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DISCOURSES OF RUMI |
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Introduction The discourses of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Muslim saint, mystic and poet of the thirteenth century, here translated for the first time out of the original Persian, must be allowed to rank amongst the most remarkable documents of religious literature. Before describing and discussing their contents, it will be useful to summarise the history of the tumultuous times in which their author lived, an age of hitherto unparalleled violence and catastrophe; for it is only by recapturing the daily circumstances of the man who here speaks out of his heart to all humanity, that one can fairly measure the greatness of his spirituality and truly assess the sublimity of his detachment from the world of matter and events. Jalal al-Din Muhammad, son of Baha' al-Din Valad of Balkh, was born on 30 September 1207. His father, whose full name was Muhammad ibn Husain al-Khatibi al-Bakri: al-Balkhi, claimed direct paternal descent from Abu Bakr, the first caliph of Islam; on his mother's side he is said to have been of the local ruling house of the Khvarizm-shahs, established about 1080 by a Turkish slave but none the less royal in its pretensions for all that, but this side of his lineage can be safely disregarded as legendary. Baha' al-Din Valad came of stock long esteemed in Khurasan as experts in theology and canon law; the province, for all its remoteness from the heartlands of Islam, had for centuries been a leading centre of Muslim learning and piety, and had produced notable schools of both philosophy and mysticism. In 1207 Khurasan was flourishing under the rule of the powerful and ambitious 'Ala' al-Din Muhammad Khvarizmshah, who had just captured Balkh the previous year from the Ghurids and would shortly master all Persia and Afghanistan and aspire to even greater dominion until halted by forces far more terrible than his own. Baha' al-Din himself was born about 1148 of a father who was also a noted scholar and divine. Brought up in the traditional atmosphere of Sunni orthodoxy, he acquired such a reputation as a teacher and preacher that he had conferred upon him the title Sultan of the Ulema. He was additionally a Sufi mystic, thus following in the footsteps of the great Muhammad al-Ghazzali of Tus (died 1111) whose rigorous attacks on the philosophers had seriously undermined the influence of Avicenna and virtually put an end to free speculation in eastern Islam. It was, however, to al-Ghazzali's more ecstatic brother Ahmad (died 1123), author in Persian of a subtle metaphysical essay on Divine Love, that Baha' al-Din traced his spiritual descent. This combination of profound theological and theosophical learning won for him high repute as a religious preceptor and lends peculiar charm to his sermons and meditations, a large volume of which has recently for the first time become available in print. This book, called Ma'arif ('Gnoses'), afterwards fascinated and greatly influenced his son. A not unexpected odium theologicum brought Baha' al-Din into collision with his contemporary Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (born 1149), an outspoken critic of al-Ghazzali and a skilful champion of scholasticism whose numerous and voluminous writings deserve far more attention than they have received hitherto. Echoes of the hostility between these two men, competitors for royal favour, are to be found in Baha' al-Din's Ma'arif and are loudly and exaggeratedly repeated by the Persian biographers. It is commonly asserted that Fakhr al-Din was the cause of the Khvarizmshah's turning against the Sufis, so that he drowned Majd al-Din Baghdadi, a prominent member of the circle to which Baha' al-Din himself belonged, in the river Oxus. It is further alleged that Fakhr al-Din's enmity led to Baha' al-Din's precipitate flight from Balkh; this report, however, involves an anachronism, for Fakhr al-Din died in 1210 whereas Baha' al-Din did not flee until 1219, and then under very different compulsion. For in that year the Mongol hordes under Chingiz Khan, storming down from the northeast, stood poised to ravage Balkh, a fearful holocaust which followed the city's surrender in 1220. Those who would and could ran headlong before the wrath to come; amongst the many thousands who preferred martyrdom was the aged Najm al-Din Kubra, founder of the Kubraviya Order of dervishes. A graphic description of terrible events from which Baha' al-Din and his young son so narrowly escaped has been given by another famous Sufi, a disciple of Majd al-Din Baghdadi and Najm al-Din Kubra, who ran from those regions not long after Baha' al-Din himself. 'It was in the year 1220,' he writes, 'that the God-forsaken army of the Tartar infidels, may God forsake and destroy them, gained the mastery over those territories. The confusion and slaughter, the devastation and leading into captivity, the destruction and conflagration that followed at the hands of those accursed creatures were such as had never before been witnessed in any age, whether in the lands of heathendom or Islam. How could slaughter ever be vaster than this that they wrought from the gate of Turkistan to the gate of Syria and Rum, wherein they laid waste so many cities and provinces, so that in one city alone -- Raiy, where I myself was born and brought up -- it has been estimated that 700,000 mortals were slain or made captive: Where was any country to be found in which true believers still dwelt, uncontaminated by the blight of heresy and fanaticism, under the protection of a just and religious king? In every place Daya asked this question, and always he was given the same answer -- in Rum, those provinces of what is now Asiatic Turkey which were still ruled over by the western branch of the once immensely powerful Saljuq House. It was to Rum therefore that Daya betook himself, whither he had already been preceded by Baha' al-Din. At the time of the flight Jalal al-Din was a boy of twelve, already well grounded in his father's learning and piety, old enough to remember in after years his childhood environment, reminiscences of which are to be found scattered here and there in his discourses. Baha' al-Din made his way first to Nishapur, all too soon to share the horrible fate of Balkh, and there called upon the venerable poet and mystic Farid al-Din 'Attar, another pupil of Majd al-Din Baghdadi. Farid al-Din recognising in Jalal al-Din the signs of spiritual greatness, presented him with a copy of his Asrar-nama ('Book of Secrets'), an important poem of the mystical life which Rumi studied deeply and from which he was delighted in later years often to quote. From Nishapur the fugitives pressed on to Baghdad, which still had some thirty-eight years of grace before Hulagu Khan would reduce the splendid capital city of Islam to a bloody shambles. They stayed in the metropolis only three days, being in a hurry to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. There is a pretty story that whilst in Baghdad Baha' al-Din predicted the imminent downfall of the caliphate, but not too much credence need be given to this typical piece of hagiography. The rites of the pilgrimage duly completed, Baha' al-Din now led his spiritually refreshed party to Syria. A veil of obscurity covers the next period of the wanderers' adventures, but it is possible that the poet and hagiographer Jami (died 1492) was correct in saying that they stopped for four years in Arzanjan, a pleasant town in the province of Armenia having a considerable Christian population. Presently Baha' al-Din moved on to Laranda, a township some thirty-five miles to the south-east of Konia. There he arranged a marriage between his son Jalal al-Din, now eighteen years old, to Gauhar Khatun, daughter of one Lala of Samarqand, presumably a member of the fugitive party. To this union a son was born in 1226 named Sultan Valad, who would later compose a poetical biography of his father and in all likelihood edited his scattered discourses. From Laranda Baha' al-Din was invited by the Saljuq ruler to remove to his capital Konia, where he took up honourable appointment as preacher and teacher. In this office he died in 1230. Konia, the ancient Iconium which St Paul thrice visited, and according to one Arab legend the resting-place of Plato's bones, had been in Muslim hands since about 1070 when the Saljuqs in their fiery prime wrested Anatolia from Byzantium. Well inland and some 5,000 feet above sea level, chosen as their capital by the Saljuqs of Rum, the city escaped recapture during the Crusades though the tide of battle ebbed and flowed not very far away. At the time of Baha' al-Din's arrival Konia had recently been adorned with a new royal palace and citadel; the great mosque founded by Kal-Ka'us I had been completed in 1220 by his successor Kal-Qubad I (reigned 1219-1236), whose invitation it was that brought Baha' al-Din and his family to the Saljuq capital. We may therefore picture the young scholar Jalal al-Din, stepping into his father's religious offices on the latter's death, as entering upon a sort of metropolitan life, preaching before the monarch and teaching the sons of the local notables, which must have recaptured for him the memory of Balkh in its prosperity. Presently there arrived in Konia a new refugee who had of old been closely associated with Baha' al-Din and his family in Balkh. Burhan al-Din Muhaqqiq, who is said to have been one of Jalal al-Din's teachers in those halcyon days, had fled from Balkh to his native Tirmidh during the first Mongol onslaught; now, hearing of the security and charity offered to learned and pious Persians by the ruler of Rum, he came to join his former friend only to find that he had been dead a year. He therefore devoted himself to the spiritual advancement of Jalal al-Din, and during the ensuing nine years initiated him into the high mysteries of the Sufi way and doctrine. In this period Jalal al-Din, at the direction and in part in the company of Burhan al-Din, journeyed into Syria and studied at Aleppo and Damascus. After some seven years' further education during which time he can hardly have failed to meet the great Andalusian mystic and theosophist Ibn 'Arabi (he died at Damascus in 1240), Jalal al-Din returned to Konia where Ghiyath al-Din Kai-Khusrau II was now on the throne. Shortly afterwards he learned that Burhan al-Din had died in Caesarea, whither he proceeded to take possession of his teacher's books and papers, doubtless including the manuscript discourses (Ma'arif) which are as yet unpublished. From 1240 to 1244 Jalal al-Din taught and preached in Konia, wearing the traditional turban and gown of orthodox religious scholars. Konia had hitherto seemed a long way from the Mongol hordes; but now they were upon the eastern borders of Asia Minor, Erzerum capitulated to them, and in 1243 the defeat of Kozadagh reduced the Saljuq of Rum to the paltry status of a tribute- paying vassal. Jalal al- Din, however, still stood outside these tremendous events. He seemed destined for a career of modest distinction as an expositor of the faith and the sacred law. Presently he might be applying himself to writing a commentary on the Koran, or collecting choice Traditions of Muhammad, or publishing his elegant sermons. Certainly nothing seemed less likely than that he would turn poet. As he tells us in one revealing passage in his discourses, the trade of poet was held in little esteem amongst the religious in his native Khurasan, and 'I am affectionate to such a degree that when these friends come to me, for fear that they may be wearied I speak poetry so that they may be occupied with that. Otherwise, what have I to do with poetry? By Allah, I care nothing for poetry, and there is nothing worse in my eyes than that. It has become incumbent upon me, as when a man plunges his hands into tripe and washes it out for the sake of a guest's appetite, because the guest's appetite is for tripe.' In 1244, when he was already thirty-seven years old and therefore well established in the religious society of Konia, Jalal al-Din went through a profound emotional and spiritual experience which changed the course of his life. In that year a wandering dervish called Shams al-Din, a native of Tabriz seemingly of artisan origin, suddenly arrived in the Saljuq capital and attracted attention by the wildness of his demeanour. The story of how Jalal al-Din reacted to his first encounter with the mysterious stranger and of the subsequent episodes of their passionate attachment fills many pages in the books of the hagiologists. Here it will suffice to quote the late Professor R. A. Nicholson's summary of the events of those four tremendous years. 'Jalal al-Din found in the stranger that perfect image of the Divine Beloved which he had long been seeking. He took him away to his house, and for a year or two they remained inseparable. Sultan Valad likens his father's all-absorbing communion with this "hidden saint" to the celebrated journey of Moses in company with Khadir (Koran, XVIII 64-80), the Sage whom Sufis regard as the supreme hierophant and guide of travellers on the Way to God. Meanwhile the Mevlevi disciples of Rumi, entirely cut off from their Master's teaching and conversation and bitterly resenting his continued devotion to Shams al-Din alone, assailed the intruder with abuse and threats of violence. At last Shams al-Din fled to Damascus, but was brought back in triumph by Sultan Valad, whom Jalal al-Din, deeply agitated by the loss of his bosom friend, had sent in search of him. Thereupon the disciples "repented" and were forgiven. Soon, however, a renewed outburst of jealousy on their part caused Shams al-Din to take refuge in Damascus for the second time, and again Sultan Valad was called upon to restore the situation. Finally, perhaps in 1247, the man of mystery vanished without leaving a trace behind.' The intense excitement of these adventures transformed Jalal al-Din from the sober divine into an ecstatic wholly incapable of controlling the torrent of poetry which now poured forth from him. To symbolise, it is said, the search for the lost Beloved, now identified with Shams al-Din, he invented the famous whirling and circling dance of his Mevlevi dervishes, performed to the accompaniment of the lamenting reed-pipe and the pacing drum. Night was turned into day in the long mystical orgy, and from time to time under the impact of the passionate moment Jalal al-Din uttered extempore brief quatrains or extended lyrics which his disciples hastily transcribed and committed to memory. To confess the human source of his inspiration, he very often introduced into his lyrics the name of Shams al-Din as though he were the poet; at other times he signed his verses with the soubriquet Khamush, the Silent, a reference to the ineffable nature of the mysteries. Thenceforward, and for the remainder of his days, Jalal al-Din residing in his madrasa presided over his own Dervish Order, the Mevlevis, surrounded by an ever growing circle of disciples, visited by the greatest in the land who were eager to consult his wisdom, and thus enjoying, or at any rate occupying, a position of wide influence in the now declining Saljuq kingdom. The discourses are a record of many of the discussions which he led during those famous years. Ghiyath al-Din Kai-Khusrau II died in 1245 leaving three sons, and a testament appointing as his successor the youngest, 'Ala' al-Din, seven-year-old child of the Georgian princess Tamara. The powerful vizier of the late king, Shams al-Din Isfahani, had a preference for the eldest of the three, 'Izz al-Din, whose mother was the daughter of a Greek priest; but Rukn al-Din, the middle of the trio, attended the convention at which Kuyuk was proclaimed Great Khan of the Mongols and returned with the coveted title Sultan of Rum, to purchase which he undertook to pay heavy tribute and to execute the vizier and his associates. This was duly effected in 1249. In 1251 Kuyuk was succeeded by Mangu Khan, who now recognised the three brothers as a triumvirate. Presently 'Ala' al-Din was murdered on his way to pay homage to the Great Khan, while 'Izz al-Din Kai-Ka'us II, who had thrown Rukn al-Din into prison, found himself embattled against the Mongol Baiju and constrained to take refuge with Theodore Lascaris in 1256. In those days Mongol soldiery occupied Konia and demolished its fortifications but spared the inhabitants, according to the hagiographer Aflaki out of high regard for Jalal al-Din. Rukn al-Din was freed and 'Izz al-Din obliged to accept him as equal partner of the Saljuq throne. In 1257, however, 'Izz al-Din was discovered to be boldly conspiring with the Egyptian Mamluks to resist Hulagu Khan, about to take and massacre Baghdad; he had to run for his life, which continued in precarious exile down to 1280. Rukn al-Din was thus free at last to assume, of course under Mongol patronage, sole rule of Rum. The real authority, however, was exercised by his prime minister, the Parvana Mu'in al-Din, who allowed his master to wear the diadem from 1257 to 1267 and then arranged his execution. Baiju himself had promoted Mu'in al-Din to the chancellorship in 1256, and for twenty years he was the actual ruler, as Mongol vassal, of Anatolia. He extended his liberal patronage to Jalal al-Din, and it seems clear from the discourses, not a few of which are addressed to him personally, that he sincerely admired the Sufi master-poet. Jalal al-Din died in 1273, and was thus spared the sorrow of witnessing the downfall of his puissant protector. For in 1277 a party of Turk noblemen, in secret league with Baibars of Egypt, planned to rebel against the Mongol overlords and to join forces with the heroic Mamluk in Caesarea. However, the conspirators lost courage; the suspect Parvana fled with the boy Sultan Kai-Khusrau III; he was taken into custody by Abaqa Khan, put to death, and then eaten. So much at least of the tangled historical background is necessary to the understanding of the circumstances attending Jalal al-Din's later years. The discourses show him as fully conscious of the tense drama of political events, which they do much to illuminate. Their value as a primary source of history is thus considerable; but this, of course, is merely incidental to their importance as first-hand documents illustrating the mystical doctrine of Jalal al-Din, and throwing light upon his thought processes. During the years covered by the discourses Jalal al-Din, who after Shams al-Din's disappearance had attached his affection successively to Salah al-Din Faridun Zarkuband, on Zarkut's death about 1261, to Husam al-Din Hasan, occupied a large part of his time with composing the Masnavi, his famous six-volume verse miscellany of the mystical life, available to English readers in R. A. Nicholson's luminous translation. The Masnavi, which contains many passages of poetry of the highest order of excellence, is a notoriously difficult work to read and understand; not only, or even not so much on account of the intricacy and unfamiliarity of the doctrines therein enunciated, but still more because of the casual looseness, not to say anarchy, of its construction. Anecdotes of prophets and saints and legends of all sorts and conditions of men and women are well-nigh inextricably intertwined with long didactic passages abounding in learned and otherwise obscure allusion. The Discourses are now seen to be composed, if that is the right term, in very similar fashion and to be in no small measure the raw materials out of which the great poem was fashioned; and it has become abundantly evident that they, like the Masnavi, represent the impromptu outpourings of a mind overwhelmed in mystical thought, the multifarious and often arrestingly original and beautiful images welling up unceasingly out of the poet's overflowing unconscious. The title by which the discourses are traditionally known, Fihi ma fihi ('In it what is in it'), a quotation from a poem of the mystic Ibn 'Arabi, has been explained by some as meaning, 'There is to be found in this book what is contained in that book,' that is, the Masnavi. But publication of the Ma'arif of Baha' al-Din Valad has now enabled us to see that in his Discourses, the son was also following in his father's footsteps; and we were already aware from other sources that Jalal al-Din studied his father's writings assiduously, so much so that the jealous Shams al-Din of Tabriz took him to task. When the latter's Maqalat become available in print, they will prove likewise to have been an important source for the Discourses. Further comment on the contents of the Discourses will be found in the notes appended to this volume, where summaries of each are provided together with explanations of the allusions and references. The translation, made as literal as could be contrived (and the original is by no means easy always to understand), has been based upon the fine and erudite edition (Teheran, 1952) of Professor Badi' al-Zaman Furuzanfar, whose learned and authoritative annotations have been fully consulted. This work is intended as a memorial to my own teacher and initiator into the Sufi mysteries, Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, and represents the first stage of an extensive exploration of the life and writings of Jalal al-Din Rumi, surely the greatest mystical poet in the history of mankind.
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