Annemarie schimmel brief study of rumi

7/30/2019 Annemarie schimmel brief study of rumi

1/15

The University of Notre Dame

Mystical Poetry in Islam: The Case of Maulana Jalaladdin RumiAuthor(s): Annemarie SchimmelSource: Religion & Literature, Vol. 20, No. 1, The Literature of Islam (Spring, 1988), pp. 67-80Published by: The University of Notre DameStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40059367 .

Accessed: 01/09/2013 08:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Notre Dame is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toReligion

&Literature.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 129.68.65.223 on Sun, 1 Sep 2013 08:23:30 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=notredamehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/40059367?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/40059367?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=notredame


2/15

MYSTICAL POETRY IN ISLAM:THE CASE OF MAULANA JALALADDIN RUMI

Annemarie Schimmel

Blessed time! when we are sitting,I and thou,With two forms and only one soul,I and thou.Fragrance, song of birds, they quickenev'rything,When we come into the garden,

I and thou.All the stars of heaven hurryto see us,And we show them our own moon,I and thou.I and thou without words, withoutI and thou-In delight we are united,I and thou.Sugar chew the heaven's parrotsin that placeWhere we're sitting, laughing sweetly,

I and thou.Strange that I and thou together in this nookAre apart yet thousand miles, see-I and thou.One form in this dust, the otherin that land,Sweet eternal Paradise there. . . .I and thou.1 {Divan 2214)This ghazal,a poem with one rhyme, here extended by additionalrhymewords(I and thou) is one of the most tender descriptionsof the

R&L 20.1 (Spring 1988)67

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/15

68 Religion & Literaturestate of loving ecstasyfoundin the enormous work of MaulanaJalalad-din Rumi, the outstanding mystical poet in the Persian tongue, andprobably one of the greatest mystical poets in the world. Rumi de-scribes in traditionalimages the state of complete spiritualunion be-tween lover and beloved: no separationexistsanymore,and everythingcreated gardens,birds, stars participatesn amazement n this scene.The silent word of the united lovers is so sweet that the heavenly par-rots (attired in green, the color of Paradise) indulge in their favoriteoccupation, that is, to chew sugar, and the stars of heaven look be-wildered at the beauty of the beloved, radiant as the full moon. Andyet, this is a purely spiritual experience- the bodies of the lovers arethousands of miles apart, "inIraq and Khorassan"(eastern Iran), asthe text should be translatedliterally. The bodies may still be on thedusty earth but the spirits have reached eternal, paradisiacalbliss.Behind this simple poem lies a development in Islamic culture ofnearly seven centuries and, more than that, a unique experience ofmystical love which transformed Rumi into a poet. How did thishappen?One of the most fascinatingaspectsof Islamic literatures s the enor-mous amount of religious, and in particularmystical, poetry in thevarious anguagesof the Islamicworld.Surprisingly, his typeof poetryhas never been taken into consideration by the literary critics of theIslamic Middle Ages. The development of truly religious verse in theIslamic world took considerabletime, as poetry and poets were con-demned in the end of Sura 26 of the Koran. There, poets were calledpeople"whosay what they do not do,"and areconsideredto be "roam-ing in everyvalley."This verdict, to be sure, was directedagainsttradi-tional Arabic poetry, which was highly developed as to vocabulary,grammar, and rhetoric at the time that Islam appeared, and whichexpressed in a rather uninhibited style the joys of free love and thepleasureof drinking, self-praiseand satire. These topics remained anintegral partof poetryeven later, and pious theologianswere thereforeoftenadverseto poetry. The Prophethimselfregarded he most accom-plished poet of pre-Islamicdays, Imru'1-qais,"as the leader of peopleon the way to Hell."During the Prophet's ifetime, severalpoets wroteencomia forhim,amongthemHassanibnThabit, who wasattached o theyoungMuslimcommunityin Medina. He described he Prophetand his achievementsand denigrated his enemies in traditional style, and his verse cannotreallybe called"religious" oetry. One reason for the late appearanceof religiousverse is that the Koran, regardedas the primordialDivine



4/15

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL 69Word revealed in clear Arabic language, was so overwhelming thatone simplydid not dare to expressreligiousfeelings in poeticalwords.But the Koran'svocabulary, symbols, and stories permeatedMuslimthought, and when the first ascetic trends emerged in Iraq andKhorassanduringthe early eighth century, the constant recitation andmeditationof the sacred textled to what Pere Nwyia has so aptlycalled"a koranization of the memory."The words and phrasesof the ArabicKoran resound in the mystical poetry of all Islamic languages to ourown day. The Koran must be recited only in its original Arabic, andmany a verse that sounds simple and plain to an untutored Westernreader is fraughtwith meaning as it contains a word or two from theKoranwhich, in turn, sparkoff a whole series of relatedconcepts. Thestructureof Arabic, with its three-lettered roots out of which almostinfiniteverbal and nominal derivationscan be formed,enablestheArabas well as all those who have grown up in a traditional Muslim en-vironment to understand not only the word mentioned in a sentenceor verse but to evoke also a plethoraof cognate meanings. To us thesemeanings may look far-fetched,but as they are derived from one rootthey can be interconnectedby the exegete. The Arabic script, whichwas used in most countries where Islam spread, does not express theshortvowels, and everyconsonanthas a numericalvalue as well. Thesefeaturesaddto the intricaciesof religioustexts which can be interpretedon ever so many levels.The Arabic language was highly refined alreadyduring the time ofthe ProphetMuhammed(570P-632ad.), but despitean enormous out-put of poetry, its greatestachievement seems to be the terse, beautifulprose style which was used by educated people- a style that delightsevery readerby its density and its crystallinelucidity. This quality isvisible in the sayings of the Sufis, the mystics, during the first cen-turies of Islam. These sayingscondense the experienceof Divine Loveand Unity and try to guide the disciple into a non-logical understand-ing of the highest mysteries, which must not be revealedto the unini-tiated. The short poems written during the classical time- between800 and 1100 A.D. are usually not of great literary value, althoughthey nicely reflect the centraltopicsof Sufism:longing and love. Somepassages in the poetryof the martyr-mystical-Hallaj (executed in 922in Baghdad) reach a higher poetical level; yet, even in his case, hisprayersand prose pieces are more moving. Only once, around 1200,is truly greatArabicmysticalverse to be found: in the poems of 'Umaribn al-Faridof Cairo, who used the classicalvocabularyof love poetryto expresshis love of God, and whose khamriyyathe poem about the



5/15

70 Religion & Literature"wineof love" has influencedgenerationsof mystics. His long descrip-tion of the mystical path, the Ta'iyyawith its 756 verses, was com-mented upon century after century.The true home of Islamic mystical poetry is the Persian and Per-sianateworld, stretchingfromTurkeyto Bengaland centralAsia. Per-sian developed as a literary medium in the tenth century AD. and itspoetrywasregulatedaccording o the rulesof Arabicrhetorics,prosody,and rhyme. Monorhyme prevails, but whereas in Arabic the rhymeconsists of one letter, at most two, in Persian and the languagesunderits influence the rhyme consists of a word or even a full phrase afterthe actual rhyming letter, whether the poem is a ghazal(a short lovepoem)or a qasidaa long poem mainlydevoted to praiseor, morerarely,to satire). The Persians also developed the poem in rhymingcouplets,mathnavi, hich could be extended to thousandsof lines, and they lovedto expresstender feelingsand pithy thoughtsin the ruba'i, he quatrainof the form aaxa(known in Europe thanks to Fitzgerald'sversion ofOmar Khayyam'sRubaiyat).Such quatrains were often sung duringthe Sufi meetings in the so-calledsama(literally "hearing"),when lovepoetry was recited with musical accompaniment and many of thelisteners experienced an ecstatic state, or at least a spiritualuplifting.Comparatively early, the mathnavi,irst used for heroic themes, wasapplied to mystical teaching. Sana'i of Ghazna (now Afghanistan)setthe example with his Hadiqat l-haqiqa, TheOrchardof Truth,"writ-ten in the early twelfth century. He tells anecdotes and little storiesto draw a lesson from them, and this type of didacticpoetry remainedin use for centuries to come. It was refinedby Faridaddin Attar(died1220)whose mystical mathnavis re masterpiecesof narrativeart, deli-cately molded, with beautiful, often sad stories. They offer poeticaldescriptionsof the mystical path and the mystic's experiences: in theMantiq t-tair,Attartells the wanderingof the thirtysoul-birds hroughthe seven valleys of mystical experiencesuntil they reach the Si-murgh,the Divine Bird, with whom they, being si-murgh,"thirtybirds,"areidentical. In the Musibatnama, he dialogues of the seeker with allcreaturesduring the forty days of his seclusion are described in vividimages: everything in the worldlongs for God, and the perfectedSufifinds Him, in the end, in "theocean of his own heart."In the Ushtur-nama,again, God is symbolized as the great playmaster who makesappearand disappearthe puppetson the screen of the shadowtheater,a theme used by numerous mystical poets (including Ibn al-Farid),especially in later Turkish and Indo-Muslim literature.'Attarpavedthe way forJalaladdinRumi, the greatestof all mystical



6/15

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL 71poets in the Islamic world, a poet whose Mathnavihas been called bythe fifteenth-centurymystical writerJami, "the Koran in the Persiantongue."Jalaladdinwas born in Balkh, northernAfghanistan, into thefamily of a leading mystical theologian, probablyin 1207. The familyleft Balkh, apparentlyfor political reasons, to settlebriefly in Aleppo,then in Anatolia, Rum henceJalaladdin'ssurnameRumi. The coun-try was thriving under the benevolent rule of Alaettin Kaykobad, theSeljukidruler of Konya. The familymoved to the capitalaftera lengthystayin Laranda-Karaman, ndJalaladdinbecame his father's uccessoras professorof theology in 1231 He was initiated into mystical theoryand practice by a disciple of his father, and in the fall of 1244, he ex-perienced an overwhelming mystical love through a wandering der-vish, Shamsaddin,"theSun of Religion,"of Tabriz. They were insep-arable, but after some time, Shamsaddin left Konya, threatened bythe growing aversion of Maulana ("our ord")Rumi's family and dis-ciples. It was during this first separation that Rumi became a poet.He himself did not know how this happened, and thus he wonderstime and again:

In my hand there was always the Koran-Now I seized the lute out of love!In my mouth there were always words of laud-Now it is poetry and quatrains, and songs. . . . {Divan 2351)After some time Shams was found in Damascus, and Maulana'syoungson, Sultan Valad, was sent to bring him home; much later, he de-scribed in his Valadnamaow his father and Shamsaddin fell at eachother's eet, "andnobodyknewwho was the loverand who the beloved."Again a shortperiodof closerelationshipbegan. Then, on December5,1248, Shamsaddinwas calledout of Maulana'shouse neverto returnin all probability killed by members of Rumi's entourage. Maulanaknew what had happened, yet he refused to believe that "the sun haddied."He continued to search for his friend, even traveling to Syria.But finally he discoveredthe beloved "inhis own heart, radiant as themoon."And his poetry now written under his friend'sname- pouredout as though it were magical incantation because:

The primordialMoon is his face, verse and ghazalare his scent-Scent is the portion of him who is not intimate with the view.Jalaladdin slowly calmed down. His friend, the illiterate goldsmithSalahaddinZarkub, whom he had known for a long time, was, afterthe consumingfire of "theSun,"Shams, like a soothingmoon for him.The circleof the Maulana'sdisciples- men and women fromall strata



7/15

72 Religion & Literatureof society- grew constantly, and his favorite disciple, HusamaddinChelebi, was ableto persuadehis master to composea mysticalmathnavifor the benefit of his students, lest they rely exclusively on the worksof Sana'iand 'Attar. Maulana complied, and it is said that he imme-diately improvisedthe firsteighteen coupletsof theMathnavi-yima'navi,"The Spiritual Couplets." It is the so-called "Song of the Reed":

Harken to the reed how it complainsand how it tells the pangs of separation. . . . (Mathnavi I.I)

The reed is the human soul, separatedfrom the primordialreedbed,the Divine Presence, and its music makes people aware of the secretof longing forhome. The dictationof theMathnaviwas interruptedafterless than two years, in 1258, and was resumedin 1262, at a time whenHusamaddinhad maturedand was chosen as Rumi'sfuture successor.It continued until shortly before Maulana's death on December 17,1273, when the bird of his soul returned from the cage of the bodyto the eternalrose garden. An enormouscrowd attended his funeralMuslims, Christians, andJews - for he was loved and admiredby allcommunities. A long sama'with music and whirling dance followedthe funeral prayers, forWhen you come to visit my grave,my roofed tomb will appear to you dancing. . . .Do not come to my tomb without tambourine, brother!For a grieved person does not belong to God's banquet! (Divan 683)A high, turquoise-greendome was constructed over his tomb. It wasconverted into a museum afterAtaturkclosed the dervish lodges andbanned the mysticalbrotherhoods n 1925. But the spiritof Rumi, hispoetry, and the mystical dance which was institutionalizedby SultanValad, are still very much alive.MaulanaJalaladdin'sife is a paradigmof mysticalexperience.Com-pletely burning himself in the Divine Love as experienced throughShamsaddin, he attained spiritualpeace and equilibrium in his rela-tion with Salahaddin;and, to complete the semicircle, then turned tohis disciple Husamaddin in whom he saw a ray of the Divine Sun andto whomhe entrustedthe secretsof mystical ife in innumerablestories,fables, and anecdotes. A key passage of the Mathnavi,and of mysticalpoetry in general, is found at the beginning of the first part whenHusamaddin- called "the soul"- asks Rumi to tell him more aboutShamsaddinand insists,despitethemaster's efusal,untilMaulanasays:It is better that the secret of the beloved onesbe told in the stories of others. (Mathnavi .136)



8/15

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL 73He warns him that the sun, which illuminates the whole world, willburn everything if it comes too close. Likewise, the Divine Truth canbe expressedonly in symbols- like colorlesslight which becomes visi-ble when broken by glass pieces or raindrops.Rumi's work is inexhaustible. His relation with Shams resulted ina constant output of lyrical poetry, of ghazals n which he sings of hislove and longing and suffering n wonderfulimages. These images areoften taken from everyday life, so that his verse offers a veritablepic-ture of the customs and events in a medieval Anatolian town. It seemsto me that it is exactlythis rootedness n dailyhuman experiencewhichmakeshis verse so fresh- "fresh ike Egyptianbread,"as he says once(although he claims that such bread does not keep fresh long). Evenduring the time he dictated the Mathnavi e continued to writeghazals.To be sure, these later lyrical poems often lack the high soaring spiritof the earlier verse and sometimes are mainly didactic. The completenumber of couplets in the collection of lyrical verse amounts to some36,000, to which a good number of ruba'iyatas to be added. Aboutone thirdto one quarterof theghazalsbear the pen name of Shamsad-din, forinsteadof mentioninghis own name in the last line ofaghazal-customary with Persian poets- Rumi inserted his beloved's name topoint to their complete unity. Many otherghazalsend with the wordkhamush, Quiet!"or another admonition to stop talking (for the truesecret can never be revealed). Others have no proper ending at all.There are some poems with the pen name of Salahaddinnd a very fewwiththat of HusamaddinChelebi. To this remarkablenumber of lyricalverses one has to add the approximately26,000 verses of theMathnavi.Also there are Maulana's talks (collected as Fihi mafihi), and some170letters,writtento differentpeoplein Konya, mainlynotableswhomhe often asked to help his proteges. The letters show him as a manconcerned with the welfare of the poor and needy: despite his deepmysticalexperiences, he never lost touch with the people of this worldwho needed his support.The Mathnavihas been read and re-read, commented upon andtranslated into different Oriental and Western languages. Everyeducated person in Ottoman Turkey and in Muslim India knew it,and Hindus also were enchanted by its contents: as early as the latefifteenthcenturya writerin farawayBengal complainedthat even "theholy Brahmin reads the Mathnavi."Most of its numerous interpretershave understood it in the light of the mystical theosophyof Ibn 'Arabi(died 1240), whose influence shaped almost all mystical teaching inthe Islamic world after 1300, and whose main interpreter,Sadraddin



9/15

74 Religion & LiteratureQpnawi, was a neighbor and friend of Maulana Rumi in Konya. Yetit is impossible to interpretthe outpourings of the free, soaring spiritin terms of a highly complicated mystical philosophy, and Maulanahimself was very much againsta philosophicalapproachto Sufism andto life in general. In fact, he very rarely used even the technicalvocabularyof Sufism as developed during the firstcenturiesof Islam,and was blamed for that by some highbrow intellectuals of Konya.But forhim, poetry, especiallyhis own poetry, was connected with in-spiration.In a moment of despairhe remarked hat in his native coun-try, Balkh, poetrywas the lowliest and most despicable professiononecould think of, and that he would never have dreamt of writing averse- but:

Into me breathesthat one Turk who comes and says to me: "Hey, who are you?"{Divan1949)He felt like an instrument moved by the breath of the mystical be-loved, a flute to singof love and separation,a harprestingon the friend'sbreast, touchedby his fingers, and at times like a drum beatenby him.Musical imagerypermeateshis work, and much of his verse was com-posed during the musical sessionswhich his friendsarrangedfor him,while he was dancing, spinningaround his axis, recitingline after ine.Although his lyrics are written according to the rules of quantitativeclassical prosody, many of them can be scanned according to stress,and Maulanahimselfsometimessighsthat "thismujia'ilunmufta'ilunaskilledme,"because the catchwords ormetricalformsseemed to diverthim fromthe innermeaning. One is indeedtemptedto clapone'shandswhile reading many of his poems. Strong rhythm is one of theircharacteristicsas is the use of powerful, and at times unusual, wordsand rhymes. Maulana did not hesitate to use dialect forms, and thecommon parlance of Konya during his time- Greek and Turkish-appearsalso in some of his ghazals,at least in the rhyme. His Arabicwas flawless, and he inserts Arabic phrases from the Koran, the Pro-phetic traditions, and Sufi history into his Persian poetry without dif-ficulty, and also composed a considerable number of Arabic poems.These, however, are alwayswritten in meters commonly used in Per-sian, not in the long, heavy, classicalArabicmeters, and theirimagerybetrays that the author'smother-tongue is Persian.In some of Maulana'sghazalsone can feel how the inspiration sets

in: a powerful first line immediately catches the listener's attention,and the inspiration continues through a long sequence of verses, likewaves, with ever new, stunningimages, until the apex is reached;then



10/15

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL 75the inspirationseems to stop while the rhyme word forceshim to con-tinue with lines less attractive than the main part. Contrary to theclassicalideal, most of Rumi'sghazalsdisplaya unity of thought- eventhough he may sometimes be carriedaway by illogical verbal associa-tions-whereas in the normal ghazal,each verse is supposed to be aclosed unit, so that a poem resembles a stringof unique pearls, strungby a fastidiousjeweller. Rumi is not a jeweller or a poet who filtershis ideas and feelingsthroughlayersand layersof intellectualactivitiesuntil one perfect ine is achieved;forhim, feeling is first, and his poetryis nothingbut the resultof inspiration hroughunendinglove. His earlyghazalsare the most intoxicatedones, the sound of the beloved'snamecarrying him as it were from verse to verse:

Not alone I keep on singingShamsaddin and Shamsaddin,But the nightingale in gardenssings, the partridge in the hills.Day of splendor. Shamsaddin, andturning heaven! Shamsaddin!Mine of jewels: Shamsaddin, andShamsaddin is day and night. . . . {Divan 1081)At times he may use amazing paradoxes, or even describe some ofhis visions: carriedaway by the "falconLove,"he seesthe Divine Oceanbillowing, out of which everythingemerges to returninto the fathom-less sea at the call of the abyss. Trees become candles, candles becomehumans; flowers and stones talk about the power of the Sun of Lovemanifested through Shamsaddin. Those who know Anatolia can ap-preciate Rumi's allusions to the ice and snow which bar the freezingsoul from its way home until spring, when the Sun enters Aries and

the snow melts; the caravan of souls moves on, and the trees beginto dance, moved by the breeze of Love, and donning the green gar-ments of Paradise which tailor Spring has preparedfor them becausethey have been patient during the hard days of winter; the springthunder resembles IsrafiTs rumpet which calls the dead out of theirgraves to appearat the resurrectionand be granteda new life. Rumi'simagery is limitless- be it taken from food or from children'sgames,be he inspiredby the pleasantbut dangerousgypsieswho perform heirrope dance in the streets, or by the miserable donkey, the stench ofgarlic, or the proud camel which, though of crookedshape, carries itspatient rider to the Kaaba. Bees and bats, lions and cats, roses andviolets, ravens and hawks- they all appear in his poetry to representthis or that aspect of the soul, or of human life.



11/15

76 Religion & LiteratureA typical example of his style is the description of love upsettingeverything:Prison became Paradise through the clamor of Love,Mr. Justice "Intellect"drunken on the judge's bench!They came to Professor Reason to ask:"Whyhas this terrible riot happened in Islam?"Mufti "First Intellect" answered with legal opinion:"This s the moment or resurrection where is [the difference]betweenlicit andillicit?"{Divan202)

The descriptionof the Preacher "Love" hen slowly tapersoff into lessinteresting images. The Mathnavioffers a similar wealth of symbols,allegories, and longer stories. Initial stories more often than not leadto new stories;and carriedawayby verbalassociations,Maulana spinsout of a simple folktale,even a dirtyjoke, ascendingspiralsof mysticalthought which lead the readerthroughevery aspect of religious expe-rience. The Mathnavis a veritable encyclopedia not only of mysticalteaching but of folklore, literary history, and proverbs, a book whichconstantly surprisesthe reader as does the Divan-iShams, he lyricalpoetry.Yet behind all thesevariegatedexpressionsand colorful stories thereis a hiddenunity. It is the strongconviction of every Muslim that thereis "nodeity save Allah,"that He alone is the one who acts, the onlyone to whom to turn. Everything in the world is His army, workingunder His orders. What look like secondarycausesare, in reality, onlythe means by which He carries out His work. That does not mean,though, that man is completely coerced. He has a certain degree offree will, as Rumi exemplifies in the storyof the thief who was caughtstealingapplesfrom a tree. The thief claimsthat he did it because Godhad written his acts beforehand, but the man is given a solid beatingwith "the stick of God" until he admits that sins are never orderedbyGod. Maulana repeats time and again that every act brings its ownfruits, and when one plants colocynths, one cannot expect sugar caneto grow. Everyone, he says, has to wear the garment made of thematerial that he himself has spun and woven, and recompense andpunishment are meted accordingto man'sactions and intentions. Yetthere is a limit to one's responsibilitiesas well as to one'spossibilities:the ox is beaten because he refuses to carry the yoke, not because hedoes not sproutwings. Although Maulana likes to quote the Prophet'ssayings, "Peopleare asleep, and when they die they awake,"he ad-monisheshis readersnot to assumethatdreams are of no consequence:they will see the true interpretationof their dreams in the morning



12/15

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL 77light of eternity, in the other world. And who can describe the worldof eternity, the spiritual realms? We know as little of it as the foetusin the dark womb can imagine the beauty of this world, its flowers andcolors.Rumi's work is the expression of a love experience that is more in-tense than a normal human being can imagine. No other poet, Eastor West, has invented so many metaphorsfor Love in all its aspects:Love is a tax collectorwho does not leave anything to man, and Loveis a consoling mother; Love is alchemy that transformsthe copper ofhuman nature into pure gold afterpurifyingit in the heat of the cruci-ble; Love is a dragon that swallows man completely; it appears as apolicemanwho "hits ntellectover the head,"or as a creeperthat com-pletely covers the tree of human existence; it is a ragman who wantsto buy all the old, shabby partsof human life (Rumi makes Love call,in Turkish, "Who has got old shoes?"),and it is the government offi-cial enacting confiscation of all goods; it is a carpenterwho builds aladder to the roof of heaven; it is that which poisons the lover's tearsso that sleep dies when approachinghis eyes. And yet, this poison issweeterthan honey, this illness morewholesome than health. In short,Love can appearunder every imaginable form, and all the heroes oftraditional stories, the prophets mentioned in the Koran, and thevarious aspectsof natureonly serve to prove the strengthof this Lovewhich makes the lover forget everything besides the Beloved. One ofthe most beautiful passages in the Mathnavi lludes to this attitude ofthe true lover: the lengthy descriptionof Zulaikha,Potiphar'swife, whois in love with the beautifulJoseph. She thinksonly of him, and hideshis name in everything she says- whether it be, "Thesun is shining,"or "The bread is tasty,"or "Clean the rugs,"or "Ihave a headache."When she says something positive, it means, "He was kind to me,"and when she complains, it is because he lacks interest in her.This story appearsat the very end of the Mathnavi,and must havebeen composed only a few months, perhapsweeks, before Maulana'sdeath. It takes up the remark, in the beginning of the Mathnavi, hatthe secrets of the beloved ones can be expressed only in the stories ofothers. Maulana's love of Shamsaddin, through whom he attainedperfectlove of God and His prophet, is hidden under ail the hundredsof metaphors, he thousandsof symbolsand allusions,the variousstoriesin his more than 60,000 verses. What he wants to express is not, asmost of his earlierinterpreters hought, a theoreticalconceptof "Unityof Being,"but rather hedynamicforce of true love whichchangesone'swhole life, and concentrates one upon only one thing, the presence



13/15

78 Religion & Literatureof the Beloved. This love cannot be learned, as the Sufis have alwaysknown;rather,it is a giftof grace, a Divine Gift- and the same appliesto his poetry, the fruit of his love. Rumi also knows that every wordthe lover utters in his relation with God is divinely inspired, for

Not only the thirsty seek the water-the water seeks the thirsty as well. {Mathnavi .1741)One of the firstchaptersof theMathnaviver translated ntoa Westernlanguage, a Latinbookletin 1821by the German Protestant heologian

F.A.D. Tholuck, is the story of the man who gave up prayer owingto the Satanic insinuations that no answer seemed to come from theLord. God reveals to the man that in his every cry, "O God!" thereare a hundred Divine Addresses, "HereI am at thy service."Prayeris a gift of grace;otherwise, "Howcould a rose grow from an ash pit?"The SwedisharchbishopNathan Sdderblom,the first to recognize theimportanceof Rumi'sstoryon prayer,hasrightlycompared t to Pascal'sexperienceof God'srevelation:"Youwould not have sought Me if youhad not alreadyfound Me." Rumi expresses in this storyas in manycomparablesayings- a truth which was well known to the Muslims,and especially to the Sufis, from the very beginning: everything is aDivine Gift, andman hasto acknowledge hisgift by constantgratitude.Rumi'spoetryis still as fresh as it was seven centuriesago. Its reper-cussions are strong not only in the Islamic world, particularlyin theareas under Persian influence, but also in the West, where the firsttranslations of his verse were produced by German orientalists inthe early nineteenth century. Riickert's version of Maulana'sghazals,published in 1820, although freely adapted, reflects the poet's spiritbetter than most of the later, more literal translations; they are alsoremarkable in that they reproduce the form of the ghazalwith itsmonorhymefaithfully n German so that theghazalhas become a com-pletely germanized literary form. Still, Rumi's poetry is available tomost Westernersonly throughmore or less faithfultranslations,mostof which cannotconvey the slightestidea of the original'sbreathtakingbeauty and dazzling rhetorical art.But anotheraspectof Maulana's workis more easily understoodbythe nonspecialist: the ritual of the sama\ the whirling mystical danceaccompaniedby the hauntingsound of lute and drums, and introducedby the na't-isharif, he praisepoem for the ProphetMuhammad, whichleadsinto theveryheartof Rumi'sreligious eeling.The mysticaldance,spontaneousin early Sufism, and not strictlyregulated by Rumi, whogave himself to whirlingforlong hours without fatigue, was organized



14/15

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL 79into a properritualby his son, SultanValad, who gathered he disciplesof his father into a real brotherhood, the Mevlevis. The brotherhoodwas centeredin Konya but expandedas faras the bordersof the Otto-man Empire. It inspired much of classical Turkish music, miniaturepainting, and calligraphy.The novice, who wanted to become a Mev-levi dervish, had to undergo a training of 1001 days, during which hedid menial work in the kitchen but was also instructed in the recita-tion and the interpretationof the Mathnavias well as in the whirlingdance until he was able to spin around his axis for hours.

It is the sama\ the whirling dance, through which Maulana's idealof dying and rising in Love is expressed most beautifully. The der-vishes appearin their black gowns, with high felt caps on their heads,walk slowly toward the master and kiss his hand. After a threefoldrepetition of this movement, they throw off their gowns to emergein white dancing garments: the material world is discarded, and theheavenly dance in the white spiritualrobe follows;annihilatedin love,they experience eternal life in their turning around the center of life,the spiritualsun. Maulana saw everything as a sama': t is the "ladderto heaven," and everything created is engaged in the circling that iscaused by Love's attraction. From the angels to the demons, dance iscommon, and even the act of creation is seen, in Maulana's poetry,as a dance. When the creatures heard the primordialDivine Address,"Am I not your Lord?" Sura7.171), it sounded to them like music.Intoxicatedby this sound, they came into existence in a loving dance.Do not the dust particles revolve around the Sun, and, at the touchof the morning breeze do not the branches begin to move as thoughthey were dancing? Wherever the dancer puts his foot, the water oflife wells up, and when the name of Shamsaddin is mentioned, eventhe dead appearfrom theirgraves, dancingin their shrouds forevery-thing revolves around the Sun of Love by which life is made possibleand which attracts everything into its own orbit.This seems to be the shortest ormula n which to condenseMaulana'smystical poetry: He is the witness of the Sun of Love, without whicheverything is lifeless. In his own tradition and environment, he ex-perienced what Dante soon after saw in his crowning vision: L'amorche muove il sol e Valtrestelle.

Harvard University

NOTE1. All translationsof Rumi's poetry in this essay are by Annemarie Schimmel.



15/15

80 Religion & LiteratureSUGGESTEDREADINGS

Chittick, William C. The Sufi Path of Love. Albany: SUNY P, 1983.Rumi, Maulana Jalaladdin. Divan-i kabir. 10 volumes. Ed. Badi'uzzaman Furuzanfar.Teheran, 1957-65. Fihi mafihi in Discoursesof Rumi. Trans. A.J. Arberry. London: Allen andUnwin, 1961. Mathnawi-yi ma'nawi. 8 volumes. Ed. and trans. Reynold A. Nicholson. Lon-don and Leiden, 1925-1940. Selected oemsfrom theDivan-i Shams-i Tabriz.Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1898.Schimmel, Annemarie. As Througha Veil:Mystical Poetry n Islam. New York: Colum-bia UP, 1982. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1975. The TriumphalSun: A Studyof Mowlanajalaladdins Life and Work. London andThe Hague: London Fine Books, 1978.

Documents

Annemarie schimmel brief study of rumi