Jalal-u’ddin Rumi (1207 -1273)
by Dorothy C. Buck
December 10.2007
Talk sponsored by the M.I.T.Rumi Club
We know him as the Islamic mystic and poet, Rumi. But he is well known in
the Muslim world as Mevlana, founder of the Mevlevi Sufi Brotherhood. He was
given the name Jalal-u’ddin which means the keeper of the faith, by his
parents when he was born. There is some confusion as to whether the city of
Balkh where he was born was in Afghanistan or Pakistan, however it is clear
that this was a time of great turmoil and invasions of Islamic lands by the
Mongols that continued throughout Rumi’s life. There is also some confusion
about the exact date of his birth although most texts say September 30, 1207.
His father was a famous spiritual teacher who became known as the Elder Master,
the Sultan of the Ulema, or Sultan of the scholars.
After his son was born Baha’u-din, Rumi’s father, left the city because
of the invasions and some tensions in the community about his popularity as
a teacher, and travelled for 16 years before reaching the city of Konya in Anatolia,
in present day Turkey, where the family settled in 1221. There he taught in
a Medresa as a Doctor, or scholar of Sacred Muslim Law and Theology and guided
his students toward the Light of the Divine. The young Rumi attended his father’s
lectures. There are many stories about him that reveal his giftedness from childhood.
For example, the family had stopped in Naishapur to visit Attar, the great mystic
of that era. Attar recognized the young Rumi’s gifts of wisdom and knowledge
and gave him his book entitled, “Interpretation of Mystery” as a gift.
On January 12, 1231 the Sultan of the Scholars, Rumi’s father died and
was buried in the Mevlana Tomb where he rests to this day. His father’s
students gathered around Mevlana, and Rumi soon gathered a large academic circle
around him because of his great learning. He was not only a secluded scholar
teacher who lectured in the medresas but also a fiery preacher in the mosques
and an authority on Islamic doctrine. As his interior life and ascetic practices
increased he longed for somewhere to reveal his experiences since one of the
demands of Sufi practice is not to reveal personal ecstatic experiences of the
Beloved. It was then that he met Muhammad Shemseddin Tebriz who became known
as Shems. This adept Sufi was the guide and companion who opened the door of
divine mystical love to Mevlana.
All religions have within their traditions a form of spiritual practice called
mysticism. Islamic mystical traditon is called Sufism. Mysticism is a path towards
God that leads one through a process of painful purification of oneself to the
heights of Divine Love alive in the depth of every human soul. This is not an
easy road and an experienced guide helps the seeker through the rigors of increasing
ascetic practice. Therefore, when Shems came into Mevlana’s life his spiritual
path to transformation blossomed. Through Shems, Mevlana had become a poet and
a lover of music. One day as he walked by the goldsmith’s shop he heard
the hammers of the apprentices pounding the rough sheets of gold into beautiful
objects. With each step he repeated the name of God; and now, with the sound
of the hammers beating the gold, all he heard was Allah, Allah and he began
to whirl in the middle of the street. He unfolded his arms, like a fledgling
bird, tilted his head back and whirled and whirled to the sound of Allah that
came forth from the very wind he created by his movement.
The dance became an integral part of the rigorous training of the dervishes
in the school of the order of Sufi ascetics known as the Mevlevi Whirling Dervishes.
The persian word Dervish literally means the sill of the door and describes
the Sufi dervish as one who is at the door of enlightenment. Some say that the
word Sufi comes from the Arabic word for wool “suf”describing the
wool cloaks worn by the Sufis. But others suggest it comes from the Greek word
“sophos” meaning wisdom. Annamarie Schimmel, the great scholar of
Sufism wrote,” Dance was practiced by the Sufis from the earliest days
of Sufism in the ninth century but the only brotherhood in which the whirling
was institutionalized as part of the ritual was the Mevlevi because Rumi himself
sang his immortal verses while whirling, enthralled by passionate longing for
his friend Shems, the “Sun of Tabriz” who had opened the way to him
to immediate experience of the Divine Beloved.
Love however means to die to one’s self and to be revived in the Beloved,
(or God). As much as the whirling dance can be interpreted as the dance of everything
created around the central Sun of Divine Love, it also means to re-enact death
and resurrection: the dervishes cast off their black coats which are symbols
of earthly life, and appear in their unfolding white gowns, symbolizing the
clothing of immortality, like moths in an enraptured and yet carefully measured
dance, burning, it seems, in the flames of the transfiguring Love of the Beloved”.
Rumi’s mystical poetry has become well known all over the world.It is a
great expression of Islamic mysticism and present day Sufi members from many
traditional brotherhoods find inspiration from Rumi for their daily lives, and
courage for their journeys towards transformation through Love. Rumi’s
greatest masterpiece is the Mathnawi consisting of 25,618 couplets in verse
originally written in the Persian language. This is a collection in six volumes
expressing mystical experience and the refining of the human soul through fables.
Rumi is known as an advocate of universal love and world peace.
The rigorous training of the dervishes in the school established in Konya included
living in seclusion in small cells, and “10001 days” of prayer, study,
and fasting. The initiates were sent into the city to beg with golden bowls,
making it clear that they had no need to beg but were on a path to learn humility.
When Turkey became a republic in 1926 the school was closed and the Shrine of
Mevlana, his father and their families, and the mosque became the Mevlana Museum.
In 1964 a group of dervishes revived the Whirling ritual as a historical tradition
and they perform the ritual around the world.
This month we are honoring his death on the evening of December 17, 1273, what
Rumi himself called the Wedding Night, the passing of Jallal-u’ddin Rumi
into “union” with the Beloved. Every year on this night the Sema,
or Whirling Dervish ritual, is performed in Konya, in Turkey.
Let us end with the words of Jallal-u’ddin Rumi:
I died from a mineral, and plant became;
Died from a plant, and took a sentient frame;
Died from the beast, and donned human dress;
When, from my dying did I e’er grow less?
Another time from manhood I must die
To soar with angel-pinions through the sky.
Midst Angels also I must lose my place
Since Everything must perish save God’s Face
Let me be naught! The harp-strings tell me plain
That unto God we return again.
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References
1. Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam, University of North Caroline Press, Chapel Hill. NC 1975.