Wisdom of the Great Rumi

Rumi, the Persian poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran was born on September 30, 1207. Rumi’s works were written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic and Greek in his verse. He influenced Muslim writing and culture in a big way. That is why he has a huge following worldwide and continues to be one of the best-selling poets in the USA.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi’s father, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad, was a noted mystical theologian, author, and teacher. Because of either a dispute with the ruler or the threat of the approaching Mongols, he and his family left their native town of Balkh about 1218. According to a legend, in Nishapur, Iran, the family met Farid al-Din Attar, a Persian mystical poet, who blessed the young Jalāl al-Dīn. After a pilgrimage to Mecca and journeys through the Middle East, Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his family reached Anatolia (Rūm, hence the surname Rūmī), a region that enjoyed peace and prosperity under the rule of the Turkish Seljuq dynasty.

After a short stay at Laranda (Karaman), where Jalāl al-Dīn’s mother died and his first son was born, they were called to the capital, Konya, in 1228. Here, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad taught at one of the madrasas and after his death in 1231 he was succeeded in this capacity by his son.

A year later, Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq, one of Bahāʾ al-Dīn’s former disciples, arrived in Konya and acquainted Jalāl al-Dīn more deeply with some mystical theories that had developed in Iran. Burhān al-Dīn, who contributed considerably to Jalāl al-Dīn’s spiritual formation, left Konya about 1240. Jalāl al-Dīn is said to have undertaken one or two journeys to Syria (unless his contacts with Syrian Sufi circles were already established before his family reached Anatolia); there he may have met Ibn al-Arabi, the leading Islamic theosophist whose interpreter and stepson, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qunawī, was Jalāl al-Dīn’s colleague and friend in Konya.

The decisive moment in Rūmī’s life occurred on November 30, 1244, when in the streets of Konya he met the wandering dervish - holy man – Shams al-Din of Tabriz, whom he may have first encountered in Syria. Shams al-Dīn cannot be connected with any of the traditional mystical fraternities; his overwhelming personality, however, revealed to Jalāl al-Dīn the mysteries of divine majesty and beauty.

For months the two mystics lived closely together, and Rūmī neglected his disciples and family so that his scandalized entourage forced Shams to leave the town in February 1246. Jalāl al-Dīn was heartbroken, and his eldest son, Sulṭān Walad, eventually brought Shams back from Syria. The family, however, could not tolerate the close relation of Jalāl al-Dīn with his beloved, and one night in 1247 Shams disappeared forever. In the 20th century it was established that Shams was indeed murdered, not without the knowledge of Rūmī’s sons, who hurriedly buried him close to a well that is still extant in Konya.

Rumi’s works reflected a broader push and pull between religious spirituality and institutionalised faith - though with a wit that was unmatched. “Historically speaking, no text has shaped the imagination of Muslims - other than the Holy Koran - as the poetry of Rumi and Hafez,” (Safi). This is why Rumi’s voluminous writings, produced at a time when scribes had to copy works by hand, have survived. “Language isn’t just a means of communication,” the writer and translator Sinan Antoon has said.

“It’s a reservoir of memory, tradition, and heritage.” As conduits between two cultures, translators take on an inherently political project. They must figure out how to make, for instance, a thirteenth-century Persian poet comprehensible to a contemporary American audience. But they have a responsibility to remain true to the original work - an act that, in the case of Rumi, would help readers to recognise that a professor of Sharia could also write some of the world’s mostly widely read love poetry.

This experience of love, longing, and loss turned Rūmī into a poet. His poems ghazals numbering about 30,000 and a large number of rubayaat reflect the different stages of his love, until, as his son writes, “he found Shams in himself, radiant like the moon.” The complete identification of lover and beloved is expressed by his inserting the name of Shams instead of his own pen name at the end of most of his lyrical poems. The Dīvān-e Shams (“The Collected Poetry of Shams”) is a true translation of his experiences into poetry; its language, however, never becomes lost in lofty spiritual heights or nebulous speculation.

The fresh language, propelled by its strong rhythms, sometimes assumes forms close to popular verses. There would seem to be cause for the belief, expressed by chroniclers, that much of this poetry was composed in a state of ecstasy, induced by the music of the flute or the drum, the hammering of the goldsmiths, or the sound of the water mill in Meram, where Rūmī used to go with his disciples to enjoy nature. He found in nature the reflection of the radiant beauty of the Sun of Religion and felt flowers and birds partaking in his love. He often accompanied his verses by a whirling dance, and many of his poems were composed to be sung in Sufi musical gatherings. His works have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Turkish, German, Russian, Urdu, Arabic, French and Italian. Brad Gooch, who wrote a biography of Rumi, describes him as “a poet of joy and of love.” Rumi’s work continues to resonate today.

His poetry, filled with spiritual depth and poetic beauty, serves as a guiding light in our quest for meaning and connection. Rumi’s sayings transcend time and culture, offering profound glimpses into the human experience.

A couple of years ago, when Coldplay’s Chris Martin was going through a divorce from the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and feeling very low and down, a friend gave him a book to lift his spirits. It was a collection of poetry by Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. “It kind of changed my life,” said Martin later, in an interview. A track from Coldplay’s most recent album features Barks reciting one of the peoms: “This being human is a guest house / Every morning a new arrival / A joy, a depression, a meanness, / some momentary awareness comes / as an unexpected visitor.”

Rumi has helped the spiritual journeys of other celebrities - Madonna, Tilda Swinton - some of whom similarly incorporated his work into theirs. Aphorisms attributed to Rumi circulate daily on social media, offering motivation. “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you ever get polished,” one of them goes. Or, “Every moment I shape my destiny with a chisel.

I am a carpenter of my own soul.” Barks’s translations, in particular, are shared widely on the Internet; they are also the ones that line American bookstore shelves and are recited at weddings. Rumi is often described as the best-selling poet in the US. He is typically referred to as a mystic, a saint, a Sufi, an enlightened man. Curiously, however, although he was a lifelong scholar of the Quran and Islam, he is less frequently described as a Muslim. The reason is not far to seek. Like Ghalib, his poetry appeals to humanity in man and not to his faith.

The words that Martin featured on his album come from Rumi’s “Masnavi,” a six-book epic poem that he wrote toward the end of his life. Its fifty thousand lines are mostly in Persian, but they are riddled with Arabic excerpts from Muslim scripture; the book frequently alludes to Quranic anecdotes that offer moral lessons. (The work, which some scholars consider unfinished, has been nicknamed the Persian Quran.)

Fatemeh Keshavarz, a professor of Persian studies at the University of Maryland, has said that Rumi probably had the Koran memorised, given how often he drew from it in his poetry. Rumi himself described the “Masnavi” as “the roots of the roots of the roots of religion” - meaning Islam - “and the explainer of the Koran.” And yet little trace of the religion exists in the translations that sell so well in the United States.

“The Rumi that people love is very beautiful in English, and the price you pay is to cut the culture and religion,” Jawid Mojaddedi, a scholar of early Sufism at Rutgers, said recently. Mojaddedi is now in the midst of a years-long project to translate all six books of the “Masnavi,” of which three have been published; the fourth is due out shortly. His translations acknowledge the Islamic and Koranic texts in the original by using italics to denote whenever Rumi switches to Arabic. His books are also riddled with footnotes.

Reading them requires some effort, and perhaps a desire to see beyond one’s preconceptions. That, after all, is the point of translation: to understand the foreign. As Keshavarz put it, translation is a reminder that “everything has a form, everything has culture and history. A Muslim can be like that, too.”

Bhushan Lal Razdan, formerly of the Indian Revenue Service, retired as Director General of Income Tax (Investigation), Chandigarh.