Rumi's Secret
Page 30
Khorasan. The eastern region of the former Persian Empire, including much of modern-day eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.
lale. A tutor for children.
madrase. An upper-level school or college.
maktab. Elementary school.
malamatiyya. Followers of the “path of blame,” who purposely disguised their piety in unorthodox clothing and behavior.
Mamluk. A military or warrior caste that rose from the ranks of slave soldiers to eventually control sultanates in Egypt and Syria in the thirteenth century.
masnavi. A long poem in rhyming couplets, often on spiritual themes; also the preferred form for narrative in classical Persian.
mihrab. A wall niche in mosques indicating the direction of the holy city of Mecca.
minbar. Pulpit in a mosque.
Mowlana. Rumi’s title, meaning “Our Master,” or “Our Teacher.” The term in Turkish is “Mevlana,” the basis of the name for the Mevlevi Order.
nay. A reed flute.
qasida. A longer ode, often of praise, but also written with elegiac, satirical, didactic, or religious content.
qadi. A local Muslim judge of religious law.
qibla. The direction of Mecca, which is the orientation for Muslim prayer.
rabab. A rebec, or small, stringed, upright instrument, sometimes bowed like a fiddle.
robai. A poem consisting of a four-line quatrain, often including short, pithy observations about life.
sama. Meditative sessions of listening to music and poetry, sometimes accompanied by a whirling dance.
Seljuks. Originally one of dozens of nomadic Turkic clans in Central Asia, the Seljuks enjoyed a two-century hold on power in the central Islamic lands—the Great Seljuks the “protector” of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, and the Seljuks in Anataolia defeating the Byzantines to establish a Seljuk Sultanate.
Sharia. Religious law, differently interpreted in such Sunni schools of law as Hanafi, which was followed by Rumi’s family, Shafii, and Hanbali.
sheikh. In the Sufi tradition, a spiritual leader or guide.
Shia. The minority branch of Islam believing that the leadership of Islam should reside with the descendants of the family of the Prophet Mohammad, beginning with his cousin and son-in-law Ali. “Shia” literally means “Party of Ali.”
Sufism. The mystical branch of Islam, from the root word “suf,” or wool, perhaps for the woolen robes worn by early Sufi ascetics, rejecting wealth and worldliness.
Sunni. The majority branch of Islam, believing leadership of Islam was rightfully passed down through the Companions of the Prophet, following the “sunna” or example of the Prophet, rather than residing necessarily with the family and descendants.
takhallos. A signature, tag, or pen name, used by a poet, and usually reserved for the last line of a ghazal; also described as a “clasp,” holding together its strung pearls of single lines into a necklace.
Umayyad. The second of the Islamic caliphates to succeed the Prophet Mohammad, the Umayyad dynasty ruled mostly from Damascus, beginning in the seventh century until overturned by the Abbasid dynasty in the eighth century.
Maps
Central Asia and the Middle East in the Thirteenth Century CE
Anatolia and Neighboring Lands in the Thirteenth Century CE
References
WORKS CITED [DIRECT TRANSLATIONS]
al-Aflaki, Shams al-Din Ahmad. Manâqeb al-’ârefin, ed., Tahsin Yazici, 2 vols. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1959). Reference is made to the offset reprint, 4th edition (Tehran: Donyâ-ye Ketâb, 1985/2006).
Bahâ al-Din Valad. Ma’âref: majmu’e-ye mavâ’ez va sokhanânan-e Soltân al-’olamâ Bahâ al-Din Mohammad b. Hosayn Khatibi-ye Balkhi, ed., Badi’ al-Zamân Foruzânfar, 2 vols. (Tehran: Edâre-ye Koll-e Enteba’ât-e Vezârat-e Farhang, 1955 and 1959.) A 2nd edition was published in Tehran in 1973.
Borhân al-Din Mohaqqeq. Ma’âref: majmu’e-ye mavâ’ez va kalamât-e Seyyed Borhân al-Din Mohaqqeq-e Termezi, ed., Badi’ al-Zamân Foruzânfar. 2nd edition. (Tehran: Markaz-e Nashr-e Dâneshgâh-e Tehrân, section edition, 1998). First published 1961.
Faridun b. Ahmad Sepahsâlâr. Resâle-ye Sepahsâlâr, ed. by Sa’id Nafisi (Tehran: Eqbâl, 1325/1947); reprinted as Zendeginâme-ye Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Mowlavi in 1983).
Foruzânfar, Badi’ al-Zamân. Resâle dar tahqiq-e ahvâl va zendegâni-ye Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Mohammad mashhur be Mowlavi, rev. 4th edition (Tehran: Zavvâr, 1978). First published 1951.
Rumi. Divân-e Shams-e Tabrizi. Following the edition of Badi’ al-Zamân Foruzânfar, Kolliyât-e Shams yâ Divân-e Kabir, 10 vols. (Tehran: University of Tehran Press, 1957–67). Reference is made to the edition of the entire series reprinted by Amir Kabir in nine volumes, 2535/1977. The Divân gives the number for each ghaza l, robai, and tarji-band.
Fihe mâ fih az goftâr-e Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Mohammad mashhur be Mowlavi, ed. Badi’ al-Zamân Foruzânfar (Tehran: Negâh, 1389/2010). First edition published by Amir Kabir, 1951.
Majâles-e sabe’e (Tehran: Kayhân, reprint 1994). First edition published in 1986.
Maktubât-e Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Rumi, ed., Towfiq Sobhâni (Tehran: Markaz-e Nashr-e Dâneshgâhi, 1992).
Masnavi-ye ma’navi, ed., R. A. Nicholson as The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi, E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, new series (London: Luzac & Co., 1925, 1929, 1933). Reference is made in these pages to the one-volume edition subsequently printed in Iran (Tehran: Gooya Books, 1386/2007).
Shams al-Din Tabrizi. Maqâlat-e Shams-e Tabrizi, ed., Mohammad ‘Ali Movahhed (Tehran: Sahâmi, Enteshârât-e Khwârazmi, 1990).
Sultan Valad. Divân: Divân-e Sultan Valad, ed., S. Nafisi (Tehran 1338/1959).
Masnavi-ye Valadi, enshâ’-e Bahâ al-Din b. Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Mohammad b. Hosayn-e Balkhi, mashhur be Mowlavi, ed., Jalâl al-Din Homâ’i (Tehran: Homâ, 1389/2010. Second Printing. First edition published by Eqbâl, 1316/1937.) Known as Valad nâme in Iran, and as Ebtedâ nâme in Turkey. [My translations are in prose; the original was written in masnavi verse couplets.]
WORKS CITED (SECONDARY SOURCES)
Barthold, W. Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (Exeter, Great Britain: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust. First published in English in 1928, 2012 reprint).
Bennison, Amira K. The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the Abbasid Empire (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).
Bobrick, Benson. The Caliph’s Splendor: Islam and the West in the Golden Age of Baghdad (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012).
Browne, Edward G. A Literary History of Persia: 1000–1290 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969; first published in 1906).
Chamberlain, Michael. Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1390 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Chittick, William C. The Sufi Path of Love (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983).
Hansen, Valerie. The Silk Road: A New History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Harvey, Andrew. The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi (Berkeley, California: Frog, Ltd. 1994).
Hirtenstein, Stephen. The Unlimited Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn Arabi (Ashland, Oregon: Anqa Publishing, 1999).
Karamustafa, Ahmet T. Sufism: The Formative Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007).
Le Strange, Guy. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010; first published in 1905).
Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2011; first published in 1901).
Lewis, Bernard, editor and translator. Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew Poems (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001; first published in hardcover by Oneworld Publications, 2000.)
Lewis, Franklin D. Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oxfor
d: A Oneworld Book, 2008, revised paperback edition). First published in hardback by Oneworld Publications, 2005.
“Reading, Writing, and Recitation: Sanai and the Origins of the Persian Ghazal” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1995).
Morray, David. An Ayyubid Notable and His World: Ibn al-Adim and Aleppo as Portrayed in His Biographical Dictionary of People Associated with the City (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).
Rypka, Jan. History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1968).
Safi, Omid. The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
Schmimmel, Annemarie. As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001, originally published 1982).
Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).
Rumi’s World: The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet (Boston & London: Shambhala Press, 2001; originally published as I Am Wind, You Are Fire).
The Triumphal Sun (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
Tabatabai, Sassan. Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, Iranian Study Series, 2010).
Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004).
Zarrinkub, A. H. Step by Step Up to Union with God: Life, Thought and Spiritual Journey of Jalal-al-Din Rumi, trans. by M. Kayvani (New York: Persian Heritage Foundation, 2009).
Notes
EPIGRAPH
xi “Love stole.” Ghazal #940.
PROLOGUE
2 Masnavi. Its full title, Masnavi-ye ma’navi, is sometimes translated into English as “Spiritual Verses.”
2 “Hearken to this reed.” Rumi: Poet and Mystic. Translated by Reynold Nicholson (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1950), 31.
4 “I am the black cloud.” #183. Mystical Poems of Rumi. Translated by A. J. Arberry. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press edition, 2009), 197.
4 “Islam in New York City.” A chapter of my book Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).
4 “best-selling poet.” Ptolemy Tompkins, “Rumi Rules!” Time Asia 160, no. 13 (October 7, 2002), 62.
4 “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing.” The Essential Rumi. Translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1997), 36.
4 “If you accustom yourself.” Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi. Introduction and translation by W. M. Thackston Jr. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994), Discourse 55, 210.
5 “paradise on earth.” Ghazal #1493. All the lines from the ghazals and robais are taken from the Divân-e Shams-e Tabrizi.
6 “The mind is a caravanserai.” Masnavi, V, 3644; 3646.
7 “calls me from the other side.” Aflaki, Manâqeb al-’ârefin, III, sec. 579, 589.
8 “If you visit my grave.” Ghazal #683.
8 “No one understood.” Aflaki, III, sec. 333, 400.
CHAPTER 1: “IN A LIGHTNING FLASH FROM HERE TO VAKHSH”
11 “In a lightning flash.” Masnavi, IV, 3319.
11 “These are angels.” Aflaki, III, sec. 1, 73.
11 “Let’s jump.” Ibid., III, sec. 2, 74.
12 “Love is your father.” Ghazal #333.
12 “no name.” Robai #1143.
12 “My Jalaloddin.” Aflaki, III, sec. 2, 74.
13 “mean temper . . . .” Baha, Ma’âref, 2:62.
13 Vakhsh. An equation of Vakhsh with the medieval city of Lewkand, near the modern village of Sangtuda, is established in V. Minorsky, Hudud al-’alâm: Translation and Commentary (London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series, New Series, XI, 1970), 359, 361. His findings are corroborated by Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 69, and J. Marquart, Eransahr nach der Geographie des Ps. Moses Xorenanc I, Abh.kgl.Ges.Wiss.Göttingen, Phil.-hist. KLI.NJ Bd III, Nro. 2, 1901, 232–34, 236, 299, 303. Marquart writes that “as so often happens among the Arabs, the name of the country [Vakhsh] was carried over [to what] must have been considered its capital city [Lewkand]” (299). These studies are cited by Fritz Meier, Baha-e Walad: Grundzüge seines Lebens and seiner Mystik (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), 15, footnote 7, the study that first established Vakhsh as the home of Baha Valad between 1204 and 1210. Meier deduces that if Minorsky is correct then Vakhsh was located on the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude. Franklin D. Lewis in Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oxford: A Oneworld Book, 2008, revised paperback edition), 47, further pinpoints the location of medieval Vakhsh/Lewkand near the modern-day village of Sangtuda, Tajikistan, on the east bank of the Vakhshab River, about sixty-five kilometers southeast of Dushanbe, thirty-five kilometers northeast of Kurgan-Tyube, within five hundred kilometers of China.
13 “very fertile.” Guy Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010; first published in 1905), 438.
14 “your sweet scent.” Ghazal #12.
14 “religion of lovers.” Masnavi, II, 1770.
14 “If he is Turk or Tajik.” Ghazal #58.
14 “Why is divine light.” Ghazal #332.
15 “Joyful Prince.” Masnavi, II, 929.
15 “Allah, Allah, Allah.” Aflaki, III, secs. 159–61, 250–51.
16 “the light of God.” Fihe ma fih, Discourse 2, 25.
17 “This arousal.” Baha, 1:381.
17 “Maybe like the morning.” Baha, 1:327.
18 “Embrace God.” Baha, 2:28.
18 “I began to wonder.” Baha, 2:138.
18 “Sometimes I feel.” Baha, 1:374.
18 “Sultan al-Olama.” Baha, 1:188–89.
18 “deviant.” Baha, 1:82.
19 “useless.” Ibid.
19 “But I have not found.” Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 2, C-G, 1965, s.v. “Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.”
19 “That philosopher.” Masnavi, IV, 3354.
20 Journal. Known as Ma’âref, or “Intimations,” this journal was held by Rumi, then recopied and circulated in private libraries of the Mevlevi order in Konya and Istanbul over seven centuries. When Rumi’s Iranian editor Badi al-Zaman Foruzunfar obtained a handwritten copy in Tehran in the 1950s, he was impressed enough to publish a critical edition. He praised Baha Valad’s “elegance of expression” as “one of the best examples of poetic prose” in Persian [Lewis, Rumi, 85]. A. J. Arberry, translating twenty sections into English, found his Persian “remarkably fine and eloquent” [Arberry, Aspects of Islamic Civilizaion, 228]. For the German Rumi scholar Annemarie Schimmel, the text was “rather weird” but the visions “astounding” [see Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Son: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi (Albany: State University of New York, 1993; first published in 1978 by FineBooks Ltd, Great Britain), 398].
20 “God inspired me.” Baha, 2:138.
20 “I will be.” Baha 1:354.
21 “You brother.” Also translated as “Your sister’s a whore.” See Aflaki, III, sec. 417, 451.
22 “a grand Storybook.” Rumi. A Rumi Anthology, trans. by Reynold A. Nicholson (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000), Introduction, xxiii.
22 “Go ask Kalile.” Masnavi, I, 899.
22 “You must have read.” Masnavi, IV, 2203.
23 “No one has ever seen.” Ferdowsi, Shahname: The Epic of the Persian Kings, trans. by Ahmad Sadri (New York: The Quantuck Lane Press, 2013), 347.
23 “sets the world on fire.” Ghazal #975.
23 “Anywhere you find anger.” Ghazal #2198.
24 “When the perfume of your grace.” Ghazal #690.
24 “The hero gives a wooden sword.” Ghazal #27.
25 “It occurred to me.” Baha, 1:360.
CHAPTER 2: SAMARKAND
26 “1212.” Yolande Crowe, “Samarkand,” The
Encyclopedia of Islam, Volume VIII (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 1033. Possible dates suggested elsewhere for the siege of Samarkand, which fixes the presence of Rumi and family in the city, are 1211 or 1213.
26 “Inside this month.” Ghazal #2344.
27 “perpetually clear.” Abul-Fida, cited in Afzal Iqbal, Life & Work of Muhammad Jalal-ud-Din Rumi (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 2003), 29.
28 “Her pulse was beating.” Masnavi, I, 167–70.
29 “Astonishing figures.” Ibn Hawqal, cited in W. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (Exeter, Great Britain: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust. First published in English in 1928, 2012 reprint), 91.
29 “Spread out the paper.” Ghazal #1.
30 robai. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), in the chapter on poetics in his Mantiq al-shifâ’, mentions an alternative possibility that the robai might have been of Greek origin. See A. M. Damghani, “Persian Sufi Literature in Arabic,” in The Heritage of Sufism: Volume I: Classical Persian Sufism from Its Origins to Rumi (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), 53, fn. 35.
30 “Sugar.” Masnavi, III, 3863.
30 “The death of a great man.” Ghazal #1007.
30 “Now stirs the scent.” Translation by the author from Persian text, in Sassan Tabatabai, Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, Iranian Study Series, 2010), 31.
30 “Now stirs the scent of the garden and the gardener.” Ghazal #2897. (Cited in Usman Hadid, “Transformer,” The Friday Times, Pakistan weekly newspaper, vol. 25, no. 16, May 31–June 6, 2013, 24.)
31 “We were in Samarkand.” Fihe ma fih, Discourse 44, 195.
31 “The word is an arrow.” Ghazal #3073.
32 “Join together.” Masnavi, IV, 3289.
32 “Someone said.” Fihe ma fih, Discourse 41, 180.
33 “He went.” Aflaki, III, sec. 246, 321.
33 “waving his hands.” Aflaki, IV, sec. 84, 681.
33 high literacy rates. For a discussion of Muslim literacy, libraries, and schools and colleges in the Abbasid period in contrast with Europe, see Edmund Burke III, “Islam at the Center: Technological Complexes and the Roots of Modernity,” Journal of World History, vol. 20, no. 2 (June 2009) 177–82.