Rumi's works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world.[22][23] His poems have subsequently been translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet",[24] is very popular in Turkey, Azerbaijan and South Asia,[25]
and has become the "best selling poet" in the United States.[26][27]
Name
He is most commonly called Rumi in English. His full name is given by his contemporary Sipahsalar as Muhammad bin Muhammad bin al-Husayn al-Khatibi al-Balkhi al-Bakri (Arabic: محمد بن محمد بن الحسين الخطيبي البلخي البكري).[28] He is more commonly known as Molānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (مولانا جلالالدین محمد رومی). Jalal ad-Din is an Arabic name meaning "Glory of the Faith". Balkhī and Rūmī are his nisbas, meaning, respectively, "from Balkh" and "from Rûm" ('Roman,' what European history now calls Byzantine Anatolia[29]).
According to the authoritative Rumi biographer Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago, "[t]he Anatolian peninsula which had belonged to the Byzantine, or eastern Roman empire, had only relatively recently been conquered by Muslims and even when it came to be controlled by Turkish Muslim rulers, it was still known to Arabs, Persians and Turks as the geographical area of Rum. As such, there are a number of historical personages born in or associated with Anatolia known as Rumi, a word borrowed from Arabic literally meaning 'Roman,' in which context Roman refers to subjects of the Byzantine Empire or simply to people living in or things associated with Anatolia."[30] He was also known as "Mullah of Rum" (ملای رومmullā-yi Rūm or ملای رومیmullā-yi Rūmī).[31]
Rumi is widely known by the sobriquetMawlānā/Molānā[1][32] (Persian: مولاناPersian pronunciation:[moulɒːnɒ]) in Iran and popularly known as Mevlânâ in Turkey. Mawlānā (مولانا) is a term of Arabic origin, meaning "our master". The term مولویMawlawī/Mowlavi (Persian) and Mevlevi (Turkish), also of Arabic origin, meaning "my master", is also frequently used for him.[33]
Rumi was born to Persian parents,[34][11][12][35] in Balkh,[36] modern-day Afghanistan or Wakhsh,[4] a village on the East bank of the Wakhsh River known as Sangtuda in present-day Tajikistan.[4] The area, culturally adjacent to Balkh, is where Mawlânâ's father, Bahâ' uddîn Walad, was a preacher and jurist.[4] He lived and worked there until 1212, when Rumi was aged around five and the family moved to Samarkand.[4]
Greater Balkh was at that time a major centre of Persian culture[17][35][37] and Sufism had developed there for several centuries. The most important influences upon Rumi, besides his father, were the Persian poets Attar and Sanai.[38] Rumi expresses his appreciation: "Attar was the spirit, Sanai his eyes twain, And in time thereafter, Came we in their train"[39] and mentions in another poem: "Attar has traversed the seven cities of Love, We are still at the turn of one street".[40] His father was also connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-Din Kubra.[19]
Rumi lived most of his life under the Persianate[41][42][43]SeljukSultanate of Rum, where he produced his works[44] and died in 1273AD. He was buried in Konya, and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage.[45] Upon his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for the Sufi dance known as the Sama ceremony. He was laid to rest beside his father, and over his remains a shrine was erected. A hagiographical account of him is described in Shams ud-Din Ahmad Aflāki's Manāqib ul-Ārifīn (written between 1318 and 1353). This biography needs to be treated with care as it contains both legends and facts about Rumi.[46] For example, Professor Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago, author of the most complete biography on Rumi, has separate sections for the hagiographical biography of Rumi and the actual biography about him.[47]
Childhood and emigration
Rumi's father was Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, a theologian, jurist and a mystic from Wakhsh,[4] who was also known by the followers of Rumi as Sultan al-Ulama or "Sultan of the Scholars". According to Sultan Walad's Ibadetname and Shamsuddin Aflaki (c.1286 to 1291), Rumi was a descendant of Abu Bakr.[48] Some modern scholars, however, reject this claim and state it does not hold on closer examination. The claim of maternal descent from the Khwarazmshah for Rumi or his father is also seen as a non-historical hagiographical tradition designed to connect the family with royalty, but this claim is rejected for chronological and historical reasons. The most complete genealogy offered for the family stretches back to six or seven generations to famous Hanafi jurists.[47][49][50]
We do not learn the name of Baha al-Din's mother in the sources, only that he referred to her as "Māmi" (colloquial Persian for Māma),[51] and that she was a simple woman who lived to the 1200s. The mother of Rumi was Mu'mina Khātūn. The profession of the family for several generations was that of Islamic preachers of the relatively liberal HanafiMaturidi school, and this family tradition was continued by Rumi (see his Fihi Ma Fih and Seven Sermons) and Sultan Walad (see Ma'rif Waladi for examples of his everyday sermons and lectures).
When the Mongols invaded Central Asia sometime between 1215 and 1220, Baha ud-Din Walad, with his whole family and a group of disciples, set out westwards. According to hagiographical account which is not agreed upon by all Rumi scholars, Rumi encountered one of the most famous mystic Persian poets, Attar, in the Iranian city of Nishapur, located in the province of Khorāsān. Attar immediately recognized Rumi's spiritual eminence. He saw the father walking ahead of the son and said, "Here comes a sea followed by an ocean."[52][53] Attar gave the boy his Asrārnāma, a book about the entanglement of the soul in the material world. This meeting had a deep impact on the eighteen-year-old Rumi and later on became the inspiration for his works.
From Nishapur, Walad and his entourage set out for Baghdad, meeting many of the scholars and Sufis of the city.[citation needed] From Baghdad they went to Hejaz and performed the pilgrimage at Mecca. The migrating caravan then passed through Damascus, Malatya, Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri and Nigde. They finally settled in Karaman for seven years; Rumi's mother and brother both died there. In 1225, Rumi married Gowhar Khatun in Karaman. They had two sons: Sultan Walad and Ala-eddin Chalabi. When his wife died, Rumi married again and had a son, Amir Alim Chalabi, and a daughter, Malakeh Khatun.
On 1 May 1228, most likely as a result of the insistent invitation of 'Alā' ud-Dīn Key-Qobād, ruler of Anatolia, Baha' ud-Din came and finally settled in Konya in Anatolia within the westernmost territories of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm.
Baha' ud-Din became the head of a madrassa (religious school) and when he died, Rumi, aged twenty-five, inherited his position as the Islamic molvi. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa.
During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.
It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.
Shams had travelled throughout the Middle East searching and praying for someone who could "endure my company". A voice said to him, "What will you give in return?" Shams replied, "My head!" The voice then said, "The one you seek is Jalal ud-Din of Konya." On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. It is rumoured that Shams was murdered with the connivance of Rumi's son, 'Ala' ud-Din; if so, Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of mystical friendship.[54]
Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus. There, he realised:
Why should I seek? I am the same as
He. His essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself![55]
Later life and death
Double-page illuminated frontispiece, 1st book (Persian: دفتر, "daftar") of the Collection of poems (Masnavi-i ma'navi), 1461 manuscript
Mewlana had been spontaneously composing ghazals (Persian poems), and these had been collected in the Divan-i Kabir or Diwan Shams Tabrizi. Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. One day, the two of them were wandering through the Meram vineyards outside Konya when Hussam described to Rumi an idea he had had: "If you were to write a book like the Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq ut-Tayr of 'Attar, it would become the companion of many troubadours. They would fill their hearts from your work and compose music to accompany it." Rumi smiled and took out a piece of paper on which were written the opening eighteen lines of his Masnavi, beginning with:
Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
How it sings of separation...[56]
Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.
In December 1273, Rumi fell ill; he predicted his own death and composed the well-known ghazal, which begins with the verse:
How doest thou know what sort of king I have within me as companion?
Do not cast thy glance upon my golden face, for I have iron legs.[57]
Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya. His death was mourned by the diverse community of Konya, with local Christians and Jews joining the crowd that converged to bid farewell as his body was carried through the city.[58] Rumi's body was interred beside that of his father, and a splendid shrine, the "Green Tomb" (Turkish: Yeşil Türbe, Arabic: قبة الخضراء; today the Mevlâna Museum), was erected over his place of burial. His epitaph reads:
When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth,
but find it in the hearts of men.[59]
Georgian princess and Seljuq queen Gurju Khatun was a close friend of Rumi. She was the one who sponsored the construction of his tomb in Konya.[60] The 13th century Mevlâna Mausoleum, with its mosque, dance hall, schools and living quarters for dervishes, remains a destination of pilgrimage to this day, and is probably the most popular pilgrimage site to be regularly visited by adherents of every major religion.[58]
Like other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, Rumi's poetry speaks of love which infuses the world. Rumi's teachings also express the tenets summarized in the Quranic verse which Shams-e Tabrizi cited as the essence of prophetic guidance: "Know that ‘There is no god but He,’ and ask forgiveness for your sin" (Q. 47:19).
In the interpretation attributed to Shams, the first part of the verse commands the humanity to seek knowledge of tawhid (oneness of God), while the second instructs them to negate their own existence. In Rumi's terms, tawhid is lived most fully through love, with the connection being made explicit in his verse that describes love as "that flame which, when it blazes up, burns away everything except the Everlasting Beloved."[61]
Rumi's longing and desire to attain this ideal is evident in the following poem from his book the Masnavi:[62]
از جمادی مُردم و نامی شدم
وز نما مُردم به حیوان برزدم
مُردم از حیوانی و آدم شدم
پس چه ترسم کی ز مردن کم شدم؟
حملهٔ دیگر بمیرم از بشر
تا برآرم از ملائک بال و پر
وز ملک هم بایدم جستن ز جو
کل شیء هالک الا وجهه
بار دیگر از ملک پران شوم
آنچ اندر وهم ناید آن شوم
پس عدم گردم عدم چون ارغنون
گویدم که انا الیه راجعون
I died to the mineral state and became a plant,
I died to the vegetal state and reached animality,
I died to the animal state and became a man,
Then what should I fear? I have never become less from dying.
At the next charge (forward) I will die to human nature,
So that I may lift up (my) head and wings (and soar) among the angels,
And I must (also) jump from the river of (the state of) the angel,
Everything perishes except His Face,
Once again I will become sacrificed from (the state of) the angel,
I will become that which cannot come into the imagination,
Then I will become non-existent; non-existence says to me (in tones) like an organ, Truly, to Him is our return.
The Masnavi weaves fables, scenes from everyday life, Qur'anic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics into a vast and intricate tapestry.
Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. It was from these ideas that the practice of whirling Dervishes developed into a ritual form. His teachings became the base for the order of the Mevlevi, which his son Sultan Walad organised. Rumi encouraged Sama, listening to music and turning or doing the sacred dance. In the Mevlevi tradition, samāʿ represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes and nations.[citation needed]
In other verses in the Masnavi, Rumi describes in detail the universal message of love:
The lover's cause is separate from all other causes
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.[63]
Rumi's favourite musical instrument was the ney (reed flute).[24]
Rumi's poetry is often divided into various categories: the quatrains (rubayāt) and odes (ghazal) of the Divan, the six books of the Masnavi. The prose works are divided into The Discourses, The Letters, and the Seven Sermons.
Poetic works
Bowl of Reflections with Rumi's poetry, early 13th century; Brooklyn Museum
Rumi's best-known work is the Maṭnawīye Ma'nawī (Spiritual Couplets; مثنوی معنوی). The six-volume poem holds a distinguished place within the rich tradition of Persian Sufi literature, and has been commonly called "the Quran in Persian".[64][65] Many commentators have regarded it as the greatest mystical poem in world literature.[66] It contains approximately 27,000 lines,[67] each consisting of a couplet with an internal rhyme.[58] While the mathnawi genre of poetry may use a variety of different metres, after Rumi composed his poem, the metre he used became the mathnawi metre par excellence. The first recorded use of this metre for a mathnawi poem took place at the Nizari Ismaili fortress of Girdkuh between 1131–1139. It likely set the stage for later poetry in this style by mystics such as Attar and Rumi.[68]
Rumi's other major work is the Dīwān-e Kabīr (Great Work) or Dīwān-e Shams-e Tabrīzī (The Works of Shams of Tabriz; دیوان شمس تبریزی), named in honour of Rumi's master Shams. Besides approximately 35000 Persian couplets and 2000 Persian quatrains,[69] the Divan contains 90 Ghazals and 19 quatrains in Arabic,[70] a couple of dozen or so couplets in Turkish (mainly macaronic poems of mixed Persian and Turkish)[71][72] and 14 couplets in Greek (all of them in three macaronic poems of Greek-Persian).[13][73][74]
Prose works
Fihi Ma Fihi (In It What's in It, Persian: فیه ما فیه) provides a record of seventy-one talks and lectures given by Rumi on various occasions to his disciples. It was compiled from the notes of his various disciples, so Rumi did not author the work directly.[75] An English translation from the Persian was first published by A.J. Arberry as Discourses of Rumi (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1972), and a translation of the second book by Wheeler Thackston, Sign of the Unseen (Putney, VT: Threshold Books, 1994). The style of the Fihi ma fihi is colloquial and meant for middle-class men and women, and lack the sophisticated wordplay.[76]
Majāles-e Sab'a (Seven Sessions, Persian: مجالس سبعه) contains seven Persian sermons (as the name implies) or lectures given in seven different assemblies. The sermons themselves give a commentary on the deeper meaning of Qur'an and Hadith. The sermons also include quotations from poems of Sana'i, 'Attar, and other poets, including Rumi himself. As Aflakī relates, after Shams-e Tabrīzī, Rumi gave sermons at the request of notables, especially Salāh al-Dīn Zarkūb. The style of Persian is rather simple, but quotation of Arabic and knowledge of history and the Hadith show Rumi's knowledge in the Islamic sciences. His style is typical of the genre of lectures given by Sufis and spiritual teachers.[77]
Makatib (The Letters, Persian: مکاتیب) or Maktubat (مکتوبات) is the collection of letters written in Persian by Rumi to his disciples, family members, and men of state and of influence. The letters testify that Rumi kept very busy helping family members and administering a community of disciples that had grown up around them. Unlike the Persian style of the previous two mentioned works (which are lectures and sermons), the letters are consciously sophisticated and epistolary in style, which is in conformity with the expectations of correspondence directed to nobles, statesmen and kings.[78]
Religious outlook
It is undeniable that Rumi was a Muslim scholar and took Islam seriously. Nonetheless, the depth of his spiritual vision extended beyond narrow understanding sectarian concerns. One quatrain reads:
در راه طلب عاقل و دیوانه یکی است
در شیوهی عشق خویش و بیگانه یکی است
آن را که شراب وصل جانان دادند
در مذهب او کعبه و بتخانه یکی است
On the seeker's path, the wise and crazed are one.
In the way of love, kin and strangers are one.
The one who they gave the wine of the beloved's union,
in his path, the Kaaba and house of idols are one.[79]
—Quatrain 305
According to the Quran, Muhammad is a mercy sent by God.[80] In regards to this, Rumi states:
"The Light of Muhammad does not abandon a Zoroastrian or Jew in the world. May the shade of his good fortune shine upon everyone! He brings all of those who are led astray into the Way out of the desert."[81]
Rumi, however, asserts the supremacy of Islam by stating:
"The Light of Muhammad has become a thousand branches (of knowledge), a thousand, so that both this world and the next have been seized from end to end. If Muhammad rips the veil open from a single such branch, thousands of monks and priests will tear the string of false belief from around their waists."[82]
Many of Rumi's poems suggest the importance of outward religious observance and the primacy of the Qur'an.[83]
Flee to God's Qur'an, take refuge in it
there with the spirits of the prophets merge.
The Book conveys the prophets' circumstances
those fish of the pure sea of Majesty.[84]
Rumi states:
I am the servant of the Qur'an as long as I have life.
I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen one.
If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings,
I am quit of him and outraged by these words.[85]
Rumi also states:
I "sewed" my two eyes shut from [desires for] this world and the next – this I learned from Muhammad.[86]
On the first page of the Masnavi, Rumi states:
"Hadha kitâbu 'l- mathnawîy wa huwa uSûlu uSûli uSûli 'd-dîn wa kashshâfu 'l-qur'ân."
"This is the book of the Masnavi, and it is the roots of the roots of the roots of the (Islamic) Religion and it is the Explainer of the Qur'ân."[87]
Hadi Sabzavari, one of Iran's most important 19th-century philosophers, makes the following connection between the Masnavi and Islam, in the introduction to his philosophical commentary on the book:
It is a commentary on the versified exegesis [of the Qur’ān] and its occult mystery, since all of it [all of the Mathnawī] is, as you will see, an elucidation of the clear verses [of the Qur’ān], a clarification of prophetic utterances, a glimmer of the light of the luminous Qur’ān, and burning embers irradiating their rays from its shining lamp. As respects to hunting through the treasure-trove of the Qur’ān, one can find in it [the Mathnawī] all [the Qur’ān's] ancient philosophical wisdom; it [the Mathnawī] is all entirely eloquent philosophy. In truth, the pearly verse of the poem combines the Canon Law of Islam (sharīʿa) with the Sufi Path (ṭarīqa) and the Divine Reality (ḥaqīqa); the author's [Rūmī] achievement belongs to God in his bringing together of the Law (sharīʿa), the Path, and the Truth in a way that includes critical intellect, profound thought, a brilliant natural temperament, and integrity of character that is endowed with power, insight, inspiration, and illumination.[88]
One of the greatest living authorities on Rûmî in Persia today, Hâdî Hâ'irî, has shown in an unpublished work that some 6,000 verses of the Dîwân and the Mathnawî are practically direct translations of Qur'ânic verses into Persian poetry.[89]
The Sufi is hanging on to Muhammad, like Abu Bakr.[90]
Legacy
Universality
Rumi's work has been translated into many of the world's languages, including Russian, German, Urdu, Turkish, Arabic, Bengali, French, Italian, and Spanish, and is being presented in a growing number of formats, including concerts, workshops, readings, dance performances, and other artistic creations.[91] The English interpretations of Rumi's poetry by Coleman Barks have sold more than half a million copies worldwide,[92] and Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in the United States.[93]
Iranian world
These cultural, historical and linguistic ties between Rumi and Iran have made Rumi an iconic Iranian poet, and some of the most important Rumi scholars including Foruzanfar, Naini, Sabzewari, etc., have come from modern Iran.[94] Rumi's poetry is displayed on the walls of many cities across Iran, sung in Persian music,[94] and read in school books.[95]
The Mewlewī Sufi order was founded in 1273 by Rumi's followers after his death.[98] His first successor could have been Salah-eddin Zarkoub who served Rumi for a decade and Rumi revered him highly in his poets. Zarkoub was illiterate and uttered some words incorrectly. Rumi used some of these incorrect words in his poems to express his support and humility towards Zarkoub. Rumi named him his successor but Zarkoub died sooner than him.[99] So Rumi's first successor in the rectorship of the order was "Husam Chalabi" and, after Chalabi's death in 1284, Rumi's younger and only surviving son, Sultan Walad (d. 1312), popularly known as author of the mystical Maṭnawī Rabābnāma, or the Book of the Rabab was installed as grand master of the order.[100] The leadership of the order has been kept within Rumi's family in Konya uninterruptedly since then.[101]
The Mewlewī Sufis, also known as Whirling Dervishes, believe in performing their dhikr in the form of Sama. During the time of Rumi (as attested in the Manāqib ul-Ārefīn of Aflākī), his followers gathered for musical and "turning" practices.
According to tradition, Rumi was himself a notable musician who played the robāb, although his favourite instrument was the ney or reed flute.[102] The music accompanying the samāʿ consists of settings of poems from the Maṭnawī and Dīwān-e Kabīr, or of Sultan Walad's poems.[102] The Mawlawīyah was a well-established Sufi order in the Ottoman Empire, and many of the members of the order served in various official positions of the Caliphate. The centre for the Mevlevi was in Konya. There is also a Mewlewī monastery (درگاه, dargāh) in Istanbul near the Galata Tower in which the samāʿ is performed and accessible to the public. The Mewlewī order issues an invitation to people of all backgrounds:
Come, come, whoever you are, Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire, Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.[103]
During Ottoman times, the Mevlevi produced a number of notable poets and musicians, including Sheikh Ghalib, Ismail Rusuhi Dede of Ankara, Esrar Dede, Halet Efendi, and Gavsi Dede, who are all buried at the Galata Mewlewī Khāna (Turkish: Mevlevi-Hane) in Istanbul.[104] Music, especially that of the ney, plays an important part in the Mevlevi.
With the foundation of the modern, secular Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk removed religion from the sphere of public policy and restricted it exclusively to that of personal morals, behaviour and faith. On 13 December 1925, a law was passed closing all the tekkes (dervish lodges) and zāwiyas (chief dervish lodges), and the centres of veneration to which visits (ziyārat) were made. Istanbul alone had more than 250 tekkes as well as small centres for gatherings of various fraternities; this law dissolved the Sufi Orders, prohibited the use of mystical names, titles and costumes pertaining to their titles, impounded the Orders' assets, and banned their ceremonies and meetings. The law also provided penalties for those who tried to re-establish the Orders. Two years later, in 1927, the Mausoleum of Mevlâna in Konya was allowed to reopen as a Museum.[105]
In the 1950s, the Turkish government began allowing the Whirling Dervishes to perform once a year in Konya. The Mewlānā festival is held over two weeks in December; its culmination is on 17 December, the Urs of Mewlānā (anniversary of Rumi's death), called Šab-e Arūs (Persian: شبِ عُرس) (Persian meaning "nuptial night"), the night of Rumi's union with God.[106] In 1974, the Whirling Dervishes were permitted to travel to the West for the first time. In 2005, UNESCO proclaimed "The MevleviSama Ceremony" of Turkey as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.[107]
Rumi and his mausoleum on the reverse of the 5000 Turkish lira banknotes of 1981–1994
Rumi and his mausoleum were depicted on the reverse of the 5000 Turkish lira banknotes of 1981–1994.[108]
Religious denomination
As Edward G. Browne noted, the three most prominent mystical Persian poets, Rumi, Sanai and Attar, were all Sunni Muslims and their poetry abounds with praise for the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattāb.[109] According to Annemarie Schimmel, the tendency among Shia authors to anachronistically include leading mystical poets such as Rumi and Attar among their own ranks, became stronger after the introduction of Twelver Shia as the state religion in the Safavid Empire in 1501.[110]
Eight hundredth anniversary celebrations
Rumi on a 1968 Afghan stamp
In Afghanistan, Rumi is known as Mawlānā, in Turkey as Mevlâna, and in Iran as Molavī.
At the proposal of the Permanent Delegations of Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, and as approved by its executive board and General Conference in conformity with its mission of "constructing in the minds of men the defences of peace", UNESCO was associated with the celebration, in 2007, of the eight hundredth anniversary of Rumi's birth.[111] The commemoration at UNESCO itself took place on 6 September 2007;[112] UNESCO issued a medal in Rumi's name in the hope that it would prove an encouragement to those who are engaged in research on and dissemination of Rumi's ideas and ideals, which would, in turn, enhance the diffusion of the ideals of UNESCO.[113]
On 30 September 2007, Iranian school bells were rung throughout the country in honour of Mewlana.[114] Also in that year, Iran held a Rumi Week from 26 October to 2 November. An international ceremony and conference were held in Tehran; the event was opened by the Iranian president and the chairman of the Iranian parliament. Scholars from twenty-nine countries attended the events, and 450 articles were presented at the conference.[115] Iranian musician Shahram Nazeri was awarded the Légion d'honneur and Iran's House of Music Award in 2007 for his renowned works on Rumi masterpieces.[116] 2007 was declared as the "International Rumi Year" by UNESCO.[117][118]
Also on 30 September 2007, Turkey celebrated Rumi's eight-hundredth birthday with a giant Whirling Dervish ritual performance of the samāʿ, which was televised using forty-eight cameras and broadcast live in eight countries. Ertugrul Gunay, of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, stated, "Three hundred dervishes are scheduled to take part in this ritual, making it the largest performance of sema in history."[119]
Mawlana Rumi Review
The Mawlana Rumi Review[120] is published annually by The Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Exeter in collaboration with The Rumi Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Archetype Books[121] in Cambridge.[121] The first volume was published in 2010, and it has come out annually since then. According to the principal editor of the journal, Leonard Lewisohn: "Although a number of major Islamic poets easily rival the likes of Dante, Shakespeare and Milton in importance and output, they still enjoy only a marginal literary fame in the West because the works of Arabic and Persian thinkers, writers and poets are considered as negligible, frivolous, tawdry sideshows beside the grand narrative of the Western Canon. It is the aim of the Mawlana Rumi Review to redress this carelessly inattentive approach to world literature, which is something far more serious than a minor faux pas committed by the Western literary imagination."[122]
^ abRitter, H.; Bausani, A. "ḎJ̲alāl al-Dīn Rūmī b. Bahāʾ al-Dīn Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ Walad b. Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad Ḵh̲aṭībī." Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. Excerpt: "known by the sobriquet Mewlānā, persian poet and founder of the Mewlewiyya order of dervishes"
Tajiks and Persian admirers still prefer to call Jalaluddin 'Balkhi' because his family lived in Balkh, current day in Afghanistan before migrating westward. However, their home was not in the actual city of Balkh, since the mid-eighth century a center of Muslim culture in (Greater) Khorasan (Iran and Central Asia). Rather, as Meier has shown, it was in the small town of Wakhsh north of the Oxus that Baha'uddin Walad, Jalaluddin's father, lived and worked as a jurist and preacher with mystical inclinations. Franklin Lewis, Rumi : Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, 2000, pp. 47–49.
Lewis has devoted two pages of his book to the topic of Wakhsh, which he states has been identified with the medieval town of Lêwkand (or Lâvakand) or Sangtude, which is about 65 kilometers southeast of Dushanbe, the capital of present-day Tajikistan. He says it is on the east bank of the Vakhshâb river, a major tributary that joins the Amu Daryâ river (also called Jayhun, and named the Oxus by the Greeks). He further states: "Bahâ al-Din may have been born in Balkh, but at least between June 1204 and 1210 (Shavvâl 600 and 607), during which time Rumi was born, Bahâ al-Din resided in a house in Vakhsh (Bah 2:143 [= Bahâ' uddîn Walad's] book, "Ma`ârif."). Vakhsh, rather than Balkh was the permanent base of Bahâ al-Din and his family until Rumi was around five years old (mei 16–35) [= from a book in German by the scholar Fritz Meier—note inserted here]. At that time, in about the year 1212 (A.H. 608–609), the Valads moved to Samarqand (Fih 333; Mei 29–30, 36) [= reference to Rumi's "Discourses" and to Fritz Meier's book—note inserted here], leaving behind Baâ al-Din's mother, who must have been at least seventy-five years old."
^Lewis, Franklin D. (2014). Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The life, Teaching and poetry of Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Simon and Schuster. pp. 15–16, 52, 60, 89.
^Ramin Jahanbegloo, In Search of the Sacred : A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on His Life and Thought, ABC-CLIO (2010), p. 141
^Lewis, Franklin D. (2008). Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The life, Teaching and poetry of Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Oneworld Publication. p. 9. How is that a Persian boy born almost eight hundred years ago in Khorasan, the northeastern province of greater Iran, in a region that we identify today as in Central Asia, but was considered in those days as part of the greater Persian cultural sphere, wound up in central Anatolia on the receding edge of the Byzantine cultural sphere, in what is now Turkey, some 1,500 miles to the west?
^Schimmel, Annemarie (7 April 1994). The Mystery of Numbers. Oxford University Press. p. 51. These examples are taken from the Persian mystic Rumi's work, not from Chinese, but they express the yang-yin [sic] relationship with perfect lucidity.
^ abAnnemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi, SUNY Press, 1993, p. 193: "Rumi's mother tongue was Persian, but he had learned during his stay in Konya, enough Turkish and Greek to use it, now and then, in his verse."
^ abFranklin Lewis: "On the question of Rumi's multilingualism (pp. 315–317), we may still say that he spoke and wrote in Persian as a native language, wrote and conversed in Arabic as a learned "foreign" language and could at least get by at the market in Turkish and Greek (although some wildly extravagant claims have been made about his command of Attic Greek, or his native tongue being Turkish) (Lewis 2008:xxi). (Franklin Lewis, "Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi," One World Publication Limited, 2008). Franklin also points out that: "Living among Turks, Rumi also picked up some colloquial Turkish."(Franklin Lewis, "Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi," One World Publication Limited, 2008, p. 315). He also mentions Rumi composed thirteen lines in Greek (Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, One World Publication Limited, 2008, p. 316). On Rumi's son, Sultan Walad, Franklin mentions: "Sultan Walad elsewhere admits that he has little knowledge of Turkish" (Sultan Walad): Franklin Lewis, Rumi, "Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, One World Publication Limited, 2008, p. 239) and "Sultan Valad did not feel confident about his command of Turkish" (Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2000, p. 240)
^ abΔέδες, Δ. (1993). "Ποιήματα του Μαυλανά Ρουμή" [Poems by Mowlānā Rūmī]. Τα Ιστορικά. 10 (18–19): 3–22.
^Gardet, Louis (1977). "Religion and Culture". In Holt, P.M.; Lambton, Ann K.S.; Lewis, Bernard (eds.). The Cambridge History of Islam, Part VIII: Islamic Society and Civilization. Cambridge University Press. p. 586. It is sufficient to mention 'Aziz al-Din Nasafi, Farid al-Din 'Attar and Sa'adi, and above all Jalal al-Din Rumi, whose Mathnawi remains one of the purest literary glories of Persia
^ abC.E. Bosworth, "Turkmen Expansion towards the west" in UNESCO History of Humanity, Volume IV, titled "From the Seventh to the Sixteenth Century", UNESCO Publishing / Routledge, p. 391: "While the Arabic language retained its primacy in such spheres as law, theology and science, the culture of the Seljuk court and secular literature within the sultanate became largely Persianized; this is seen in the early adoption of Persian epic names by the Seljuk rulers (Qubād, Kay Khusraw and so on) and in the use of Persian as a literary language (Turkmen must have been essentially a vehicle for everyday speech at this time). The process of Persianization accelerated in the 13th century with the presence in Konya of two of the most distinguished refugees fleeing before the Mongols, Bahā' al-Dīn Walad and his son Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose Mathnawī, composed in Konya, constitutes one of the crowning glories of classical Persian literature."
^ abSeyyed, Hossein Nasr (1987). Islamic Art and Spirituality. Suny Press. p. 115. Jalal al-Din was born in a major center of Persian culture, Balkh, from Persian speaking parents, and is the product of that Islamic Persian culture which in the 7th/13th century dominated the 'whole of the eastern lands of Islam and to which present day Persians as well as Turks, Afghans, Central Asian Muslims and the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent are heir. It is precisely in this world that the sun of his spiritual legacy has shone most brillianty during the past seven centuries. The father of Jalal al-Din, Muhammad ibn Husayn Khatibi, known as Baha al-Din Walad and entitled Sultan al-'ulama', was an outstanding Sufi in Balkh connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-Din Kubra.
^Franklin Lewis (2008). Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi. One World Publication Limited. p. 9.
^Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Maulana), Ibrahim Gamard, Rumi and Islam: Selections from His Stories, Poems, and Discourses, Annotated & Explained, SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2004.
^Yalman, Suzan (7 July 2016), "Badr al-Dīn Tabrīzī", Encyclopaedia of Islam THREE, Brill, retrieved 7 June 2023, Badr al-Dīn Tabrīzī was the architect of the original tomb built for Mawlānā Jalālal-DīnRūmī (d. 672/1273, in Konya), the great Persian mystic and poet.
^ abSeyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, SUNY Press, 1987. p. 115: "Jalal al-Din was born in a major center of Persian culture, Balkh, from Persian speaking parents, and is the product of that Islamic Persian culture which in the 7th/13th century dominated the 'whole of the eastern lands of Islam and to which present day Persians as well as Turks, Afghans, Central Asian Muslims and the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistani and the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent are heir. It is precisely in this world that the sun of his spiritual legacy has shone most brilliantly during the past seven centuries. The father of Jalal al-Din, Muhammad ibn Husayn Khatibi, known as Baha al-Din Walad and entitled Sultan al-'ulama', was an outstanding Sufi in Balkh connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-Din Kubra."
^Franklin Lewis: Rumi: Past and Present, East and West. The Life Teachings and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi. One World Publications, Oxford 2000, S. 47.
^Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The life, Teaching and poetry of Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Oneworld Publication Limited, 2008 p. 9: "How is that a Persian boy born almost eight hundred years ago in Khorasan, the northeastern province of greater Iran, in a region that we identify today as Central Asia, but was considered in those days as part of the greater Persian cultural sphere, wound up in central Anatolia on the receding edge of the Byzantine cultural sphere"
^Maqsood Jafrī, The gleam of wisdom, Sigma Press, 2003. p. 238: "Rumi has influenced a large number of writers while on the other hand he himself was under the great influence of Sanai and Attar.
^A.J. Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam, Courier Dover Publications, Nov 9, 2001. p. 141
^Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's Mystical Tradition HarperCollins, Sep 2, 2008. page 130: "Attar has traversed the seven cities of Love, We are still at the turn of one street!"
^Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, (Rutgers University Press, 2002), 157; "...the Seljuk court at Konya adopted Persian as its official language".
^Aḥmad of Niǧde's "al-Walad al-Shafīq" and the Seljuk Past, A.C.S. Peacock, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 54, (2004), 97; With the growth of Seljuk power in Rum, a more highly developed Muslim cultural life, based on the Persianate culture of the Great Seljuk court, was able to take root in Anatolia
^Carter Vaughn Findley, The Turks in World History, Oxford University Press, 11 November 2004. p. 72: Meanwhile, amid the migratory swarm that Turkified Anatolia, the dispersion of learned men from the Persian-speaking east paradoxically made the Seljuks court at Konya a new center for Persian court culture, as exemplified by the great mystical poet Jelaleddin Rumi (1207–1273).
^Note: Rumi's shrine is now known as the "Mevlâna Museum" in Turkey.
^Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2000.
How is it that a Persian boy born almost eight hundred years ago in Khorasan, the northeastern province of greater Iran, in a region that we identify today as Central Asia, but was considered in those days as part of the Greater Persian cultural sphere, wound up in Central Anatolia on the receding edge of the Byzantine cultural sphere, in which is now Turkey
^ abFranklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008 (revised edition). pp. 90–92: "Baha al-Din’s disciples also traced his family lineage to the first caliph, Abu Bakr (Sep 9; Af 7; JNO 457; Dow 213). This probably stems from willful confusion over his paternal great grandmother, who was the daughter of Abu Bakr of Sarakhs, a noted jurist (d. 1090). The most complete genealogy offered for family stretches back only six or seven generations and cannot reach to Abu Bakr, the companion and first caliph of the Prophet, who died two years after the Prophet, in C.E. 634 (FB 5–6 n.3)."
^H. Algar, “BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD WALAD“, Encyclopedia Iranica. There is no reference to such descent in the works of Bahāʾ-e Walad and Mawlānā Jalāl-al-Dīn or in the inscriptions on their sarcophagi. The attribution may have arisen from confusion between the caliph and another Abū Bakr, Šams-al-Aʾemma Abū Bakr Saraḵsī (d. 483/1090), the well-known Hanafite jurist, whose daughter, Ferdows Ḵātūn, was the mother of Aḥmad Ḵaṭīb, Bahāʾ-e Walad's grandfather (see Forūzānfar, Resāla, p. 6). Tradition also links Bahāʾ-e Walad's lineage to the Ḵᵛārazmšāh[check spelling] dynasty. His mother is said to have been the daughter of ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Moḥammad Ḵārazmšāh[check spelling] (d. 596/1200), but this appears to be excluded for chronological reasons (Forūzānfar, Resāla, p. 7)
^(Ritter, H.; Bausani, A. "ḎJalāl al- Dīn Rūmī b. Bahāʾ al-Dīn Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ Walad b. Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad Ḵhaṭībī ." Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2009. Brill Online. Excerpt: "known by the sobriquet Mawlānā (Mevlâna), Persian poet and founder of the Mawlawiyya order of dervishes"): "The assertions that his family tree goes back to Abū Bakr, and that his mother was a daughter of the Ḵhwārizmshāh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad (Aflākī, i, 8–9) do not hold on closer examination (B. Furūzānfarr, Mawlānā Ḏjalāl Dīn, Tehrān 1315, 7; ʿAlīnaḳī Sharīʿatmadārī, Naḳd-i matn-i mathnawī, in Yaghmā, xii (1338), 164; Aḥmad Aflākī, Ariflerin menkibeleri, trans. Tahsin Yazıcı, Ankara 1953, i, Önsöz, 44).")
^Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008 (revised edition). p. 44:“Baha al-Din’s father, Hosayn, had been a religious scholar with a bent for asceticism, occupied like his own father before him, Ahmad, with the family profession of preacher (khatib). Of the four canonical schools of Sunni Islam, the family adhered to the relatively liberal Hanafifiqh. Hosayn-e Khatibi enjoyed such renown in his youth—so says Aflaki with characteristic exaggeration—that Razi al-Din Nayshapuri and other famous scholars came to study with him (Af 9; for the legend about Baha al-Din, see below, "The Mythical Baha al-Din"). Another report indicates that Baha al-Din's grandfather, Ahmad al-Khatibi, was born to Ferdows Khatun, a daughter of the reputed Hanafite jurist and author Shams al-A’emma Abu Bakr of Sarakhs, who died circa 1088 (Af 75; FB 6 n.4; Mei 74 n. 17). This is far from implausible and, if true, would tend to suggest that Ahmad al-Khatabi had studied under Shams al-A’emma. Prior to that the family could supposedly trace its roots back to Isfahan. We do not learn the name of Baha al-Din's mother in the sources, only that he referred to her as "Mama" (Mami), and that she lived to the 1200s." (p. 44)
^Ahmed, Akbar (2011). Suspended Somewhere Between: A Book of Verse. PM Press. pp. i. ISBN978-1-60486-485-4.
^El-Fers, Mohamed (2009). Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi. MokumTV. p. 45. ISBN978-1-4092-9291-3.
^Crane, H. (1993). "Notes on Saldjūq Architectural Patronage in Thirteenth Century Anatolia". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 36 (1): 1–57. doi:10.1163/156852093X00010. JSTOR3632470. ProQuest1304344524.
^Naini, Majid. The Mysteries of the Universe and Rumi's Discoveries on the Majestic Path of Love.
^Jawid Mojaddedi (2004). "Introduction". Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One. Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition). p. xix. Rumi's Masnavi holds an exalted status in the rich canon of Persian Sufi literature as the greatest mystical poem ever written. It is even referred to commonly as 'the Koran in Persian'.
من چه گویم وصف آن عالیجناب — نیست پیغمبر ولی دارد کتاب
مثنویّ معنویّ مولوی — هست قرآن در زبان پهلوی
What can I say in praise of that great one?
He is not a Prophet but has come with a book;
The Spiritual Masnavi of Mowlavi
Is the Qur'an in the language of Pahlavi (Persian).
(Khawaja Abdul Hamid Irfani, "The Sayings of Rumi and Iqbal", Bazm-e-Rumi, 1976.)
^Jawid Mojaddedi (2004). "Introduction". Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One. Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition). pp. xii–xiii. 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.
^Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008 (revised edition). p. 306: "The manuscripts versions differ greatly in the size of the text and orthography. Nicholson’s text has 25,577 lines though the average medieval and early modern manuscripts contained around 27,000 lines, meaning the scribes added two thousand lines or about eight percent more to the poem composed by Rumi. Some manuscripts give as many as 32,000!"
^Virani, Shafique N. (January 2019). "Persian Poetry, Sufism and Ismailism: The Testimony of Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī's Recognizing God". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 29 (1): 17–49. doi:10.1017/S1356186318000494. S2CID165288246. ProQuest2300038453.
^Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, rev. ed. (2008). p. 314: “The Foruzanfar’s edition of the Divan-e Shams compromises 3229 ghazals and qasidas making a total of almost 35000 lines, not including several hundred lines of stanzaic poems and nearly two thousand quatrains attributed to him”
^Dar al-Masnavi Website, accessed December 2009: According to the Dar al-Masnavi website: “In Forûzânfar's edition of Rumi's Divan, there are 90 ghazals (Vol. 1, 29; Vol. 2, 1; Vol. 3, 6; Vol. 4, 8; Vol. 5, 19, Vol. 6, 0; Vol. 7, 27) and 19 quatrains entirely in Arabic. In addition, there are ghazals which are all Arabic except for the final line; many have one or two lines in Arabic within the body of the poem; some have as many as 9–13 consecutive lines in Arabic, with Persian verses preceding and following; some have alternating lines in Persian, then Arabic; some have the first half of the verse in Persian, the second half in Arabic.”
^Mecdut MensurOghlu: “The Divan of Jalal al-Din Rumi contains 35 couplets in Turkish and Turkish-Persian which have recently been published me” (Celal al-Din Rumi’s turkische Verse: UJb. XXIV (1952), pp. 106–115)
^Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, rev. ed. (2008): "“a couple of dozen at most of the 35,000 lines of the Divan-I Shams are in Turkish, and almost all of these lines occur in poems that are predominantly in Persian”"
^Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, rev. ed. (2008): "Three poems have bits of demotic Greek; these have been identified and translated into French, along with some Greek verses of Sultan Valad. Golpinarli (GM 416–417) indicates according to Vladimir Mir Mirughli, the Greek used in some of Rumi's macaronic poems reflects the demotic Greek of the inhabitants of Anatolia. Golpinarli then argues that Rumi knew classical Persian and Arabic with precision, but typically composes poems in a more popular or colloquial Persian and Arabic.".
^Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West — The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Oneworld Publications, 2000, Chapter 7.
^“As Safa points out (Saf 2:1206) the Discourse reflect the stylistics of oral speech and lacks the sophisticated word plays, Arabic vocabulary and sound patterning that we would except from a consciously literary text of this period. Once again, the style of Rumi as lecturer or orator in these discourses does not reflect an audience of great intellectual pretensions, but rather middle-class men and women, along with number of statesmen and rulers”” (Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008 (revised edition). p. 292)
^Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008 (revised edition). p. 293
^Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008 (revised edition). p. 295:“In contrast with the prose of his Discourses and sermons, the style of the letters is consciously sophisticated and epistolary, in conformity with the expectations of correspondence directed to nobles, statesmen and kings"
^Rumi: 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love, trans. by Amin Banani and Anthony A. Lee, p. 3
^Curiel, Jonathan, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, Islamic verses: The influence of Muslim literature in the United States has grown stronger since the 11 Sep attacks (6 February 2005), Available online (Retrieved Aug 2006)
^ abFranklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2000.
^See for example 4th grade Iranian school book where the story of the Parrot and Merchant from the Mathnawi is taught to students[verification needed]
^Hiro, Dilip (1 November 2011). Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz stan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran. The Overlook Press. ISBN978-1-59020-378-1.[page needed]
^Uyar, Yaprak Melike; Beşiroğlu, Ş. Şehvar (2014). "Recent representations of the music of the Mevlevi Order of Sufism". Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. 6 (2): 137–150. doi:10.4407/jims.2014.02.002.
The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, by William Chittick, Albany: SUNY Press, 1983.
The Mysteries of the Universe and Rumi's Discoveries on the Majestic Path of Love, by Majid M. Naini, Universal Vision & Research, 2002 ISBN978-0-9714600-0-3www.naini.net
Masnaví-i Ma'naví, the Spiritual Couplets of Mauláná Jalálu'd-din Muhammad Rúmí, translated and abridged by E.H. Whinfield, London: 1887; 1989. Abridged version from the complete poem. On-line editions at sacred-texts.com, archive.org and on wikisource.
The Masnavī by Jalālu'd-din Rūmī. Book II, translated for the first time from the Persian into prose, with a Commentary, by C.E. Wilson, London: 1910.
The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, edited from the oldest manuscripts available, with critical notes, translation and commentary by Reynold A. Nicholson, in 8 volumes, London: Messrs Luzac & Co., 1925–1940. Contains the text in Persian. First complete English translation of the Mathnawí.
Rending The Veil: Literal and Poetic Translations of Rumi, translated by Shahram Shiva Hohm Press, 1995 ISBN978-0-934252-46-1. Recipient of Benjamin Franklin Award.
Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi, translated by Shahram Shiva Jain Publishing, 1999 ISBN978-0-87573-084-4.
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996 ISBN978-0-06-250959-8; Edison (NJ) and New York: Castle Books, 1997 ISBN978-0-7858-0871-8. Selections. Description of 2010 expanded edition. A much-cited poem therein is "The Guest House found in, for example, Mark Williams and Danny Penman (2011), Mindfulness, pp. 165–167. The poem is also at The Guest House by Rumi.
The Masnavi: Book One, translated by Jawid Mojaddedi, Oxford World's Classics Series, Oxford University Press, 2004 ISBN978-0-19-280438-9. Translated for the first time from the Persian edition prepared by Mohammad Estelami with an introduction and explanatory notes. Awarded the 2004 Lois Roth Prize for excellence in translation of Persian literature by the American Institute of Iranian Studies.
Divani Shamsi Tabriz, translated by Nevit Oguz Ergin as Divan-i-kebir, published by Echo Publications, 2003 ISBN978-1-887991-28-5.
The rubais of Rumi: insane with love, translations and commentary by Nevit Oguz Ergin and Will Johnson, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 2007, ISBN978-1-59477-183-5.
The Masnavi: Book Two, translated by Jawid Mojaddedi, Oxford World's Classics Series, Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN978-0-19-921259-0. The first ever verse translation of the unabridged text of Book Two, with an introduction and explanatory notes.
The Rubai'yat of Jalal Al-Din Rumi: Select Translations Into English Verse, Translated by A.J. Arberry, (Emery Walker, London, 1949)
Mystical Poems of Rumi, Translated by A.J. Arberry, (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
The quatrains of Rumi: Complete translation with Persian text, Islamic mystical commentary, manual of terms, and concordance, translated by Ibrahim W. Gamard and A.G. Rawan Farhadi, 2008.
The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems, translations by Coleman Barks, Harper One, 2002.
Rumi: 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love: Poems from the Rubaiyat of Mowlana Rumi, translated by Amin Banani and Anthony A. Lee (White Cloud Press, 2014) ISBN978-1-940468-00-6.
Afzal Iqbal, The Life and thought of Mohammad Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, Lahore: Bazm-i-Iqbal, 1959 (latest edition, The life and work of Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, Kuala Lumpur: The Other Press, 2014). Endorsed by the famous Rumi scholar, A.J. Arberry, who penned the foreword.
Abdol Reza Arasteh, Rumi the Persian: Rebirth in Creativity and Love, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1963 (latest edition, Rumi the Persian, the Sufi, New York: Routledge, 2013). The author was a US-trained Iranian psychiatrist influenced by Erich Fromm and C.G. Jung.
Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi, Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
Fatemeh Keshavarz, "Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi", University of South Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN978-1-57003-180-9.
Mawlana Rumi Review mawlanarumireview.com. An annual review devoted to Rumi. Archetype, 2010. ISBN978-1-901383-38-6.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, Albany: SUNY Press, 1987, chapters 7 and 8.
Majid M. Naini, The Mysteries of the Universe and Rumi's Discoveries on the Majestic Path of Love, Universal Vision & Research, 2002, ISBN978-0-9714600-0-3
Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Oneworld Publications, 2000. ISBN978-1-85168-214-0
Leslie Wines, Rumi: A Spiritual Biography, New York: Crossroads, 2001 ISBN978-0-8245-2352-7.
Rumi's Thoughts, edited by Seyed G Safavi, London: London Academy of Iranian Studies, 2003.
William Chittick, The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi: Illustrated Edition, Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2005.
Şefik Can, Fundamentals of Rumi's Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective, Sommerset (NJ): The Light Inc., 2004 ISBN978-1-932099-79-9.
Rumi's Tasawwuf and Vedanta by R.M. Chopra in Indo Iranica Vol. 60
Athanasios Sideris, "Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi", an entry on Rumi's connections to the Greek element in Asia Minor, in the Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World – Asia Minor, 2003.
Waley, Muhammad Isa (2017). The Stanzaic Poems (Tarjī'āt) of Rumi. Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary, with Additional Chapters on Aspects of His Divan. (School of Oriental and African Studies, London.)
Persian literature
E.G. Browne, History of Persia, four volumes, first published 1902–1924.
Contemporary Persian and Classical Persian are the same language, but writers since 1900 are classified as contemporary. At one time, Persian was a common cultural language of much of the non-Arabic Islamic world. Today it is the official language of Iran, Tajikistan and one of the two official languages of Afghanistan.
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