qur’an
The error of reading a love letter when you are next to the beloved
The man who prayed for a livelihood without having to work
The teacher who was tricked by his pupils into believing he was sick
Shaikh Amputee
The far-sighted goldsmith
Pharaoh’s threats to his magicians
The mule’s complaint to the camel
/> Ozayr’s ass
The shaikh who did not grieve the death of his sons
The man who regained sight whenever reading the Qur’an
The patience of Loqman
Friends of God who choose not to pray
Bohlul and the dervish
The visions of Daquqi
Moses and Khezr
Jesus’ escape from the fool
The People of Sheba and the Prophets
The tale about the blind, far-sighted man, the deaf, sharp-eared man, and the naked man wearing a long skirt
The hares and the elephant
Noah and the building of his ark
The burglar who said he was just beating a drum
A parable about prudence
The vow of the dogs every winter
The wisdom in the creation of hell
Kings and the small gate in the city wall of Jerusalem
The Sufi who was made ecstatic by an empty mealcloth
Jacob and Joseph’s shirt
The prince and the slave who stayed in the mosque to pray
When Prophets lose hope
Ordinary people have faith based on fear and hope
Hidden friends of God
Anas and the Prophet Mohammad’s napkin
The Prophet saves a caravan in the desert
Need draws God’s bounty
The baby that bore witness to the Prophet Mohammad
The eagle that lifted away the Prophet’s boot
The man who asked Moses to teach him the languages of animals
The woman whose children all died in infancy
Hamza’s refusal to wear body armour
The advantages of deliberation
Belal’s embrace of death
The world and the body
Reason and revelation
The reverence disciples should have for their masters
The enemy of the sun
Levels of knowledge
The relativity of knowledge
Self-annihilation and subsistence in God
The love of the vakil of Bukhara for his ruler, the sadr
The appearance of the Holy Spirit to Mary
The haunted mosque
The worldliness of Galen
How Satan tricked the Qoraysh
A drum of inappropriate size
Chick peas boiling in a pot compared with true believers
The Masnavi and its critics
The outer and inner meanings of the Qur’an
Why friends of God retreat to the mountains
The mountains joined David in repeating the Psalms
The foal that would not drink near commotion
The cry of the Devil to dissuade you from the path
The attraction of elements to their source
The soul’s attraction to the spiritual world
The Prophet Mohammad and his foes
The flea complains about the wind to Solomon
The union of the lover who was not true
Explanatory Notes
Glossary
INTRODUCTION
Book Three of the Masnavi
RUMI’S Masnavi is probably the longest mystical poem ever written by a single author from any religious tradition. It consists of about 26,000 verses, divided into six books. The current volume is a translation of the third book of the Masnavi, and follows Book One and Book Two, also published in Oxford World’s Classics.1
Much has been written on Rumi and his Masnavi. However, one point which has not been explored extensively is its organizational framework. Would Rumi have had an overall framework in mind when he compiled this long and complex poem? The richness of the Masnavi makes it very hard to draw any definitive conclusions. On the one hand, that Rumi divided his poem into six books of roughly equal length, each with its own distinct introduction, may suggest an overall framework of some kind. On the other, Rumi’s many digressions, as well as his emphasis on the divine origin of his poetry, can give the impression that he did not feel constrained by any particular framework, or perhaps did not want the reader to be distracted by it from the immediate focus.
A comparison of the first three books of the Masnavi reveals first of all that they are very similar in form. The poetry is divided into numerous sections by means of section headings. These headings range from a single word to several lines, which occasionally incorporate an interpretation of the poetry that follows. Each book can also be roughly divided into about a dozen major stories.2 These major stories differ from the more numerous shorter stories because they are usually made up of many sections, which represent not only the consecutive parts of the narrative, but often also commentaries and elaborations (sometimes in the form of further shorter stories), which break up the main narrative.3 If one were to consider the dozen or so major stories of this kind in each book to be Rumi’s main building-blocks, then, by analysing their functions, one may be able to decipher the rationale behind Rumi’s division of the poem into books, and the order of the major stories in each one.
While there is substantial overlap between the three books—at times almost identical verses are used—each book can be seen to focus on a specific aspect of Sufism. Like many previous works of the Persian mystical masnavi genre, the order of presentation of the major stories of the first book sketches the progress of the mystic on the Sufi path. Book One begins with the well-known ‘Song of the Reed’ (I, vv. 1–18), which describes the longing of a reed to return to the reed-bed from which it has been cut, and this is usually interpreted by commentators as representing the birth of the human being into this world and his longing to return to his original spiritual nature in God’s presence. The final major story in Book One depicts the Prophet Mohammad’s disciple Ali as a mystic who has reached the end of the path. He throws away his sword when an enemy soldier, whom he is about to slay, spits in his face (I, vv. 3735–4004). This action is explained as a sign that he has returned to subsistence in God after self-annihilation, since his every action is now determined by God and not by his own will.
Although the content of each book of the Masnavi is too rich and diverse to be neatly categorized, one can none the less observe a logic to the selection and order of the major stories. For instance, those of Book One seem to be presented in the order of progression on the Sufi path as far as the climax represented by the aforementioned final story about Ali.
As one might expect of any writing designed to instruct Sufi disciples, Book Two also describes aspects of the Sufipath, especially the struggle against the self. However, this is not its main focus. Instead, the major stories in Book Two are primarily concerned with the challenge of discerning the true nature of people behind appearances, in order to identify with whom one should associate so as to progress on the mystical path. The extensive exordium introduces these specific issues to the reader from the outset (II, vv. 19–41).
The major preoccupation of Book Three is no mystery either, as it is pointed out at the very start of the Prose Introduction with which it begins. Rumi comments: ‘Pieces of wisdom are the armies of God by which He strengthens the spirits of seekers, and keeps their knowledge away from the tarnish of ignorance, their justice from the tarnish of tyranny, their generosity from the tarnish of self-display, and their intelligence from the tarnish of stupidity’ (p. 3). The subsequent exordium develops this theme with an emphasis on the contrast between nourishment of the body through food and spiritual nourishment received from God. Book Three as a whole presents Rumi’s epistemology by classifying different levels of knowledge, from the limited amount possessed by fools who are controlled by their lusts and the rational knowledge of the well-educated to the all-consuming mystical knowledge of the Sufi adept, or ‘Friend of God’ (wali). Moreover, consistent with his description here of knowledge as a source of strength for one’s inner being, in Book Three Rumi frequently presents his teachings in the form of stories that involve food.
The first major stories highlight the limitations of ration
al knowledge which sees things only at immediate face value. For instance, hungry travellers ignore sage advice against satisfying their hunger by eating a baby elephant and then pay with their lives (III, vv. 69–171), while a townsman is disappointed when a bumpkin whom he has treated well fails to reciprocate or even acknowledge him after having invited him to his village with generous promises (III, vv. 236–720). With a more directly spiritual emphasis, the People of Sheba are irritated by the Prophets for disturbing their comfortable and pleasing current state of ignorance, unappreciative of their foreknowledge of impending doom (III, vv. 282–411), while Pharaoh tries in vain to prevent the birth of Moses through the logical methods of separating Jewish men from their wives at the time of conception and then eliminating all babies born at the time when his birth was foretold, overlooking in the process that his own Jewish treasurer, Emran, could father the expected Prophet (III, vv. 840–995). Rumi’s subsequent major story about Moses’ miracle of transforming his rod into a snake builds on this theme (III, vv. 1067–1259). All these major stories in the first quarter of Book Three recount the failures of a purely rational approach to knowledge, by highlighting the fact that it can be influenced by the self’s desires, and that it cannot perceive anything of the future in contrast to the all-encompassing mystical knowledge of Prophets.
Possibly the most dramatic of twists comes in the major story about the man who prayed for a livelihood without having to work (III, vv. 1451–2571). This man is convinced that his prayer is being answered when a cow charges into his house, so he slays it. Reading this story rationally, the reader sympathizes with the owner of the cow who wants compensation, and yet, through divine communication, Prophet David discovers that the killing of the cow was perfectly correct. His prophetic communication from God informs him of the history of the present owner of the cow and the ancestors of the man who killed it, which shows that the former did not possess it legitimately and had in fact murdered the original owner. This story not only highlights the superiority of the divine communication received by Prophets over rational knowledge, but in this case there is a protagonist who appears at first to be foolish with his prayer to God for livelihood without the need to work, and yet his conviction that the cow’s arrival at his house is an answer to this prayer is finally vindicated. The implication here is that such a conviction in divine communication is superior to rationalizing, a teaching that is also expressed explicitly elsewhere in Book Three.
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