How the Thirteenth-Century Sufi Poet Rumi Turned One of many World’s Most Well-liked Writers


The Mid­dle East is tough­ly the world’s most har­mo­nious area, and it solely will get extra frac­tious in case you add in South Asia and the Mediter­ranean. However there’s one factor on which many res­i­dents of that huge geo­graph­i­cal span can agree: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥam­mad Rūmī. One may at first imag­ine {that a} thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry poet and mys­ti­cal philoso­pher who wrote in Per­sian, with occa­sion­al for­ays into Turk­ish, Ara­bic, and Greek, can be a distinct segment fig­ure as we speak, if identified in any respect. Actually, Rumi, as he’s com­mon­ly identified, is now one of the pop­u­lar writ­ers in not simply the Mid­dle East however the world; Eng­lish rein­ter­pre­ta­tions of his verse have even made him the best-sell­ing poet within the Unit­ed States.

“The trans­for­ma­tive second in Rumi’s life got here in 1244, when he met a wan­der­ing mys­tic often called Shams of Tabriz,” writes the BBC’s Jane Cia­bat­tari. She quotes Brad Gooch, writer of Rumi’s Secret: The Lifetime of the Sufi Poet of Love, describ­ing them as hav­ing an “elec­tric buddy­ship for 3 years,” after which Shams dis­ap­peared. “Rumi coped by writ­ing poet­ry,” which incorporates 3,000 poems writ­ten for “Shams, the prophet Muham­mad and God. He wrote 2,000 rubay­at, four-line qua­trains. He wrote in cou­plets a six-vol­ume spir­i­tu­al epic, The Mas­navi.” He did all this work in ser­vice of what, in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above, Stephanie Honchell Smith calls his ulti­mate purpose: “the reuni­fi­ca­tion of his soul with God by means of the expe­ri­ence of divine love.”

How is such a like to be accessed? “Love resides not in study­ing, not in knowl­edge, not in pages in books,” Rumi declared. “Wher­ev­er the debates of males might lead, that’s not the lover’s path.” He pur­sued it by means of devo­tion to Shams’ Sufism, “par­tic­i­pat­ing in rit­u­al­ized danc­ing and preach­ing the reli­gion of affection by means of lec­tures, poet­ry, and prose.” Lat­er in life, he shift­ed “from ecsta­t­ic expres­sions of divine like to vers­es that information oth­ers to dis­cov­er it for them­selves,” incor­po­rat­ing “concepts, sto­ries, and quotes from Islam­ic reli­gious texts, Ara­bic and Per­sian lit­er­a­ture and ear­li­er Sufi writ­ings and poet­ry.” Per­haps there will be no full appre­ci­a­tion of Rumi’s work with­out a schol­ar’s below­stand­ing of the lan­guages and cul­tures he knew. But when his gross sales fig­ures are any­factor to go by, the lengthy­ing into which his com­plex work faucets is uni­ver­sal.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mys­ti­cal Poet­ry of Rumi Learn By Til­da Swin­ton, Madon­na, Robert Bly & Cole­man Barks

Study Islam­ic & Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy with 107 Episodes of the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­forged

The Com­plex Geom­e­strive of Islam­ic Artwork & Design: A Brief Intro­duc­tion

500+ Beau­ti­ful Man­u­scripts from the Islam­ic World Now Dig­i­tized & Free to Down­load

The Beginning and Speedy Rise of Islam, Ani­mat­ed (622‑1453)

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e book.



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