A short outline of the life of Rumi
Jalaleddin
Rumi was one
of the great spiritual masters and poetic geniuses
of mankind, and the Mevlevi Sufi order was founded
to follow his teachings. He was born in 1207 in
Balkh in present day Afghanistan to a family of
learned theologians. Escaping the Mongol invasion,
he and his family
traveled
extensively in Muslim lands, performed pilgrimage to
Mecca and visited Medina; the journey brought the
family to Erzincan and then Karaman, where Rumi
studied for a short period in the Halaveye School.
In 1228, at the invitation of the Sultan of the
Seljuks, Alaeddin Keykubad, they settled in Konya,
Anatolia, in present day Turkey, then part of the
Seljuk Empire. Here Jalaleddin married and lived
with his wife, Gevher Hatun, who bore him two
children. He is called ‘Rumi,’ meaning
‘Anatolian’ because of his life in that place.
He also gained the title Mevlana which means ‘Our
Master’ through his life’s work there.
When his father Bahauddin Veled passed away in 1231, Rumi
succeeded him as professor in religious sciences at
the largest theological school in Konya. Only 24
years old, Rumi was already an accomplished scholar
in religious and positive sciences. He died on the
17th of December 1273 in Konya, where he
had spent most of his adult life and composed all
his works, and where his tomb lies today.
Although
Rumi had already succeeded to his father’s
position as a teacher, when the great scholar and
Sufi Burhaneddin al-Tirmithi arrived in Konya, Rumi
studied under him and devoted himself to his service
for nine years. This training was focused on divine
love, worship, austerity and abstinence, piety,
consciousness of God, humility, and tolerance, which
are the foundations of Sufism. Rumi spent his days
mostly praying and serving people who came to visit
the Sufi
center,
preparing food for them, collecting wood for cooking
and heating, and cleaning the toilets and bathrooms
used by visitors. He thus learned the merit of
serving people and knew that serving people is
ultimately serving God. On Burhaneddin’s advice
Rumi completed his scholarly education in Aleppo,
mastering also the classical Islamic sciences,
including jurisprudence (fiqh), commentary on
the Qur’an (tafsir), tradition (hadith)
and epistemology (usul). There were thus a
number of significant figures in Rumi’s spiritual
development. Apart from his father and Burhaneddin,
he met many great philosophers and scholars of the
age including the renowned Ibn Arabi in Aleppo and
Damascus, and others in Konya under the patronage of
the Seljuk Court. He thus acquired both the inner
and outer sciences within sixteen years.
The
most famous and probably the most fruitful
relationship in his development was with Shems-i
Tebriz, whom he met in Konya at the suggestion of
Ruknuddin Zarqubi. Modern historians may argue about
who influenced whom in their long association but
this is not profitable. What we know is that for a
particular period of time, two
skillful
and acute spirits came together, and by sharing the
divine bounties and gifts they received from their
Lord, they reached peaks that most would not be able
to reach easily on their own. To this day the place
where the two first met in Konya is known as Marc’al
Bahreyn, the meeting point of the two oceans.
Through their spiritual cooperation, they
enlightened those of their own age, and have also
influenced all the centuries which followed.
Following
the departure of Shams, Rumi continued to compose
his works and to develop the principles that would
be followed by the order formed and named in his
honour after his death. He started to live in
seclusion and abstinence practicing ascetics in
series of three periods of forty days; eating
little, talking little and sleeping
little
were essential components of this discipline.
Here
it is important to remember that while Rumi was
informed by numerous sources of ideas, on his
journey he seemed to leave many of his
contemporaries behind—his love and compassion
flowed like the waters of the world’s oceans; so
much so that while continuing to live physically
among humans, he managed to become ever closer to
God. He never elevated himself above others but his
writings, both during his life and after his
entering into eternal life, provide a guiding star
which reflects the light of the spiritual life of
the Prophet of Islam. Thus, he is among the few
figures who have exerted great influence over large
parts of history and large regions of the world.
Rumi was not, and is not, the only hero of love. He was
and is one of the great representatives of the
school of love in the Islamic tradition based on the
life and practices of the Prophet, which we call
Sufism. This tradition, which includes names like
Hasan Basri, Ibrahim Ethem, and Bishr-i Khafi in the
Arabian Peninsula in the second century of Islam,
grew rapidly with Ahmed Yasawi and Yunus Emre in
Central Asia and Anatolia during the rule of both
the Seljuks and the Ottomans. In recent times this
understanding of Islam has been represented by Sufis
and scholars like Mevlana
Halid-i Bagdadi, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, Muhammed
Lutfi Efendi and recently Fethullah Gülen. Rumi was
one of the important rings in that golden chain of
Islamic tradition, and was deeply affected by and
benefited from the wealth and experiences of those
Sufis and scholars preceding him, as well as
influencing those to come.
His
Sufi
understanding
Rumi’s
love for Allah was a fiery one, with a constant
weeping and longing for God’s mysteries. Love for
anything other than God is not real Love:
‘Wherever I put my head, that is my place of
worship. No matter where I am, that is where God is.
Vineyards, roses, nightingales, the sema and
loving . . . They are all symbols, the reason is
always Him.’ Allah is the Beloved and Rumi bewails
his separation from Him, as the ney weeps at
its separation from the reed bed whence it came and
longs for return. He experienced love and passion
both through his solitary asceticism and his
communal engagements and said: ‘The way of God’s
Messenger is the way of Love. We are the children of
Love. Love is our mother.’ It was in his
solitariness that he became most open to the truest
union with God, and it was in his separation from
all things except God that he became like a ball of
fire. And while such a sense of burning would prove
difficult for many to bear, Rumi, considered it an
essential part of passion, and not complaining was
viewed as a tradition of loyalty. To him, those who
profess a love of God must necessarily accompany
their statement of ‘I love’ with a sense of
furious burning—this is the price one must
willingly pay for being close to God or in union
with Him: ‘I was raw, I am now cooked and
burnt.’ Additionally, one must engage in ascetic
behavior
such as moderate eating, drinking, sleeping, and a
constant awareness and directedness towards God in
one’s speech, and one must inevitably experience
bewilderment at God’s bounties. Rumi cannot
understand how a lover can sleep in an immoderate
way, as it takes away from time shared with the
Beloved. For him, excessive sleeping was offensive
to the Beloved. As God instructed David by saying,
‘O David, those who indulge in sleeping without
contemplating Me, while they claim passion for Me,
are really lying,’ so also Rumi states, ‘When
the darkness falls, lovers become intense.’ Rumi
continually prescribed this in word, and also showed
it in his actions.
Rumi's
poetry and prose writings have a spiritual content
that is the universal language of the human soul.
They speak of the spiritual journey of man's ascent
through the mind and love to Perfection. His works
were recorded, collected and compiled during his
lifetime and after his death by his son, his friends
and his students, particularly his much-loved
disciple Husameddin Chelebi.
The Mathnawi
Soon
after his spiritual friend Shems appeared in his
life, Rumi started his
marvelous
work, The Masnawi, consisting of twenty-five
thousand verses. Written in couplets and collected
into six large volumes The Masnawi expresses
Rumi’s burning love, refined spirit, fine
intelligence and mysticism through the form of
linked stories.
Divan-i Kebir
Also
known as Divan-i Shems-i Tebriz (the
collected poems of Shems of Tebriz) because Rumi
used his friend’s name as a pseudonym, and
consisting of over forty thousand couplets, this is
a monumental work of divine lyricism. The whole is
studied in depth in Muslim countries and selected
passages have been widely translated and read
throughout the world for centuries.
Fihi ma Fihi
Fihi
ma Fihi
(It Is What It Is), written in prose, is a
collection of discourses and spiritual discussions
given at gatherings with his students. Again using
stories and examples it covers such topics as the
mystical view of life and death, the phases of
initiation into the mystical life, the relationship
between the master and the initiate, faith, love,
conduct, ethics and worship.
His continuing significance
Rumi
was a devout Muslim and his teaching of peace and
tolerance has appealed to men and women of all sects
and creeds, and continues to draw followers from all
parts of the Muslim and non-Muslim world. As both a
teacher and a mystic, his doctrine advocates
tolerance, reasoning, goodness, charity and
awareness through love, looking with the same eye on
Muslims, Jews, Christians and others alike.
Recognized
as perhaps the greatest mystical poet of Islam, he
communicated something through his writing that has
attracted spiritual seekers from almost every
religion in the world, for hundreds of years.
Although at the time that Rumi emerged as a teacher
and spiritual guide, the lands and the people of the
East had been scourged and exhausted by the assaults
of the Mongols, the Seljuk State much weakened by
incursions and invasions by the Harzemshahs, who had
previously defended Muslim lands against the
Mongols, and in the chaos of the weakened state
intercommunal and interreligious violence and schism
were starting to arise, Rumi was able to produce an
atmosphere of tolerance and dialogue. His message
was to clarify the relation of human beings to our
Creator, and our relation to others and our fellow
beings. Even in his day, Rumi was sought out by
merchants and kings, devout worshippers and
rebellious seekers, famous scholars and common
peasants, men and women. When he passed away in
1273, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Arabs, Persians,
Turks and Romans
honored
him at his funeral, and men of five faiths followed
his bier. That night was named
Sheb-ul
Arus
(The Night of Union with the Divine). Ever since,
the Mevlevi dervishes have kept that date as a
festival.
Although
Rumi was known and loved during his lifetime by the
Christians in his immediate environment, the West
only came to know him many centuries later, in part
because the great German poet, Goethe, one of the
fathers of the hugely Romantic movement, came to
know and be influenced by some of the works of Rumi
through the translations of the Austrian historian,
Josef von Hammer. Even though most Islamic scholars
would argue that von Hammer’s translations were
for the most part inadequate, nevertheless the power
and beauty of Rumi’s thought, mysticism and love
shone through. By this route, Rumi has long been a
strong, albeit indirect, influence on religious,
cultural and even political life in Europe and the
United States, and provides a real point of unity
for East and West. The current truth and great
potential of this cultural meeting is best proved by
the fact that Rumi has been the best-selling poet in
the United States for the last thirteen years.
Rumi’s
life and works show us that it is not faith, belief
and religion which cause hatred, conflict and
violence, but the sins of hatred and greed and other
symptoms of the unrestrained ego, and he showed us
how the true practice of religion, the purification
of the heart, is the remedy for these.
In
our days his life and works are a reminder to all
that the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ is far from
inevitable and they show us how to derive hope,
renewal and reconciliation, rather than despair,
fear and enmity from our differences. He invites us
to call constantly to mind that we are all one, from
God we come and to God we will return:
Come,
come, come again,
Whoever
you may be,
Come
again, even though
You
may be a pagan or fire worshipper,
Our
hearth is not the threshold of despair.
Come
again, even if you may have
Violated
your vows a hundred times,
Come
again…
http://www.whirlingdervishes.org/rumilife.htm
