Rumi

Rumi

Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد رومى), also Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى), or by his common names Mevlana or Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a Persian Sufi, theologian, and Sufi mystic poet who lived in Anatolia in the 13th century. Rumi's influence transcends national boundaries and ethnic distinctions: his spiritual legacy has for the last seven centuries been greatly appreciated by Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, and the Muslims of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. His poems have been widely translated into most of the world's languages and rendered into various forms. Rumi has been described in the United States as the "most popular poet" and the "best-selling poet."

He wrote his works mostly in Persian, but on rare occasions he also used Turkic, Arabic, and Greek. His work titled the "Masnavi" is regarded as one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. His works are widely read in Iran and in Persian-speaking countries. Translations of his works are especially popular in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the USA, and South Asia. His poems influenced not only Persian literature but also the literary traditions of Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Urdu, Bengali, and Pashto.

Rumi is thought to have been born in 1207 in the city of Balkh, located within the borders of present-day Afghanistan. After migrating from Balkh, when he reached the age of 21, he settled in Konya, the capital of the Anatolian Seljuk State, and spent the rest of his life there. He died in Konya on 17 December 1273.

Concerning His Name

His full name was expressed by his contemporary Sipahsalar as Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Khatibi al-Balkhi al-Bakri. More commonly, however, he is known as Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد رومی). Jalal al-Din is an Arabic name meaning "the Majesty of the Faith." Balkhi and Rumi express his affiliation, meaning, respectively, "of Balkh" and "of Rome (Rūm)." In English his name is known simply as Rumi.

Rūm/Rome, in European history, is the place today called Byzantine Anatolia. Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago, regarded as an authority in the biography of Rumi, says the following on this subject: "The Anatolian peninsula which belonged to Byzantium, or the eastern Roman Empire, had only relatively recently been conquered by Muslims and, even when it came to be under the dominion of Muslim Turkish rulers, it was still known to the Arabs, Persians, and Turks as the geographical region of Rūm. As such, there are a number of historical personages born in or associated with Anatolia known as Rumi, a word borrowed from the Arabic meaning 'Roman,' in which context Roman refers to subjects of the Byzantine Empire or simply to people living in, or things associated with, Anatolia."

He was also known as the "Mullah of Rome" (Persian: ملای روم).

In Iran he is commonly known as Mevlana/Molana (Persian: ملای روم مولانا), and in Turkey as Mevlana. Mevlana (Arabic: مولانا) is a word of Arabic origin meaning "our master." The frequently used Mevlevi (Persian: مولوی, Mevlevi/Movlevi), likewise of Arabic origin, means "my master."

Overview

Rumi was born to native Persian-speaking parents in Balkh, which was then part of the Khwarazmian Empire but is today located in Afghanistan. His birth may have been in Vakhsh, a village on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan, or in the city of Balkh in Afghanistan.

Balkh was then an important center of Persian culture, and Sufism developed there over several centuries. The most important influences on Rumi, apart from his father, were the Iranian poets Attar and Sanai. Rumi praises them: "Attar was the spirit, Sanai his eyes twain, and in time thereafter, we came in their train," and he speaks of them in another poem: "Attar traversed the seven cities of Love, we are still at the turn of one street." His father too was connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-Din Kubra.

Rumi lived for the greater part of his life under the Persianized Seljuk Sultanate, where he produced his works and died in 1273. He was buried in Konya, and his tomb became a place of pilgrimage. Upon his death, his disciples and his son Sultan Veled founded the Mevlevi Order (also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes), famous for the Sufi dance known as the Sema ceremony. He was laid to rest beside his father, and a mausoleum was erected over his remains.

The accounts in Shams al-Din Ahmad Aflaki's Manāqib al-'Ārifīn, written between 1318 and 1353, contain both legends and facts about Rumi, and this biography must be handled with care. For example, Professor Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago, the author of the most complete biography of Rumi, has separate sections for Rumi's hagiographic biography and for his actual biography.

Childhood and Migration

Rumi's father was Baha al-Din Veled, a theologian, jurist, and mystic known among Rumi's followers as the "Sultan of the Scholars." According to Sultan Veled's İbadetname and to Shams al-Din Aflaki (c. 1286–1291), Rumi was descended from Abu Bakr. However, some modern scholars reject this claim. The claim of a maternal descent from the Khwarazmshah for Rumi or his father is also seen as an unhistorical legend designed to associate the family with royalty, and is rejected on chronological grounds. The most complete genealogy presented for the family is six or seven generations, extending back to the famous Hanafi jurists.

In the sources we cannot learn the name of Baha al-Din's mother; we only learn that he referred to her as "Māmi" and that she was a simple woman who lived until the 1200s. Rumi's mother is Mu'mina Hatun. For several generations the family's occupation was Islamic preaching of the relatively liberal Hanafi Maturidi school, and Rumi too continued this family tradition.

When the Mongols invaded Central Asia between 1215 and 1220, Baha al-Din Veled set out westward with all his family and a group of disciples. According to the hagiography on which there is no agreement, Rumi met Attar, one of the most famous mystical Persian poets, in the city of Nishapur in the Khorasan province of Iran, and Attar recognized Rumi's spiritual eminence. Of the son walking before his father he said, "Here comes a sea followed by an ocean."

Attar gave the child his Asrārnāme, a book about the entanglement of the soul in the material world. This meeting deeply affected the eighteen-year-old Rumi and later became a source of inspiration for his works.

Veled and his companions set out from Nishapur toward Baghdad and met many scholars and Sufis. From Baghdad they went to the Hijaz and performed the pilgrimage. Their caravan passed through Damascus, Malatya, Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri, and Niğde, and they settled in Karaman for seven years; Rumi's mother and brother died there. In 1225 Rumi married Cevher Hatun in Karaman. They had two sons: Sultan Veled and Alaeddin Çelebi. When his wife died, Rumi married again, and from her were born Amir Alim Çelebi and Melike Hatun.

His Education and His Meetings with Shams-i Tabrizi

Baha al-Din was the head of a madrasa, and when he died, the twenty-five-year-old Rumi took over his position as a mullah. Burhan al-Din, one of Baha al-Din's students, continued to instruct Rumi in the sharia and especially in the Order (tariqa) of Rumi's father until 1240.

Sources

Türkçe →