The Islamic mystic Rumi (1207-1273) is one of the most important Persian poets of the Middle Ages. He was a famous scholar of his time and embraced Sufism in Islam. He is considered the founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes.
“If they on the day of death
sink me deep into the earth,
that my heart is still on earth
wait, you mustn’t think…
Do you see my stretcher pulling?
don’t let the word separation be heard
because that’s what I’ve always longed for
Meeting and finding belong!
Don’t lament ‘Farewell, oh farewell!’
if I am led into the grave:
It is a happy arrival for me
prepared behind the curtain.”
At the beginning of December 1273 there were several earthquakes in Konya in eastern Turkey. The residents of the Anatolian city found no rest during the day or at night. One of them, however, who was on his deathbed was the poet and mystic Maulana Jelaleddin Rumi. Nevertheless, he comforted the residents of Konya and said about his own fate:
“The earth is hungry.
Soon she’ll get a fat chunk and she’ll rest.”
A few days later, on December 17, 1273, Rumi left the world. The mystic, who all his life had seen traces of divine activity in everything and everywhere, was freed from the cage of the earthly body – to become the breath of God.
“Behold, I died as a stone and came up as a plant,
died as a plant and then took the course as an animal.
Died an animal and became a human. Then what am I afraid of
because by dying I can never become less!
And when I die again as a human being,
an angel’s wing will be acquired for me.
And as an angel I must be sacrificed too,
become what I do not understand: a breath of God!”
“I was twenty-five when I first encountered Rumi while studying at Oxford University. First of all, it was the exquisitely beautiful language that won me over to him. Then, when I turned to mysticism, his verses resonated in my heart. Eventually they became the center of my life.”
So Andrew Harvey, the historian of religions at Oxford University and translator Rumis.
“Of course, every translation is associated with certain disappointments. But at least the English is expressive enough to duly capture Rumi’s imagery. And I hope I was able to preserve some of that beauty and a shade of the great light from the original.”
The verses, didactic poems and prose writings of the philosopher Maulana Jelaleddin Rumi, who was born in 1207, are still of great importance today. Rumi’s main work, the mystical long poem Mathnawi, is considered the “Koran in Persian tongue”. Poets and thinkers of Islam have repeatedly drawn on Rumi’s literature to emphasize their points of view, to illuminate religious differences, or simply to use his inspiring verses to adequately portray modern themes. And: Rumi’s verses and anecdotes have found their way into the folk literature and music of Turkey, India and Iran.
In the West, Rumi’s message has become synonymous with mystical enthusiasm and Sufi union with the beloved, with God.
“Do you think I know what I’m doing?
That I belong to myself for a breath or half?
No more than a pen knows what it writes
or the ball can guess where it is going.
“In my eyes, Rumi is particularly important because he presents Islam in his very own way. He refers to this belief as a jewel. If interpreted correctly, Rumi says, Islam is paving the way through the madness that the fundamentalists have brought to the world. Rumi has looked into the heart of Islam!”
In 1230, Konya, located in Central Anatolia, was considered the center of Islamic religiosity and culture. In this era, the then twenty-seven-year-old Maulana Gelaleddin Rumi, after studying theology, took over the chair from his father, Baha’uddin Walad, at the University of Konya. The father was a respected theologian in the tradition of the great scholar Ahmad Ghazali.
Another disciple of his father then introduced Rumi to Sufism. As for other Muslims, the revelations of the Koran and the duties and laws associated with them are of great importance to Sufis. However, the Sufis strive for an emotionally lived spirituality that is cleansed of all superstition, but also of dogmatism, fanaticism and egoism. They seek the direct experience of God, which is often referred to as union with the beloved.
“And think so earnestly of God
until you completely forget yourself
that you rise in what is called
where caller and call is no more.”
This self-forgetfulness described by Rumi, oneness with God, can be achieved in different ways. Rhythmic dancing and singing, devotional exercises in which the names of God are intoned, a life of complete asceticism and painful penances are just part of the repertoire that some Sufis adopt. It can also include practices that other Muslims regard as strictly forbidden, such as indulgence in sensual pleasures or the use of drugs. A few years after his initiation into Sufism, Rumi added another variant: the mystical union with his teacher Shams-i Tabrisi.
“When Rumi first met his great teacher Schams, he was in his late thirties. Schams was about twenty-five years older. The two soon found themselves in an intense mystical love affair. But it all lasted just three years. Because shame disappeared. He may have been murdered.”
The intimate relationship between Rumi and the dervish Shams-i Tabrisi was an open secret in Konya. The last doubts about the nature of this relationship were dispelled in the eyes of many observers by Rumi’s verses. In some poems, the mystic described being together with his friend in such a way that the imagination had little scope.
But whether Rumi and Schams were only united in their love for God or whether their togetherness also contained erotic elements never came to light. And since Rumi was a respectable, if not revered, citizen of the city, the relationship between the two seekers of God, while always a source of talk, was discussed behind closed doors.
After two years of being with his beloved disciple, Shams-i Tabrisi left the city. It was said that the envy and jealousy of his friendship with Rumi had become too great. After a while the dervish returned to Konya again for a short time. But then he suddenly disappeared forever. Now there were rumors that Shams-i Tabrisi had been murdered. But the true circumstances surrounding his disappearance have never been clarified. Rumi withdrew from the public eye. One of his sons described to his father’s friends how things were with the mystic at the time.
“After the breakup, he acted like a madman. He has become a poet lost in love. He was a pious, now he’s a drunk pub owner. But he is not drunk with the wine of the grapes. He who belongs to the Light of God drinks nothing but the wine of the Divine Light.”
“For three years, Rumi was beside himself with pain. But then one day he realized that through the extremely intimate connection he had become one with Schams. The separation was now over. In this state of wondrous, incomprehensible realization he wrote some of his greatest works – the mystical masterpieces through which we know him today.”
And did not forget Rumi what had comforted him in the darkest period of his life – the music. On his way back to life, the sound of the lute, harp and flute had given him renewed confidence. Because it was the singing and the passionate tones of the instruments that had brought his beloved back to his inner eye.
“I saw the friend; he walked in circles around the house,
on his lute he struck a melody.
With a fiery beat, a sweet song
he played, intoxicated by the wine of the night, burning through.”
But Rumi had not only found a way to be very close to his distant friend again, he had also returned to the paradise of his longing: to a direct encounter with God. While recovering at that time, Rumi had devised the divine round dance that one of his sons would later promote to the central activity of the world-famous Mevlevi order. During the whirling dance of the Mevlevis, the dervishes with their black cloaks also shed their dark earthly life in order to be absorbed in divine love and to awaken to higher life.
“After one of Rumi’s sons founded the Mevlevi order at the time, this Sufi brotherhood, based on Rumi’s teachings, spread rapidly throughout the Islamic world to the West. This also made his poetry very popular in the western world. And today Rumi is a major poet in East and West.”
In 1925, Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish state, decreed the end of the activities of the Mevlevi Order with the closure of the dervish convents. But the Sufi brotherhood has long been active again. The ideals of the religious community consist, among other things, of striving for absolute trust in God and of the maxim of seeing one’s neighbor as a reflection of God and treating them accordingly, even across the borders of the individual religions. The ultimate goal of the Mevlevis is to become empty of everything that does not correspond to God, so that the breath of God can flow through man and make his soul vibrate.
“Fortunately, the Mevlevi Order has been very active again for a long time. Here the teachings and practices of Rumi are preserved, as well as the ecstatic dance he created. The whole thing is an unbelievable achievement!”
Via the Mevlevi Brotherhood, the cultural centers of the same name, Rumi congresses, music projects that set his verses to music and the numerous translations of his works into many languages - the Sufi master, who died more than eight hundred years ago, is as present today as ever.
“Like the wind in this world
he blows and lifts the edge of the carpet
and the mats become restless and move.
He twirls trash and straws in the air
makes the water of the pond look like chainmail
and twigs and trees and leaves dance and put out the lamps.
He flares up the half-burnt wood and stokes the fire.
All of these states appear different and different;
but from the point of view of the object and the root and the reality they are only one, for the movement comes from a wind.”
“One thing that shows how unusual Rumi really was is that he wrote eighty-two poems about Jesus. Although he was a Muslim, he felt very close to him and the pain inherent in his birth. He felt that he lived through and suffered through essentially the same experiences as Jesus.”
“It is pain that guides man in every endeavor.
As long as there is no pain for anything in him and no passion
and no longing for the thing arises in him,
he will never strive to attain this thing.
Without pain this matter remains unattainable for him,
be it success in this world or salvation in the next.
As long as the labor doesn’t start
Mary did not go to the trunk of the palm tree.
This pain brought her to the tree and the withered tree bore fruit.
The body is like Mary. Each of us has a Jesus within us.
When we feel pain, our Jesus is born.
If no contractions come
then Jesus goes back to his origin by the same secret path,
on which he had come
and leaves us empty and without part in him.”
Despite his affinity for Jesus and a remarkably tolerant attitude towards other religions, Rumi drew his image of God solely from the Koran. Accordingly, for Rumi, Allah was the Creator, Sustainer and Judge of the world. For Rumi he is the god of all people and all religions.
The Koran was key to Rumi’s worldview, even if, as he said, this holy book of Islam is like a bride who hides if you want to unveil her too quickly.
“What shall I do, O Muslims? Because I don’t know myself:
I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Pars’ nor Muslim:
Not from the east, not from the west, not from the land, not from the sea,
I am not from the bosom of the earth and not from the light of heaven.
Not of dust, not of water, not of fire, not of wind,
not from the throne, not from the gutter, and also not from being and becoming.
Not from this world, not from the hereafter, not from Eden, not from hell
not of Adam, not of Eve, nor of angels do I come.
My space is spaceless, my sign is signlessness,
is neither body nor soul, I am only a part of His light.
I have rejected duality, I saw one in both worlds
I’m looking for one, I’ll call one, I know one, I’ll name one.
If in my life just a breath goes by without you,
From this day and this hour, I am ashamed of this life.”
“Rumi points the way to the next stage in human evolution. Whatever our beliefs, it encourages us to walk the path of love and eventually enter the next dimension.”
At times, however, the mystic fell silent. For his friends and followers, this was not necessarily a bad sign, but rather an indication that Rumi was following the aphorism said to have come from the Prophet Mohammed. “Whoever knows God becomes dumb”. But under ever new inspirations the wall of silence broke again and another statement, which is also attributed to the prophet, gained the upper hand: “He who knows God talks a lot”.
Like many other mystics, Rumi oscillated between these two poles throughout his life. Statements on the relationship between the words and their reality, their inner meaning, can be found in many of his works. Here is how he illustrated the flimsy and hypocritical use of words in an anecdote:
“A greengrocer was in love with a woman and he sent a message to this lady through her maid. She should tell her: ‘I’m so and so, I love, I’m on fire, I can’t find peace, I felt like this yesterday; This and that happened to me last night…’ and he told long detailed stories each time.
When the servant then brought the message to her mistress, she said: ‘The greengrocer sends his regards and says: ‘Come’, so that I can do this and that with you!’
‘Did he say that so coldly?’ the mistress asked back.
‘No, he talked for a very long time,’ answered the servant, ‘but the point was just that.'”
The odes of Rumi represent a great didactic poem, which in the eyes of the mystic pursued only one goal – to bring the light of knowledge and the all-encompassing love of God closer to people.
“I love everything that Rumi has produced. The odes too, of course! They remind me of Beethoven’s Ninth. The odes come like a deluge. They’re just great.”
“Where there is love, there is no I. For the beloved, everything is just you.
The way to God is the loss of self.
Rejoice, my God, in your lover!
Hallowed be her death! A feast be your beauty for them!
In your embers may their souls burn like incense.”
When Maulana Gelaleddin Rumi died on December 17, 1273, Jews, Christians, Sufists and other Muslims wept together for him. The residents of Konya accompanied Rumi to his tomb, which has remained an important place of pilgrimage to this day.
The inscription on Rumi’s final resting place contains his universal appeal – an invitation to all who want to focus their whole being on God.
“Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderers, idolaters.
You who love goodbyes.
It does not matter.
This is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your oath a thousand times.
Come, come, come again.”
What is love Rumi?
– “Love is the medicine of our pride and our complacency. Doctor of our many imperfections.” – “I want to sing like the birds sing without worrying who is listening or what they are thinking.” – “You have more love inside than you could ever understand.”
Where there is love there is no I Rumi?
“Where there is love, there is no I. For the beloved, everything is just you. The way to God is the loss of self. Rejoice, my God, in your lover!
Where did Rumi come from?
Balch is a city in Balch Province in northern Afghanistan. Balkh is an important pilgrimage site located about 20 kilometers from Mazar-e Sharif, the largest city in northern Afghanistan. The population was calculated in 2012 with 87,000. Since then the city has grown enormously.
Was Rumi Afghan?
After all, Rumi’s birthplace is in Balkh, a province of present-day Afghanistan, and he is therefore primarily an Afghan poet! However, Rumi spent most of his life in present-day Turkey, he died in Konya.
What is Rumi known for?
Rūmī was a great Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic Mas̄navī-yi Maʿnavī (“Spiritual Couplets”), which widely influenced mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world.
Who is Rumi and what did he do?
The ecstatic poems of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi master born 807 years ago in 1207, have sold millions of copies in recent years, making him the most popular poet in the US. Globally, his fans are legion.
What is Rumi philosophy?
Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path to reach God. It was from these ideas that the practice of whirling dervishes developed into a ritual form. In the Mevlevi tradition, worship “represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One.
What is Rumi’s most famous poem?
Still, many literary experts agree that Masnavi, a six-volume series referred to by many as “The Koran in Persian,” is Rumi’s most famous poem. The series is about 50,000 lines long and teaches Sufis how to find love in God.
What is Rumi’s famous quote?
“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.”
What Rumi says about love?
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
What does Rumi say about healing?
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” “God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.”
What Rumi says about beauty?
“Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.” “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” “Everything in the universe is a pitcher brimming with wisdom and beauty.” “The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.”
What does Rumi say about the heart?
Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths. Find the sweetness in your own heart, then you may find the sweetness in every heart. I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you into my heart.
What Rumi says about happiness?
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” “Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.” “Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
