Abstract
Rumi’s meeting with Shams propelled him into a new level of understanding. Legend has it that Shams, under the discipleship of a certain Baba1 Kamāl Jandī2 (or Jundi), was advised to rush to Konya specifically to prevent the vibrant young Rumi from falling into a spiritual abyss: “to reignite the dying fire.”3 Whether or not this anecdotal claim is a later construction, Shams not only reignited but also reinvented Rumi.
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Notes
He may have been an adherent of Kubravi order: see Devin DeWeese, “The Eclipse of the Kubravīya in Central Asia,” Iranian Studies 21, nos. 1/2 (1988), 50–51, 66, 70.
Asadullah Izad Goshasb, Jazabiyyāt-e Ilāhiyya (with introduction by Bastard Parizi and the work completed by Abdol Baqi Izad Goshasb) (Tehran: Chap Khajeh, 1319/1940, reprinted in 1378/1999), xxix.
Maqālāt, 690; see also Shams al-Din Ahmed al-Aflaki al-ʻArefi, Menāqib al-ʻĀrefīn, ed. Tahsin Yazici (Tehran: Donya-ye Ketab, 1362/1983), 82.
See the introduction by Jaafar Modarress Sādeghi, ed., to Maqālāt Shams (Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 1373/1994), xx. For some references about the biographers, see also Lewis, op. cit., 143, 146, 185.
Abdol Hossein Zarrinkoob, Pel-e Pel-e tā Molāqāt-e Khodā: Dar Bāreh Zendegī, Andīshe va Suluk Maulānā Jalal al-Din Rumi (Tehran: Entesharat ʻElmi, 14th ed., 1379/2000), 170–71.
In the introduction by Mohammad Ali Movvahed, Maqālāt-e Shams-i Tabrizi (Tehran: Kharazmi Publishers, 1369/1990), 23 notes, quoting Masnavi of Robāb Nāmeh of Sultan Valad.
Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oxford, Boston: Oneworld, 2000), 172, 312. The dance (waving the hand, stamping the feet, and circling about) practiced in mystical circles at the time of Abu Saʻid Abul-Khayr was well known in eastern Iran, and according to Hujwīrī, the Prophet had allowed singing and playing melodies; in other words, dancing was endorsed by Hujwīrī. See Lewis, 309, 310.
Ahmet Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City: University Utah Press, 1994), 81–82. On the other hand, a parallel group of Mevlevi followers under Sultan Valad (d. 1312) took a more conformist direction: see 82.
This poem in some sources is attributed (perhaps erroneously) to Abu Said Abuʼl-Khayr (d. 1049). See R. A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, 90; Ignaz Goldziher, Vorlesungen Über den Islam (Heidelberg, 1910), 172.
See F. W. Hasluck, “Studies in Turkish History and Folk-Legend,” The Annual of the British School at Athens 19 (1912/1913), 208, 210, 213n5, 214–15, 216, 218.
A. C. S. Peacock, “Sufis and the Seljuk Court in Mongol Anatolia: Politics and Patronage in the Works of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī and Sultān Walad,” in A. C. S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yıldız, eds., The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (London: IB Tauris, 2013), 206–7.
For this discussion, see M. Vaziri, Buddhism in Iran, chapter 8. See also Ahmet Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 66.
Iraq is where the term “Sufism” as we know it emerged in the late seventh century. The true origin of “Sufi” is as yet unresolved. Regarding the word suf, Birunī explained that it meant “wisdom” in Greek (soph), but “in later times the word was corrupted by misspelling, so that finally it was taken for a derivation from suf, i.e. the wool of goats.” See Alberuniʼs India, trans. Edward C. Sachau, vol. 1 (London, 1910), 34. However, Nöldeke raises doubts as to whether the Greek word soph can be established as ever having any usage in Asia. And “Sufis” did not necessarily wear woolen clothes, although the Sufis were recognized by the way they were dressed. See Theodor Nöldeke, “Sūfī,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 48 (1894), 45–47.
Michael Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 401.
The famous ecstatic Iraqi Sufi, Maʻrūf Karkhī (d. 815), may have been brought up as a Sabian (Mandaean) or a Christian in Mesopotamia. See R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (New York, 1907), 385; Nicholson, “A Historical Enquiry Concerning the Origin and Development of Sufiism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (April 1906), 306; A. H. Hujwīrī, Kashf ul-Mahjūb: The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism, trans. and ed. Reynold A. Nicholson (Lahore Edition: Zaki Enterprises, 2002), 114, mentions Maʻrūf was born as non-Muslim—bégāna (outsider or stranger to Islam), referring to a person outside the biblical religions; F. ʻAttār, Taḍkirat ul-Aulīyā, ed. Mohammad Esteʻlami (Tehran: Entesharat Zavvar, 8th ed., 1374/1995), 324, mentions Maʻrūf’s parents were Christians.
See Nathaniel Deutsch, “Mandaean Literature,” The Gnostic Bible, ed. Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer (Boston and London: Shambhala, 2003), 528. Hafiz’s poem about Adam is reminiscent of certain Mandean belief: “I was a king and my throne was paradise, it was Adam who brought me to this ruined and impermanent world.”
Jawid Mojaddedi, Beyond Dogma: Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 112.
See the introduction by Partow ʻAlavi (written in the year 1335/1956) to Kulliyāt Divan-i Shams Tabrizi (Tehran: Entesharat Safi Ali Shah, 202 12th ed., 1377/1998), 122, quoting Rumi’s Fīhi mā fīh. See also Lewis, Rumi, 173.
See Jalal al-Din Humai’s introduction (dated 1335/1956) to Kulliyāt Divan-i Shams Tabrizi (Tehran: Entesharat Safi Ali Shah, 12th ed., 1377/1998), 62 (see also note 1, 55).
See James Roy King, “Narrative Disjunction and Junction in Rumi’s ‘Mathnawi’,” The Journal of Narrative Technique 19, no. 3 (Fall 1989), 276–77.
See Nile Green, Sufism: A Global History (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 80.
S. H. Nasr, “Rumi and the Sufi Tradition,” in The Scholar and the Saint: Studies in Commemoration of Abuʼl-Rayham al-Bīrūnī and Jalal al-Din Rāmī, ed. Peter J. Chelkowski (New York: NY University Press, 1975), 174, 175–76.
Alessandro Bausani, “Il Pensiero Religioso di Maulānā Gialāl ad-Din Rūmī,” Oriente Moderno 33, no. 4 (April 1953), 180–98. See also A. Bausani, “Theism and Pantheism in Rumi,” Iranian Studies 1, no. 1 (Winter 1968), 8–24.
F. Mojtabai, “Dāstān-hāye Hindī dar Adabīyāt-i Fārsī,” in Yekī Qatreh Bārān, ed. Ahmad Taffazoli (Tehran, 1370/1991), 476–77, 482.
Gholam Hosein Yousofi, “Mawlavī as Storyteller,” in The Scholar and the Saint: Studies in Commemoration of Abuʼl-Rayham al-Bīrūnī and Jalal al-Din Rūmī, ed. Peter J. Chelkowski (New York: NY University Press, 1975), 299. See also D: 2943; M: IV: 739, 800.
Rumi favored not mere toleration, but full acceptance of all communities for the sake of peace and harmony: see Cyrus Masroori, “An Islamic Language of Toleration: Rumi’s Criticism of Religious Persecution,” Political Research Quarterly 63, no. 2 (June 2010), 243–56.
The imagery in the Masnavi is completely different from that in the Divan, which contains more diverse imagery and allegories, rather than just anecdotes, also indicating that Rumi was listening to music and/or dancing during the years when he composed the Divan. Unlike the Masnavi, the Divan becomes more of a personal experience. See Fatemeh Keshavarz, Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988, 2000), 2, 73, 93, 146, 165n14, 175n1.
For the reason why Islamic legalism became obsolete for many antinomian Sufis, see Mehdi Aminrazavi, “Antinomian Tradition in Islamic Mysticism,” The Bulletin of the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies 4, nos. 1-2 (Jan.–June 1995), 21–22.
Jalal al-Din Rumi, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. and annotated by B. Forouzānfar (Tehran: Entesharat Amir Kabir, 1362/1983), 98–99.
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Vaziri, M. (2015). Rumi Unlearns His Pious Past: Curbing Anachronism. In: Rumi and Shams’ Silent Rebellion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530806_4
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