We call him Rumi. He probably wasn’t called that in his life, maybe Jalal, but I don't know.
Quick outline of his life(1207-1273): He was born in what is present day Afghanistan in Balkh or maybe Sangtuda Tajikistan, which is a 6 day walk or 350 km distance. It was part of greater Iran at the time in the 13th century. At age 5 the family moved to Samarkand. Like his contemporary Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), they founded the Mevlevi Order after his death. When the mongols invaded, the family moved to Nishapur, Baghdad, to Hejaz and a pilgrimage to Mecca. Then Damascus, Malatya, Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri and Nigde. They finally settled in Karaman for seven years. Rumi married Gowhar Khatun in Karaman and had 2 sons when he was 18. His wife died and he remarried and he a son and a daughter.
He moved to Konya in Turkey in 1228 where he lived until 1273, with a 4 year soujourn in Damascus. When he was 25 his father died, and he inherited his position as head of a school. His friendship with Shams is pivotal, whom he met in 1244. His bereavement at losing Shams is some good poetry. One book I read about him was about his friendship with Shams. I'm currently reading Rumi's Secret by Brad Gooch.
The most important influences upon Rumi, besides his father, were the Persian poets Attar and Sanai.
His father Baha Valad journal survives:
"Sometimes I feel as if I'm a king without a kingdom, a judge without authority, a man of position without a position, and a wealthy man without any money." (p. 18 Gooch).
Rumi was still a muslim cleric so he says thing like this (p34 Goodch):
Stay away from that mother and her worries
A father slaps are better than her sweet pastries.
The mother is impulsive, the father, noble reason,
At first, difficult, but finally a hundred times easier.
Not how I see it. I tend to agree with Barbie (2023):
"This makes me emotional! And I’m expressing it. I have no difficulty holding both logic and feeling at the same time. It does not diminish my powers, it expands them."
Gooch writes about the
siege of Samarkand in 1220 he was supposedly 6, so Wikipedia lists 1207 as his birth, but if you subtract 6 from 2020 you get 1214. So hard to get dates to line up from so long ago, when people aren't using the same calendars.
Reading the Gooch book on Rumi, and he's writing about the
silk road, one of the roads Buddhism traveled. Peking to Constantinople, Hangzhou to Cairo. Love Bill Porter/Red Pine's book on the Silk road. Looked up so many things and learned so many things. Infact, I love every Bill Porter travel book I've read. I'm getting an obscure one in the mail soon, hopefully.
Some maps have
Mashhad on the silk road. Looks like January is the coolest month in Mashhad. I didn't know Imam Reza shrine was bombed in 1994, 25 people died. The
Baloch terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, a Sunni Muslim turned Wahhabi, one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was found to be behind the plot.
If Rumi went to Neyshabur in 1216, he maybe went to Mashhad, but maybe not. I'm pretty sure there were lots of forks in the road. But Mashhad is one way to Tehran and Neyshabur is another.
Yaqut (1179-1229) has some influential books used to understand the times. There was a huge earthquake in 1145 and in 1153
Oghuz Turks invaded and took off their grand sultan.
When Rumi was in Neyshabur he might have seen some
Malamatiyya: "The Malamatiyya believed in the value of self-blame, that piety should be a private matter and that being held in good esteem would lead to worldly attachment. They concealed their knowledge and made sure their faults would be known, reminding them of their imperfection. The Malamati is one for whom the doctrine of "spiritual states" is fraught with subtle deceptions of the most despicable kind; he despises personal piety, not because he is focused on the perceptions or reactions of people, but as a consistent involuntary witness of his own "pious hypocrisy"."
Now there's a sect of Islam I can get behind.
Full name: Faridoldin Abu Hamed Mohammad Attar Neyshaburi (1145 – 1221). And his pen name was Faridoldin. Now he is known as Attar of Nishapur.
Attar of Nishapur is one of the poets who influenced Rumi. I continue to read about Rumi, to learn more about Iran and culture of my friend who lives in Mashhad.
He was influenced by Ferdowsi, Sanai, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari, Mansur Al-Hallaj, Abu-Sa'id Abul-Khayr, Bayazid Bastami.
He influenced: Rumi, Hazrat Ishaan, Sayyid Alauddin Atar, Hafez, Jami, Ali-Shir Nava'i and many other later Sufi Poets.
Attar practised the profession of pharmacist and personally attended to a very large number of customers. He is mentioned by only two of his contemporaries, Awfi and Tusi.
With 21st century hindsight, we can look back and see that Rumi noticed Attar, and not Omar Khayyam, and his Rubaiyat. Which is an unread classic on my to read list. (I continue to read Brad Gooch's Rumi's Secret.)
The qibla is the spot marked in a room that points to Mecca. My Mecca is Bodhgaya, which is a tick blow east, which also happens to be where the sun comes up.
Another poet Mansour al-Hallaj (858 – 922) may have influenced Rumi. He's in Baghdad now, Iraq, and then he headed to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Spaniard Ibn Jubayr made the journey 30 years before Rumi went with his family as a 10-11 year old. The father was on a hajj. You're supposed to walk 7 times around the Kaaba. And stone the devil, among other things.
Then they went to Malatya, which is Turkey. He may have met the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi. Next it was on to Erzincan, The Mongol army made Iran unappealing to return to as they killed up to 90% of the population in cities, destroyed infrastructure. It is the time of Genghis Khan. His grandson would rule from Korea to Hungary. As the family pushed west, they stayed at times in Sufi Lodges. It was paradoxically a time of great spiritual and religious activity. Rumi lost a lot of family along the way. On to Larande, which Google redirects to Karaman, though the article doesn't say they're the same, but Gooch confirms was the modern name. It is 60 miles southeast of Konya, where they would eventually end up, and Rumi would spend the rest of his life. Rumi's father was in his 70's. His patron was the local governor. At 17 he marries Gowhar. Gowhar was from Samarkand, and was part of the caravan traveling with his father. (Konya was Sham's destination for his retreat, and his first trip out of Iran.)
Kayqubad I was the patron to Rumi's father Baha Valad in Konya. I'm less and less interested in Rumi as a Muslim, but I am interested in Islam some. The journey from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, through Iran to Bagdad, to Mecca, and then further and further into Turkey is interesting to me. Travel is something I love. I'm fascinated by how amazing this earth is. I'm going to try and dog out this book about Rumi, but other books are calling me louder now.
Gooch p.88: Borhan used many of the standard Sufi images for these experiences, such as discovering a pearl, reflecting light in a mirror, or burning like a moth in a flame. With students, perhaps even Rumi, taking notes, he explained, "You are your own pearl... If you don't know anything else, but know yourself, then you are a scholar and a mystic. If you don't know yourself, then all the science and knowledge that you possess is useless.'
Borhan provided another teacher for Rumi after the lead of his father. The more gurus you have the better, because we're all so incomplete alone. Everyone has the guru of the books, and that's pretty powerful, but living gurus are very important.
For me, Gooch, Borhan are pointing to the ability to hold the contradictions in great ideals in the spiritual life. Seeing compassion and pity, dismissing the pity, keep going, see the horrified anxiety, keep going, to see how we all create our own suffering, the optional suffering and not the non-optional pains.
Rumi goes to
Aleppo and
Damascus to study. Today Syria is southeast of Turkey, north northwest of Israel, west of Iraq, north of Jordan, and surrounds Lebanon. Aleppo is in the north, Damascus to the south.
Gooch P.95: “In 1219 Francis of Assisi met in Egypt with the Ayyubid sultan and won an agreement for his "Monks of the Rope" to wander the Holy Land. During the time of Rumi's stay, the first Franciscan friars began arriving in Aleppo to minister to Crusader princes and soldiers held prisoner in the Citadel. They swept through the streets in their rough, woolen robes, much like the robes worn by Sufis, with similar vows of poverty, and may have imprinted on Rumi the affinities between these two expressions of spirituality.”
In Damascus students were not supposed to read alone, or silently, and there were circles of reading aloud. That sounds like fun.
Rumi spent 5 years studying in Syria, now he's 30 and he returns to Konya. Borhan is going to give him the final teachings.
P. 104 Gooch: "More extreme than regular fasting but essential was the completion of a forty-day trial in sealed isolation from the world known as chelle-from chehel, Persian for "forty." This period of solitude and subsisting on bread and water was a sort of vision quest, conceived as an inward hajj, or desert experience, owing its origins perhaps to the Syrian hermit monks, such as those Rumi met on his way to Damascus. Borhan arranged Rumi's retreat, sealing him into total seclusion, and then helping him with interpreting his insights afterward.“
My reading rate has slowed down because I read this paragraph and savor it:
"A stranger appeared in Konya on November 29, 1244. About sixty years old, dressed in a cloak fashioned from coarse black felt, and wearing a simple traveler's cap, he checked into one of the inns managed by the sugar confectioners or the rice sellers within the market district, not far from Rumi's school. His name was Shamsoddin, or Shams of Tabriz, and he was a singular outlier mystic in a period of history crowded with extreme religious seekers, especially active in the wake of the Mongol invasions. From decades of restless travel throughout all the religious capitals of the Muslim world, he had earned the nickname "Parande," or "The Flier.""
Rumi is so far back in time they don't have a wikipedia article about his father or Shams. Shams spent 3 months with him on retreat. Shams didn't want him to read his father's journal or poets, he wanted him to dance and sing!
Poems:
Unfold Your Own Myth by Rumi
Who gets up early
to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Soloman cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow on drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he’s wealthy.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.
Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you’ve grown,
lifting.
with the line "Let the beauty we love be what we do."
Like this quote too:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
Movies and TV shows:
Basically nothing really available:
Rumi: Poet at Heart (1998): Not available for streaming
When Rumi meets Francis: $9.99 on Apple
Rumi (2023) TV show: Supposedly on Turkish channel Tabii... they say it's free, then it's free for 3 days before it costs. No thank you. You can also be teased and watch the first episode on
YouTube.
Nothing on the bootleg channels I can find.
A million idiot YouTube BS videos.
Intoxicated by Love (2024) is not available for streaming.
Rumi: The Wings of Love (2005)
Not even on databases (
Reddit):
The Great Beauty (2021) directed byPaolo Sorrentino. The film follows the story of Jep Gambardella, an aging writer who reflects on his life and relationships in Rome. The movie features a scene where Jep visits a Sufi dance ceremony inspired by Rumi's poetry. The dance is a form of worship, and the participants are deeply connected to the words of Rumi's poetry. The scene is beautifully shot and captures the spiritual essence of Rumi's work.
The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam (2005), directed by Kayvan Mashayekh. The film tells the story of a young Iranian boy named Kamran who travels to America to study at a university. While there, he discovers a manuscript that belonged to his grandfather, which contains the secret to unlocking the meaning of Rumi's poetry.
Whispers of the Heart (1999), directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The film tells the story of a blind boy who meets a group of Sufi dancers who perform Rumi's poetry. The boy is deeply moved by the dance and begins to recite Rumi's poetry himself. The film is a powerful portrayal of the transformative power of Rumi's work and how it can inspire people from all walks of life.
My friend Shams says the Turkish miniseries is good.
Music isn't in English, so I can't vouch it's about Rumi, but
Wikipedia links these musicians:
Reviews of Gooch:
New York Times review by Azadeh Moaveni (
Gift Article): "For those who want a more precise portrait, Franklin Lewis’s scholarly biography remains the definitive work."
"As part of his tendency to portray Rumi as a proto-humanist, Gooch quotes another scholar who says that “Rumi resonates today because people are thinking post-religion.” While this isn’t necessarily Gooch’s main thesis, his tendency to cast Rumi as Romeo in a turban pushes the book in this direction."
"Many contemporary translations of Rumi strip the Persian, Arabic and Quranic references out of his verse, or simply ignore the vast bulk of the “Masnavi” dealing with hard Islamic theology. By divesting Rumi of his Islamicness — which is what today’s culture seems to demand of him — we miss the significance of his role in the history of Islam. As the late scholar Shahab Ahmed writes in his book “What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic,” the “historical and human phenomenon that is Islam” for centuries tolerated contradiction and paradox."
I feel like Gooch countered this criticism quite a few times. I'm interested in every detail and I don't feel like this book skimps on details.
"In these days of cultural intolerance, there is certainly great value to books that add nuance to hateful, caricatured views of Islam. “Rumi’s Secret” may be a Lonely Planet guide to Sufism, but it is a sensitive and passionate introduction nonetheless."
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