One wonders in amazement at the enduring mystery that poetry written 750
years ago by Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi continues to “” quicken the soul”"
and “”radiate light of Love”"–words by Rumi — to citizens of the
twentieth and twenty first centuries. Above the entrance door to the
grave of the great Mowlana the following is engraved in Persian;
“”Come, come whoever you are,
An unbeliever , a fire worshipper, come
Our covenant is not of desperation.
Even if you have broken your vows a few times ,
Come, come again.”"
This clarion catholic call by the Mowlana to all mankind is based on the Koranic assurance that man will be forgiven of his sin if he returns sincerely to Allah (Sura al Imran).Molla Abdur Rahman Jami, the fifteenth century Persian sufi poet, described the Dargha of Rumi in the following words, “”"This station has become the Kabaa of Lovers. Whoever comes here deficient will become complete.”
Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi was born on 30 September 1207 at Balkh, now in Afghanistan. His father, Mawlana Bahauddin Walad (died 1231) was celebrated for his religious learning and great spirituality. His book , “Maarif” is a collection of ecstatic and earthly reflections translated into English by Coleman Barks and John Moyne in the US. Bahauddin emigrated from Balkh with his family and close relations to Konya in Turkey, then under Seljuk rule. On their way they broke their journey at Nishapur, Khorasan , which was then a centre of learning and a Sufi hub. The great sufi poet and saint Fariduddin Attar(d1220) hosted them . Attar presented to young Jalaluddin his book, “Asrarnama”, which Rumi treasured much in his later life.
While Jalaluddin grew up under the tutelage of his famous father and after his death succeeded to his position as a teacher and religious leader, his esoteric learning and training did not begin until Burhanuddin Muhaqqiq ,a deputy and disciple of his late father, arrived in Konya and guided him. On his advice, Jalauddin spent three years in Damascus studying in madrasas there. And it was there that he came in contact with sufi masters and scholars of the time, including the great Andalusian, Hazrat Ibnul Arabi ,the Shaikh ul Akbar. Mawlana Shams e Tabrizi, who was later to become the mentor of Rumi, was also living in Damascus.
Back in Konya, Jalaluddin was living the life of a teacher , scholar and religious leader. But it was his tryst with Shams e Tabrizi, the itinerant, enigmatic fakir who appeared from Damascus, that completely transformed the scholar and teacher in Rumi. He abandoned religious and scholarly pursuits and ensconced himself for days in the company of Shams e Tabrizi ,the mendicant dervish. They found in themselves soul mates of each other and they drowned themselves in the ecstasy of divine love and beauty unknown to the common man. Jalauddin”"s inseparable companionship with the wild and enigmatic dervish gave rise to conspiracies. They thought it was an outrage. One night Shams vanished suddenly, allegedly to have been killed and thrown into a well . A grave said to be belonging to Shams e Tabrizi is preserved in Konya covered in green silk near the madrassa where Rumi used to teach.
The tragic disappearance of Shams, the soul mate, lit an unquenchable fire of pain and tears in the heart of Jalaluddin. This pang of pain and love gave birth in turn to a torrent of touching poetry at once ecstatic and divine , a beautiful “foaming torrent that leaps and plunges in the etheral solitidue of hills”, in the words of Professor R.A. Nicholson, who translated , “Divan -e-Shamse –Tabrizi”, a book of odes by the Mawlana. Rumi lamented in one of the poems of the Divan,
At last thou has departed and gone to the unseen;
Its marvelous by what way thou wentest from the world.
Thou did”st strongly shake thy wings and feathers and
having broken the cage
Didst take the air and journey towards the world of soul.
But the enduring fame of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi rests naturally more on his magnum opus, “Masnavi -E- Manavi”, dubbed as the “Koran in Pahlavi language”, by Molla Jami for its spiritual couplets scanned from the holy Koran and given a beautiful poetic expression.
It is an absolute amazement that Masnavi, which is twice the size of Dante”s “Divine Comedy”, more than the combined poems in the Greek epics “Iliad and Odyssey”, more than the ” Slokas” in the Hindu epic Ramayana, was the bestselling book of poetry in the United States in the mid nineties. Masnavi has 25,700 couplets and it took 12 years for Rumi to compose it. The Scottish fiction and travelogue writer, William Darlymple, has observed, “It seems almost unbelievable in the world of 9/11, Bin Laden and the clash of civilizations ,but the bestselling book in the US in the 1990s was not any of the giants of American letters — Robert Forst, Robert Lowell, Wallace Steavans, or Sylvia Plath nor was it Shakespeare or Homer or Dante or any European poet. Instead, remarkably it was a classically trained Muslim cleric who taught the Islamic code of law in a madrassa in what is now in Turkey.” It goes to the credit of Prof. Coleman Barks that he freed the Masnavi poems “from the cage” in modern English free verse.
The beginning of the writing of Masnavi has a sweet and surprising note. Hushamuddin Clelebi, the Mawlana”s favorite disciple and companion, one day asked Rumi to write book of poetry book like Sanai”s (d1131) “Haqiqa”, or Attar”s (d1220) “Monteq ur Tayar” for the benefit of the students and the learned. The Mawlana quietly brought out a piece of paper from his turban and handed it to Hushamuddin, wherein were written the opening lines of the famous Masnavi:
Listen to the reed how it tells a tale ,
Complaining of separations, saying,
Ever since I was parted from the reed bed,
My lament has caused man
and woman to moan.
I want a bosom torn of severance,
That I may unfold (to such a one) the pain of love desire.
The reed flute’s cry to go back to its origin is the metaphor for the human soul’s yearning to travel back to its source, the “Reed -bed” of God”s presence . Even today a flute symbolically plays a plaintive note in the Dargha of Mowlana Rumi day in and day out. In the Masnawi the Mowlana sings,
In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty how to make poems.
You dance in my chest.
Where no one sees you
but sometimes I do
and that sight becomes this art.
The Masnavi has been described by its English translator, Professor R. A. Nicholson of Cambridge, as a” majestic river calm and deep meandering through a varied landscape to the immeasurable ocean “.
The green dome on the grave of the Mawlana beckons humanity to love and to the purification of the soul. It also asks humanity to prepare itself for the “Urs”, the spiritual wedding when one is lowered into the grave.
Another aspect of the Mawlavi Dervish order is called “Sama”", the music acompanied with a whirling dance. This dance of the Dervishes was institutionalised by Rumi”s son, Sultan Walad. Visitors to the Dargha are inevitably drawn to this spectacle. But it was not intended for entertainment or for tourist attraction when it began. The esoteric spirit of Sama is expressed by the Mawlana in these words;
The souls that have clung to water and clay,
And pleased on being freed from them,
And begin to dance in the air and breezes of love,
Becoming perfected like the full moon.
The dance of the Dervishes was correctly understood by the German poet Friedrich Ruchert, says the late Professor Annmarie Schimmel of Harvard, who translated the following ghazal written by the poet in 1819 in celebration of the spirit of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi:
“”Come, come whoever you are,
An unbeliever , a fire worshipper, come
Our covenant is not of desperation.
Even if you have broken your vows a few times ,
Come, come again.”"
This clarion catholic call by the Mowlana to all mankind is based on the Koranic assurance that man will be forgiven of his sin if he returns sincerely to Allah (Sura al Imran).Molla Abdur Rahman Jami, the fifteenth century Persian sufi poet, described the Dargha of Rumi in the following words, “”"This station has become the Kabaa of Lovers. Whoever comes here deficient will become complete.”
Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi was born on 30 September 1207 at Balkh, now in Afghanistan. His father, Mawlana Bahauddin Walad (died 1231) was celebrated for his religious learning and great spirituality. His book , “Maarif” is a collection of ecstatic and earthly reflections translated into English by Coleman Barks and John Moyne in the US. Bahauddin emigrated from Balkh with his family and close relations to Konya in Turkey, then under Seljuk rule. On their way they broke their journey at Nishapur, Khorasan , which was then a centre of learning and a Sufi hub. The great sufi poet and saint Fariduddin Attar(d1220) hosted them . Attar presented to young Jalaluddin his book, “Asrarnama”, which Rumi treasured much in his later life.
While Jalaluddin grew up under the tutelage of his famous father and after his death succeeded to his position as a teacher and religious leader, his esoteric learning and training did not begin until Burhanuddin Muhaqqiq ,a deputy and disciple of his late father, arrived in Konya and guided him. On his advice, Jalauddin spent three years in Damascus studying in madrasas there. And it was there that he came in contact with sufi masters and scholars of the time, including the great Andalusian, Hazrat Ibnul Arabi ,the Shaikh ul Akbar. Mawlana Shams e Tabrizi, who was later to become the mentor of Rumi, was also living in Damascus.
Back in Konya, Jalaluddin was living the life of a teacher , scholar and religious leader. But it was his tryst with Shams e Tabrizi, the itinerant, enigmatic fakir who appeared from Damascus, that completely transformed the scholar and teacher in Rumi. He abandoned religious and scholarly pursuits and ensconced himself for days in the company of Shams e Tabrizi ,the mendicant dervish. They found in themselves soul mates of each other and they drowned themselves in the ecstasy of divine love and beauty unknown to the common man. Jalauddin”"s inseparable companionship with the wild and enigmatic dervish gave rise to conspiracies. They thought it was an outrage. One night Shams vanished suddenly, allegedly to have been killed and thrown into a well . A grave said to be belonging to Shams e Tabrizi is preserved in Konya covered in green silk near the madrassa where Rumi used to teach.
The tragic disappearance of Shams, the soul mate, lit an unquenchable fire of pain and tears in the heart of Jalaluddin. This pang of pain and love gave birth in turn to a torrent of touching poetry at once ecstatic and divine , a beautiful “foaming torrent that leaps and plunges in the etheral solitidue of hills”, in the words of Professor R.A. Nicholson, who translated , “Divan -e-Shamse –Tabrizi”, a book of odes by the Mawlana. Rumi lamented in one of the poems of the Divan,
At last thou has departed and gone to the unseen;
Its marvelous by what way thou wentest from the world.
Thou did”st strongly shake thy wings and feathers and
having broken the cage
Didst take the air and journey towards the world of soul.
But the enduring fame of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi rests naturally more on his magnum opus, “Masnavi -E- Manavi”, dubbed as the “Koran in Pahlavi language”, by Molla Jami for its spiritual couplets scanned from the holy Koran and given a beautiful poetic expression.
It is an absolute amazement that Masnavi, which is twice the size of Dante”s “Divine Comedy”, more than the combined poems in the Greek epics “Iliad and Odyssey”, more than the ” Slokas” in the Hindu epic Ramayana, was the bestselling book of poetry in the United States in the mid nineties. Masnavi has 25,700 couplets and it took 12 years for Rumi to compose it. The Scottish fiction and travelogue writer, William Darlymple, has observed, “It seems almost unbelievable in the world of 9/11, Bin Laden and the clash of civilizations ,but the bestselling book in the US in the 1990s was not any of the giants of American letters — Robert Forst, Robert Lowell, Wallace Steavans, or Sylvia Plath nor was it Shakespeare or Homer or Dante or any European poet. Instead, remarkably it was a classically trained Muslim cleric who taught the Islamic code of law in a madrassa in what is now in Turkey.” It goes to the credit of Prof. Coleman Barks that he freed the Masnavi poems “from the cage” in modern English free verse.
The beginning of the writing of Masnavi has a sweet and surprising note. Hushamuddin Clelebi, the Mawlana”s favorite disciple and companion, one day asked Rumi to write book of poetry book like Sanai”s (d1131) “Haqiqa”, or Attar”s (d1220) “Monteq ur Tayar” for the benefit of the students and the learned. The Mawlana quietly brought out a piece of paper from his turban and handed it to Hushamuddin, wherein were written the opening lines of the famous Masnavi:
Listen to the reed how it tells a tale ,
Complaining of separations, saying,
Ever since I was parted from the reed bed,
My lament has caused man
and woman to moan.
I want a bosom torn of severance,
That I may unfold (to such a one) the pain of love desire.
The reed flute’s cry to go back to its origin is the metaphor for the human soul’s yearning to travel back to its source, the “Reed -bed” of God”s presence . Even today a flute symbolically plays a plaintive note in the Dargha of Mowlana Rumi day in and day out. In the Masnawi the Mowlana sings,
In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty how to make poems.
You dance in my chest.
Where no one sees you
but sometimes I do
and that sight becomes this art.
The Masnavi has been described by its English translator, Professor R. A. Nicholson of Cambridge, as a” majestic river calm and deep meandering through a varied landscape to the immeasurable ocean “.
The green dome on the grave of the Mawlana beckons humanity to love and to the purification of the soul. It also asks humanity to prepare itself for the “Urs”, the spiritual wedding when one is lowered into the grave.
Another aspect of the Mawlavi Dervish order is called “Sama”", the music acompanied with a whirling dance. This dance of the Dervishes was institutionalised by Rumi”s son, Sultan Walad. Visitors to the Dargha are inevitably drawn to this spectacle. But it was not intended for entertainment or for tourist attraction when it began. The esoteric spirit of Sama is expressed by the Mawlana in these words;
The souls that have clung to water and clay,
And pleased on being freed from them,
And begin to dance in the air and breezes of love,
Becoming perfected like the full moon.
The dance of the Dervishes was correctly understood by the German poet Friedrich Ruchert, says the late Professor Annmarie Schimmel of Harvard, who translated the following ghazal written by the poet in 1819 in celebration of the spirit of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi:
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