Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (A Bibliography)

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Balkhī l-Rūmī

Date of Birth 30 September, 1207Place of Birth Vakhsh, modern-day TajikistanDate of Death 17 December, 1273Place of Death Konya, modern-day Turkey

BiographyJalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad, known to posterity as Mawlānā (‘Our master’) and Rūmī (the Anatolian), was born in Tajikistan in the city of Vakhsh, which is about 250 kilometers southwest of Balkh in present-day Afghani-stan. His father, Bahā l-Dīn Valad (1150-1231), was an eminent jurist, famous preacher, and Sufĳi teacher. In 1212, when Rūmī was around fĳive years of age, the Valad family moved to Balkh; a year or so later they moved to Samarqand in (modern-day) Uzbekistan; and sometime around 1216 they left the region for good, just before the Mongol invasion of Khurāsān in 1221. They fĳirst visited Nishapur in northern Iran, then went to Baghdad, from where they proceeded to Kufa and then on to Arabia, where they performed the pilgrimage. Thence they travelled north-west to Damas-cus in Syria, before fĳinally settling in Malatya in 1217.

In 1218, Bahā l-Dīn Valad, who made his living as a Sunnī preacher and teacher of the Ḥanifī juridical sect, persuaded the princess who ruled Erzincan (in eastern Anatolia) to build him a Sufĳi khānaqāh in the nearby town of Āqshahr, where the family now settled and where he taught gen-eral law for four years. Bahā l-Dīn and family then moved to Lārende (modern-day Karaman) in southern Turkey, where he now obtained another teaching position. In Lārende in 1224, his son Jalāl al-Dīn, aged 17, married Gawhar Khātun, by whom he had two sons, Sulṭān Valad, and ʿAlā l-Dīn. The Seljuk prince ʿAlā l-Dīn Kayqubād (r. 1219-37) then invited Bahā l-Dīn Valad to come north to the city of Konya, where in 1229 the family settled and he was appointed professor in a local madrasa. Bahā l-Dīn Valad quickly became known as one of the chief learned men in the city, and when he died in 1231, seven days of public mourning were decreed. Rūmī’s father left to posterity a diary entitled Maʿārif (‘Mystical

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intimations’), which reveals the rapturous, ecstatic nature of his Sufĳi mysticism.

Jalāl al-Dīn, aged 24, immediately succeeded to his father’s position in the same madrasa, where he taught general classes on religion, litera-ture and theology. In the following year (1232), Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq, who hailed from the city of Tirmidh on the Oxus near Vakhsh, where he had been one of Bahā l-Dīn Valad’s chief disciples, arrived in Konya and initiated the young professor into the mysteries of Sufĳism, becom-ing his spiritual guide for the next eight years until his death in 1240. Jalāl al-Dīn, who had already become his father’s successor in the exo-teric ‘husk’ of Islamic law, through the esoteric education vouchsafed by Muḥaqqiq thereby received the ‘kernal’ of the esoteric teachings of Islamic spirituality. During his tutelage under Muḥaqqiq, Jalāl al-Dīn also spent a number of years in Damascus and Aleppo studying the Islamic sciences in the best colleges of the day; it is following this that he became renowned as Mawlānā.

Sometime during the next four years, his wife Gawhar Khātun passed away and the widowed professor married Kerrā Khātun, herself a widow, by whom he had a son and a daughter. Biographers recount that during these years he held four diffferent professorial positions at four diffferent colleges in Konya, where he taught religious sciences.

On 2 November 1244, another spiritual master, Shams-i Tabrīzī, appeared in Konya and soon became Rūmī’s inseparable companion. Shams was a qur’anic scholar, a theologian of intense passion and learn-ing, an ascetic and highly advanced adept in Sufĳi mysteries. Rūmī soon became infatuated by Shams’ ecstatic Sufĳi teachings and abandoned his duties as a professor of Islamic law and religion. Although he was in his early sixties, Shams was an enfant terrible whose bohemian wildness and ecstatic utterances none but the most sophisticated and wisest adepts could fathom. Eventually, Shams’ presence in Konya provoked both the wrath of conventional Muslims in the city and the rancor and jealousy of Rūmī’s alienated disciples. He was forced to flee, disappearing forever (some say he was murdered) in 1248.

Although his entry into and exit from Mawlānā’s life lasted only four years, Shams’ efffect on Rūmī’s being – and Islamic mystical literature – was incalculable. Mostly inspired by this association, Rūmī began to compose long lyrical poems. Eventually, these lyrics (known as ghazals) turned into a collection totalling some 36,360 verses (3,229 ghazals) that became known as Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī (‘Shams’ book of verse’) because many


488 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī

of its ghazals contained his name in the fĳinal signature line of the poem. Absorbed in love for Shams, whom he extolled with many encomia, Rūmī adopted his master’s name as his own nom de plume.

Stoically shaking offf his grief at the loss of Shams, Rūmī next trans-ferred his attachment to an illiterate but spiritually advanced goldsmith named Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Zarkūb, who had been the successor of his fĳirst teacher Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq. For the next ten years (1248-58), dur-ing the decade of his devotion to Zarkūb, Rūmī perfected the whirling dance ceremony of the Sufĳis called samāʿ (the movements of which had originally been choreographed by Shams) that later caused his Order, the Mawlawiyya, to be dubbed by Westerners ‘the Whirling Dervishes’. During this period, Rūmī betrothed his son Sulṭān Valad to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s daughter and appointed Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn as his deputy, and in his honor composed for him over 70 ghazals. In around 1256, Rūmī began to com-pose the Mathnawī, his long epic mystical poem – the longest poem in world literature – in rhyming couplets.

Upon Zarkūb’s demise in 1258, Rūmī devoted his attention to Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī, a man from the middle classes of Konya, an ascetic and a Sufĳi shaykh in his own right, who was also the director of a Sufĳi futuwwa organization. Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī had been a close friend of Shams and also a long-time disciple of Rūmī. The Mathnawī, which eventually came to consist of some 26,000 verses of didactic poetry, was largely dedi-cated and dictated to Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī, whose spiritual eminence is lauded all through this immense poem. After the Qur’an, the Mathnawī is probably the most frequently commented upon work in all of Islamic literature, being known as the Qur’an in Persian. At the same time, Rūmī preached numerous sermons that were noted down in his collected Dis-courses (Fīhi mā fīhi). When fĳinally he died on 17 December 1273, it is said that the Sufĳi philosopher Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī (d. 1274), the mystical poet Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIraqī (d. 1282) and some other great Sufĳis were sitting together, remembering Mawlānā. Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī remarked:

If Bayazid and Junayd had been alive at this time, they would have seized the hem of this victorious man and would have considered this a boon: he is the major domo of Muḥammadan poverty, and we taste it through his mediation.

The funeral prayers were led by Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī, and Christians and Jews participated in them, each according to their own rite, for Rūmī had been on good terms with all religions.

In Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad-i Aflākī’s (d. 1360) hagiographical account of Rūmī, known as the Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, one fĳinds a number of symbols



and images relating to Jesus and Christianity in which emphasis is often laid on the ecumenical aspect of Rūmī’s encounter with Christians (for a wide-ranging discussion of which see Grierson, ‘We believe in your Prophet’, pp. 99-105). Aflākī thus relates how once some of Rūmī’s dis-ciples tried to persuade a Greek Christian workman to become a Mus-lim, but the workman replied that he was too afraid of Jesus to abandon his faith, prompting Rūmī to comment, ‘The secret of faith is fear (tars). Whoever is fearful (tarsā) of God, even if he is a Christian (tarsā), he has religion and is not without religion’ (O’Kane, Feats, iii, p. 329, § 450). In this statement it is clear that Rūmī understood ‘religiosity’ and ‘piety’ to constitute a kind of ecumenical essence of spirituality above and beyond sectarian divisions.

Jesus is treated with veneration and has an extremely high profĳile in all of Rūmī’s poetry. In the Mathnawī in particular, the various virtues of Jesus are frequently lauded, and his character traits, such as his trust in God, forbearance, breath of inspiration, perpetual cheer and sense of humor, often celebrated. There are a number of stock images concern-ing Jesus that Rūmī uses in his poetry and which also pervade classical Persian poetry (Nurbakhsh, Jesus, pp. 51-57; Schimmel, ‘Jesus and Mary’; Lewisohn, ‘Esoteric Christianity’, pp. 137-51).

The plethora of Christian imagery and symbolism in Rūmī’s poetry, which also appears in other poets of the Mongol period such as Shabistarī and Awḥādī (see Lewisohn, Beyond faith, pp. 84-92), is partly a reflection of the huge numbers of Greek Christians in the area of Anatolia in which he lived (Grierson, ‘We believe in your Prophet’, pp. 99-105). There were apparently Christians even among Rūmī’s followers. In the ruling elite, Tamar, the wife of the powerful minister of state Mu‘īn al-Dīn Parvāna, who counted herself among his disciples, was Christian, being the daugh-ter of the Christian Queen Rosudan of Georgia (r. 1223-47) (Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, p. 126). He also managed to convert a number of Greek and Armenian Christians to Islam by his preaching (Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, p. 127). From both Aflākī’s account (O’Kane, Feats, iii, p. 405, § 580) and Rūmī’s own statements in the Fīhi mā fīhi (p. 97), it is clear that the outward Islamic form of his teachings never hindered his discourses from being enthusiastically welcomed and appreciated by the non-Muslim ‘infĳidels’ in his environs. Rūmī’s anti-sectarian inclusivism (Rid-geon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 120-21), tolerance and open-minded religious pluralism (Hick, ‘Religious pluralism’, p. 332) were thus the product of out-ward socio-political conditions as much as inward spiritual principles.



Universalism continued to characterize his order after his death, and from the mid-15th century onwards the tolerance and ecumenical teach-ings and the spiritual practices of the ‘Whirling Dervishes’ of Rūmī’s Mevlevi Order began to attract the attention of Christian scholars and travellers to Turkey (Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, ch. 12; Ambrosio, Vie, ch. 2). In fact, this Mevlevi ecumenical outlook on other religions is one of the main things that continue to captivate admirers of his poetry both in the East and the West today.

For further analysis and study of the symbolism of Jesus, Christian imagery and Rūmī’s attitude towards Christians in his Mathnawī, Fīhi mā fīhi, Dīwān-i Shams and other works, see in the bibliography below Nurbakhsh, Jesus, passim; Dihqāni-Taftī, Masīḥ va Masīḥiyyat nazd-i Īrāniyān ii, pp. 116-36; Renard, All the king’s falcons, ch. 6; Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’.

MAIN SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Primary

The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmi, edited from the oldest manuscripts available

with critical notes, translation, and commentary, ed. R.A. Nicholson. 8 vols,

London, 1925-40 (repr. Mathnawī-yi maʾnawī, Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1363

AHsh [1984]; the edition cited here)

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Mathnawī. Muqaddimah wa taḥlīl, taṣḥīḥ-i matn

bar asās-i nuskhahhā-yi muʿtabar-i Mathnawī, muqāyasah bā chāphā-yi

maʿrūf-i Mathnawī, tawḍiḥāt wa taʿlīqāt-i jāmiʿ wa fĳihristhā, ed. Muḥammad

Istiʿlamī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zawwār, 13847 AHsh [2005]

Kulliyāt-i Shams yā Dīwān-i kabīraz guftār-i Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad

mashhūr bi Mawlavī, ba tasḥīḥāt wa ḥawwashī, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān

Furūzānfar, 10 vols in 9, Tehran: Sipihr, 13633 AHsh [1984]

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Tehran: Amīr

Kabīr, 1358 AHsh [1979]

Shams-i Tabrīzī, Maqālāt-i Shams-i Tabrīzī, ed. M. ʿAlī Muvaḥḥid, Tehran:

Intisharat-i Khwarazmi, 13772 AHsh [1998]

Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad-i Aflākī, Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, ed. Tahsin Yazıcı, 2 vols,

Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1959; trans. J. O’Kane, The feats of

the knowers of God (Manāqeb al-ʿārefīn), Leiden, 2002

Farīdūn ibn Aḥmad Sipahsālār, Zindigīnāma-yi Mawlānā Jalāl al-Din-i Mawlawi,

ed. Saʿīd Nafīsī, Tehran: Chāp u Intishārāt-i Iqbāl, 13805 AHsh [2001]

Secondary

The literature on Rumi is vast. Some of the most important works dealing with

his relations with Christians are:



A.F. Ambrosio, ‘Rûmî, les derviches tourneurs et les chrétiens de Konya’, Rivista

di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 67 (2011) forthcoming

R. Grierson, ‘ “We believe in your Prophet”. Rumi, Palamas, and the conversion

of Anatolia’, Mawlana Rumi Review 2 (2011) 96-124

A.F. Ambrosio, Vie d’un derviche tourneur. Doctrine et rituels du soufĳisme au

XVIIe siècle, Paris, 2010

A.F. Ambrosio, ‘Vizir anti-cristiano o falso profeta? Rûmî, il Mathnâwî e s. Paolo’,

in C. Monge (ed.), Paolo di Tarso. Testimone del Vangelo in missione ‘fuori

le mura’, Florence, 2009, 137-56

M. Rustom, ‘The metaphysics of the heart in the Sufĳi doctrine of Rumi’, Studies

in Religion: Canadian Journal / Sciences Religieuses. Revue Canadienne 37

(2008) 3-14

R. Algan and C.A. Helminski (trans.), Rumi’s sun. The teachings of Shams of

Tabriz, Sandpoint ID, 2008

A.J. Arberry (trans.), Mystical poems of Rūmī, ed. E. Yarshater, with a new fore-

word by F. Lewis, Chicago IL, 2008

G.-R. Avani (ed.), The legacy of Rumi. Collected papers, 6 vols, Tehran: Iranian

Institute of Philosophy, 1386 AHsh [2007] (Persian)

İsmail Güleç, ‘ “Mesnevî” de Geçen Taassp Yüzünden Hıristyanları Öldüren

Yahudi Padişahın Hikayesi’ndeki Vezir, Aziz Pavlus mudur?’ [‘Can the

vizier in the tale of the Jewish sultan who murdered Christians because of

his fanaticism, recounted in the Mesnevi, be identifĳied as Saint Paul?’], in

İ.E. Erünsal, C. Ferrard and H. Kandur (eds), Essays in memory of Hazel E.

Heughan, Edinburgh: Hazel E. Heughan Educational Trust, 2007, 113-34

Mahdi Mohabati (ed.), Mowlavi studies at Iranian universities. M.A. and Ph.D

level dissertations, Tehran: Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, 2007

(a bibliography in English of over 500 MA and PhD theses written in Per-

sian on Rumi in Iran since the early 1970s)

Q. Āryān, art. ‘Christianity, vi. Christian influences in Persian poetry’, in EIr

F.D. Lewis, Rumi. Swallowing the sun. Poems translated from the Persian, Oxford,

2007

A.F. Ambrosio, È. Feuillebois and T. Zarcone (eds), Les derviches tourneurs. Doc-

trine, histoire et pratiques, Paris, 2006

Jalāl al-Dīn Huma’ī, Mawlawī-nāma. Mawlawī chi migūyad?, Tehran: Nashr-i

Humā, 1385 AHsh [2006]

C. Barks and J. Moyne (trans.), The drowned book. Ecstatic and earthy reflections

of Bahauddin, the Father of Rumi, San Francisco CA, 2004

S. Filiz and T. Uluc, ‘Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (1207-1273): a Sufĳi representative

of Turkish urban religiosity (a philosophical and sociological inquiry)’,

Islamic Quarterly 48 (2004) 67-79

W. Chittick (trans.), Me and Rumi. The autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi, Louis-

ville KY, 2004



W.C. Chittick, ‘The pluralistic vision of Persian Sufĳi poetry’, Islam and Christian-

Muslim Relations 14 (2003) 423-28

M. Estelami, ‘Rumi and the universality of his message’, Islam and Christian-

Muslim Relations 14 (2003) 429-524

L. Lewisohn, ‘The esoteric Christianity of Islam. Interiorisation of Christian

imagery in medieval Persian Sufĳi poetry’, in L. Ridgeon (ed.), Islamic inter-

pretations of Christianity, Richmond UK, 2001, 127-56

L. Ridgeon, ‘Christianity as portrayed by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’, in L. Ridgeon (ed.),

Islamic interpretations of Christianity, Richmond UK, 2001, 99-126

F. Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, East and West, Oxford, 2000

Vaḥīd Ākhirat-dūst (ed.), Majmūʿa-yi maqālāt-i himāyish-i buzurgdāsht-i Shams-i

Tabrīzī, Tehran: Anjuman-i āthār va mafākhir-i farhangī, 1378 AHsh

[1999] (a large volume of Persian papers given at a conference on Shams-i

Tabrīzī in Iran)

V.R. Holbrook, ‘Diverse tastes in the spiritual life. Textual play in the difffusion

of Rumi’s order’, in L. Lewisohn (ed.), The heritage of Sufĳism, vol. 1. The

legacy of mediæval Persian Sufĳism, Oxford, 1999, 99-120

L. Lewisohn, art. ‘Awhadi Maragha’i’, in EI3

J. Hick, art. ‘Religious pluralism’, in M. Eliade (ed.), The encyclopedia of religion,

New York, 1995, xii, 331-33

L. Lewisohn, Beyond faith and infĳidelity. The Sufĳi poetry and teachings of Mahmud

Shabistari, London, 1995

A. Rigo, ‘Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī et l’abate di S. Caritone’, in Östliches – Westliches.

Studien zur vergleichenden Geistes – und Religionsgeschichte. Hommage

an Cyrill J.C. von Korvin-Krasinski, ed. M. Sladek, Heidelberg, 1995, 173-94

A. Schimmel, ‘Jesus and Mary as poetical images in Rumi’s verse’, in Y.Y. Haddad

and W.Z. Haddad (eds), Christian-Muslim encounters, Miami FL, 1995,

143-57

H. Dabashi, ‘Rūmī and the problems of theodicy. Moral imagination and nar-

rative discourse in a story of the Masnavī’, in A. Banani, R. Hovannisian

and G. Sabagh (eds), Poetry and mysticism in Islam. The heritage of Rūmī,

Cambridge, 1994, 112-35

J. Renard, All the king’s falcons. Rumi on prophets and prophetology, Albany NY,

1994, ch. 6 (on ‘Jesus and other Gospel fĳigures’)

Rūmī, Signs of the unseen. The discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, trans. W.M. Thack-

ston, Putney VT, 1994

G.H.B. Dihqāni-Taftī, Masīḥ va Masīḥiyyat nazd-i Īrāniyān [‘Christ and Christian-

ity among the Persians’], 3 vols, London: Suhrāb, 1992-94 (vol. ii, pp. 116-38,

brings together many of Rūmī’s verse references to Jesus, Christians, the

Gospels and Christianity, followed by a brief discussion of the meaning

of relevant individual verses)

A. Schimmel, The triumphal sun. A study of the works of Jalaloddin Rumi, Albany

NY, 1993



A. Schimmel, I am wind, you are fĳire. The life and works of Rumi, Boston MA,

1992

Q. Āryān, Chihrah-yi Masīḥ dar adabiyāt-i fārsī [‘The image of Jesus in Persian

literature’], Tehran: Intishārāt-i Muʿīn, 1369 AHsh [1990] (Persian)

J.-P. Roux, ‘La tolérance religieuse dans les empires Turco-Mongols’, Revue de

l’Histoire des Religions 202 (1986) 131-68

W. Chittick, The Sufĳi path of love. The spiritual teachings of Rumi, Albany NY,

1983

J. Nurbakhsh, Jesus in the eyes of the Sufĳis, trans. T. Graham and L. Lewisohn,

London, 1983

Nasīr al-Dīn Sāḥib al-Zamānī, Khaṭṭ-i sivvum. Darbāra-yi shakshṣiyat, sukhanan

va andīsha-yi Shams-i Tabrīzī, Tehran: ‘Ata’i, 1351 AHsh. [1972] (a study of

the Discourses of Shams-Tabrīzī)

A.J. Arberry (trans.), The discourses of Rumi, London, 1961

R.A. Nicholson (trans.), Rumi, poet and mystic, 1207-1273. Selections from his writ-

ings, London, 1950

Works on Christian-Muslim Relations

Mathnawī-i maʿnawī, ‘Rhyming couplets of

spiritual signifĳicance’

Date 1256-73 (not completed)Original Language Persian

DescriptionNumerous references to Jesus, Christians, monks, priests, and Christian-ity can be found in the Mathnawī. The poem paraphrases or provides stories that parallel various Gospel tales and sayings, including the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’ miracle of increasing the loaves of bread (ed. Nicholson, I: 83-85); his walking on water; curing the deaf and blind, and his healing the sick (Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 101-3; Renard, King’s falcons, pp. 89-93), as well as versifĳied extracts of sentences from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is also portrayed, for instance, as a divine physician (I: 46-47); Jesus’ multi-colored robe that he changed into a robe of a single color, symbolic of his understanding of divine unity, is praised (I: 500-2); a story is adapted from the apocryphal Gospel of Philip (Rid-geon, ‘Christianity’, p. 105). Rūmī also professes a deeply interiorized ‘Spirit of Jesus’ doctrine, a kind of esoteric Christology where Jesus comes to symbolize inner aspects of the soul (Renard, King’s falcons, pp. 95-96)



Nonetheless, in the Mathnawī (as well as in Fīhi mā fīhi and Dīwān-i Shams), we still fĳind many of the traditional Islamic ‘orthodox’ dividing lines between Christian and Islamic theological doctrines and religion left intact. These lines of theological and doctrinal distinction include the opposition of Islam to monasticism and ascetic seclusion versus their advocation in Christianity (Renard, King’s falcons, p. 95; Ridgeon, ‘Chris-tianity’, pp. 111-12); the purely spiritual wine of al-Ḥallāj in Islam versus the physical wine in the Christian rite of communion (Ridgeon, ‘Chris-tianity’, p. 113; Renard, King’s falcons, p. 95); the advocation of celibacy in Christianity versus its emphatic rejection in Islam (Renard, King’s falcons, p. 90; Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, p. 112); the acceptance in Christian-ity of the doctrine of the crucifĳixion versus its rejection in Islam (Renard, King’s falcons, p. 93; Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, p. 104); the acceptance of the divinity of Jesus (i.e. the doctrine of the Incarnation) in Christianity versus its rejection in Islam (Renard, King’s falcons, pp. 93-94; Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 111, 121), and so on. Rūmī also endorses the traditional Islamic doctrine that the Christian scriptures have been falsifĳied (taḥrīf ), devoting an entire section of the Mathnawī to explaining why and how this happened (Dabashi, ‘Rūmī and the problems of theodicy’; Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 114-15). In his comparisons in the Mathnawī between the Prophet Muḥammad and Jesus, the former is nearly always consid-ered to be the superior (Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 107-9).

In the Mathnawī, Rūmī’s own hermeneutical approach to religious diversity, and by extension his attitude towards Christianity, generally eschews sectarian partisanship. His view of Christian priests and monks in the poem wavers between semi-parochial exclusivism and ecumeni-cal understanding, on the one hand considering the committed Chris-tian believer to be a ‘miscreant and astray’ (IV: 2378), and on the other apprehending full well that ultimately all diffferences between Christians, Muslims and Jews ecumenically dissolve when they turn to face the one God (IV: 2417-20). Indeed, since the Deity who is praised during prayer is always the One, in the end all religions turn out to be just one faith (III: 1222-25). In one place, he even seems to accept the validity of the Catholic doctrine of confession and forgiveness of sins, maintaining that through the power of love and imagination the Christian priest may gen-uinely serve as an intercessor between God and the Christian believer (IV: 3282-83).

SignificancePopularly known as the ‘Qur’an in Persian’, the Mathnawī is the longest poem in the Persian language and ‘possibly the longest single-authored



“mystical” poem ever written’ (Rumi, spiritual verses, trans. Williams, p. xvi). Not only is there nothing like it in Western spirituality, but the poem also far excels its antecedents in Persian poetry (i.e. the similar mathnawī poems composed by Sanāʾī, d. 1131, Niẓāmī, d. 1202, and ʿAṭṭār, d. 1221) in scope, scale and conception (Safavi and Weightman, Rumi’s mystical design, p. 3). The macro-compositional structure of the work conveys the structure and symbolism of the spiritual world through three hidden levels of ring composition (the level of the discourse, the book, and the work as a whole), every part of the poem being connected by mirroring parallelism and chiasmus (Safavi and Weightman, pp. 8-9). Inimitable in its poetic art, in the mathnawī genre at least, no subsequent poet in Persian has produced anything comparable and of equivalent depth of hermeneutical sophistication, theosophical insight or breadth of subject matter.

The profound theosophical resonances secreted within many of the Mathnawī ’s verses and the multiple levels of meaning found in the poem’s tales make it still the most frequently commented-on Sufĳi poem in Persian, its verses being cited by Islamic philosophers and metaphysi-cians more than those of any other poet as bon mots, or used as pithy summations of mystical insights to illustrate their doctrines. In Turkey, for instance, between the 16th and 20th centuries, some ten important commentaries on it were written. In each of the lodges (tekkes) of the Mevlevi Sufĳi Order founded by Rūmī’s son Sulṭān Valad (there were 14 large Mevlevi lodges in major cities throughout the Ottoman Turkey, with 76 minor lodges in smaller towns: Safavi and Weightman, p. 25), a qualifĳied instructor in the Mathnawī (called Mathnawī-khwān) held a professorial chair.

Insofar as Persian maintained its position as the sacred liturgical lan-guage of the Order for several centuries (the Mathnawī was not trans-lated into Turkish until the late 18th century: Holbrook, ‘Diverse tastes in the spiritual life’, p. 100), by the mid-16th century Mevlevi centers where the Mathnawī was taught in Persian could be found as far afĳield as Nico-sia in Cyprus, Tripoli in Libya, Jerusalem in Palestine, Beirut in Lebanon, Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, Cairo in Egypt, and Athens in Greece. For eight centuries from the northernmost borders of Central Asia down to Calcutta in India, and from Ottoman-ruled Sarajevo in Western Europe east to Isfahan in Persia, the Mathnawī served as a vehicle to convey Sufĳism’s ecumenical teachings, in this respect being unrivalled by any other Islamic work. It is said that even the Brahmins of Bengal used to dress like Sufĳis and recited Rūmī’s Mathnawī up until the mid-19th



century. Today, largely thanks to the popular poetic renditions of selec-tions from the Mathnawī into American English by Coleman Barks, since the early 1990s Rūmī has been the best-selling poet in English in the United States.

ManuscriptsLewis, Rumi. Past and present, pp. 305-9, discusses the particulars of most of the important MSS, and see also Muḥammad Istiʿlamī’s introduction to his edition of the text, pp. 86-89, for a comprehensive and detailed dis-cussion of the provenance and signifĳicance of all the extant MSS. Nich-olson’s detailed account of the MSS used in his edition (Tehran, 1984, pp. xiv-xviii) is also useful.Editions & TranslationsThere are numerous editions and translations of this work, including:

Rumi, spiritual verses. The fĳirst book of the Masnavi-ye maʿnavi, trans. A. Williams, London, 2006

Rumi, the Masnavi. Book One, trans. J. Mojaddedi, Oxford, 2004Rumi, the Masnavi. Book Two, trans. J. Mojaddedi, Oxford, 2007Rumi, the Masnavi. Book Three, trans. J. Mojaddedi, Oxford, [forth-

coming 2012]Mathnawi-i manawi, tr. C. Oxenstierna, Chicago, 3 vols, 1992-2002

(German trans.)Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Mathnawī. Muqaddimah wa taḥlīl,

taṣḥīḥ-i matn bar asās-i nuskhahhā-yi muʿtabar-i Mathnawī, muqāyasah bā chāphā-yi maʿrūf-i Mathnawī, tawḍīḥāt wa taʿlīqāt-i jāmiʿ wa fĳihristhā, ed. Muḥammad Istiʿlamī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zawwār, 13847 AHsh [2005]

Mathnawî. La quête de l’absolu, ed. E. Vitray-Meyerovitch and D. Mor-tazavi, Paris, 2000 (French trans.)

R.A. Nicholson, Tales of mystic meaning. Being selections from the Mathnawī of Jalāl-ud-Dīn Rūmī, Oxford, 1995

A. Schimmel, Das Mathnawi. Ausgewählte Geschichten, Basle, 1994 (German trans.)

Maulana Rumi’s Mathnawi, tr. M.G. Gupta, Agra, 1990The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmi, edited from the oldest manuscripts

available with critical notes, translation, and commentary, ed. R.A. Nicholson, 8 vols, London, 1925-40 (repr. Mathnawī-yi maʿnawī, Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1363 AHsh [1984]; the edition cited here)

The Mathnawi-i-Maǹawi of Jalāl al-Din Rūmi, s.l., s.n., 1865



studiesS.G. Safavi and S. Weightman, Rumi’s mystical design. Reading the

Mathnawī, Book One, Albany NY, 2009Ḥusayn Muḥyī al-Dīn Ilāhī Qumsha’ī, 365 rūz dar suḥbat-i Mawlānā,

Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1386 AHsh [2007] (a day by day year-book of quotations from the Mathnawī with commentary by a famous contemporary Iranian mystical thinker)

Jalāl al-Dīn Humaʾī, Mawlawī-nāma. Mawlawī chi migūyad?, 2 vols, Tehran: Nashr-i Humā 1385 AHsh [2006] (a wide-ranging study of the theological views, Sufĳi doctrines and philosophical thought of the Mathnawī)

M. Tourage, ‘Phallocentric esotericism in a tale from Jalal al-Din Rumi Masnavi-yi maʿnawi’, Iranian Studies 39 (2006) 47-70

Bahā’ al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, Siyāmak Mukhtārī, Qurʾān va Mathnawī. Farhangvāra-yi taʾthīr-i āȳāt-i Qurʾān dar adabiyāt-i Mathnawī, Tehran: Nashr-i Qaṭra, 13842 AHsh [2005] (an analytical survey and concordance illustrated verse-by-verse of all qur’anic references in the Mathnawī)

Walī Muḥammad Akbarābādī, Sharḥ-i Mathnawī-yi Mawlawī, ed. N. Māyil Haravī, 7 vols, Tehran: Nashr-i Qaṭra, 2004 (an important 17th-century Persian commentary on the Mathnawī composed in India)

Karīm Zamānī, Mīnāgar-i ʿishq. Sharḥ- mawḍūʿī-yi Mathnawī-yi maʿnawī, Tehran: Nashr-i Nay, 13832 AHsh [2004] (verses from the Mathnawī arranged according to key religious, mystical and philo-sophical themes)

J. Eshots, ‘Why is the “Mathnawi” called “the shop of Oneness”? Reflec-tions on Rumi’s methodology’, in S.G. Safavi (ed.), Rumi’s thoughts, London, 2003, 71-84

S.G. Safavi, ‘The structure of Book One of the Mathnawī as a whole’, in S.G. Safavi (ed.), Rumi’s thoughts, London, 2003, 5-64

A. Esmailpour, ‘Rûmî’s prologue to the Mathnawî and gnostic hymns. A comparative analysis’, Islamic Culture 77 (2003) 47-71

Karīm Zamānī, Bar lab-i daryā-yi Mathnawī-yi maʿnawī. Biyān-i maqāṣad-i abyāt, 2 vols, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Qaṭra, 1382 AHsh [2003] (the entire Mathnawī arranged for students with thematic subtitles for each topic)

J.A. Mojaddedi, ‘The Sufĳi master in Rumi’s Mathnawi’, Sufĳi 58 (2003) 32-9



M. Alavi, ‘An analysis of Discourse One in Book II of the Mathnawī’, in S.G. Safavi (ed.), Rumi’s thoughts, London, 2003, 27-50

D. Davis, ‘Narrative and doctrine in the fĳirst story of Rūmī’s Mathnawī’, in G.R. Hawting, J.A. Mojaddedi and A. Samely (eds), Studies in Islamic and Middle Eastern texts and traditions in memory of Nor-man Calder, Oxford, 2000, 93-104

M. Estelami, ‘The concept of knowledge in Rūmī’s Mathnawī ’, in L. Lewisohn (ed.), The heritage of Sufĳism. Vol. I: Classical Persian Sufĳism from its origins to Rumi (700-1300), Oxford, 1999, 400-8

A. Schimmel, ‘Yūsuf in Mawlānā Rumi’s poetry’, in L. Lewisohn (ed.), The heritage of Sufĳism. Vol II: The legacy of medieval Persian Sufĳism (1150-1500), Oxford, 1999, 45-59

ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Zarrīnkūb, Baḥr dar kūza. Naqd va tafsīr-i qissahā va tamthīlāt-i Mathnawī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī, 1376 AHsh [1997] (a critical analysis of the tales and symbolism of the Mathnawī)

M. Este’lami, ‘The gnosis of self in Rumi’s Mathnawi’, Sufĳi 20 (1994) 5-9

N. Faghih, ‘Some scientifĳic doctrines in the Mathnawī of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Mawlawī Rūmī’, Hamdard Islamicus 16 (1993) 79-96

C. Barks, Delicious laughter. Rambunctious teaching stories from the Mathnawi of Jelaluddin Rumi, Athens GA, 1990

J.A. King, ‘Jesus and Joseph in Rūmī’s Mathnawī’, Muslim World 80 (1990) 81-95

Ismāʿīl Anqaravī, Sharḥ-i kabīr-i Anqaravī bar Mathnawī-yi Mawlawī, trans. (Persian) ʿIṣmat Satārzādah, 15 vols, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zarrīn, 1374 AHsh [1995] (a Persian trans. of Anqaravī’s (d. 1631) famous Ottoman Turkish commentary on the Mathnawī)

ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Zarrīnkūb, Sirr-i nay. Naqd va sharḥ-i taḥlīlī va taṭbīqī-yi Mathnawī, 2 vols, Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī, 13683 AHsh [1989] (a comparative analytical study of the Mathnawī)

A.L. Herman, ‘Ṣūfīsm, fatalism and evil in the Mathnawī of Jalāl al-Din Rūmi’, Iqbal Review 12 (1971) 1-15

Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Mākhaz-i qiṣaṣ wa tamthīlāt-i Mathnawī, Tehran: Majlis, 1955 (repr. Amīr Kabīr, 1983) (a dictionary of the historical sources of the stories and symbolism used by Rūmī in the Mathnawī)

Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Aḥādīth-i Mathnawī, Tehran: Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1335 AHsh [1956] (repr. Amir Kabir, 13613 AHsh [1982]) (an annotated collection of all Traditions of the Prophet in the Mathnawī)



S. Hillelson, ‘The source of a story in the Mathnawī, and a Persian parallel to Grimm’s fairy tales’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1937) 474-77

E.G. Browne, ‘A parallel to the story in the Mathnawī of Jalálu’d Dín Rúmí, of the Jewish king who persecuted the Christians’, Islamica 2 (1926) 129-34

Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī, ‘Shams-i Tabrīzī’s

book of verse’

Date Begun in 1244 and continued until Rūmī’s death in 1273Original Language Persian

DescriptionThe Dīvān-i Shams is the most celebrated collection of ecstatic lyrical love poetry in Persian literature, which in metaphysical insight, expres-sion of spiritual realities, deep wisdom and philosophical subtleties, remains unrivalled by any other book of verse in the world’s mystical poetic literature. From the standpoint of quantity, at over 35,000 couplets the Dīvān-i Shams is the largest collection of mystical lyrics, containing the widest, most diverse pattern of meters ever composed by any Persian poet. It features 3,229 ghazals varying in length (anywhere between 6 to 60 couplets), along with 44 strophe poems (tarjīʿāt) totalling 1,700 verses, and 1,983 quatrains (rubāʿiyyāt).

Composition of the lyrics in the Dīvān, mainly in Persian with a few Arabic ghazals, only began after Rūmī’s encounter in 1244 with Shams-i Tabrīzī, but following the latter’s disappearance in 1248 he continued to compose poems for it down to his own death in 1273. There are 156 refer-ences to Jesus in the Dīwān-i Shams, many if not most of which relate to Christological imagery and symbolism of qur’anic derivation that were the stock-in-trade of every classical Persian poet. For reasons of space, only a few of these can be mentioned here. They include the idea that Jesus’s lip (lab-iʿĪsā) revives the sick and ailing (780: 8142; 1250: 13242); the miracle of Jesus’s ascent to heaven from Q 4:158 (631: 6576); and the miracle of Jesus’ discourse as a two-year-old infant in the cradle from Q 3:46 (619: 6477). Just as Jesus was able to raise the dead (Q 3:49), Rūmī declares that ‘Love is the Jesus of the age. Love seeks one who’s dead. Like me die – utterly – before his beauty, and fear not’ (1214: 12918). In another ghazal, he also compares his own spiritual realization with



that of Jesus and Mary: ‘At times, I became entirely speech like Jesus; at times I became a heart as silent as Mary. If you will believe me, I also became all that was manifested through Jesus and Mary’ (1661: 17402-3). In a tarjīʿband, he writes ‘I am the Jesus of that moon which surpasses the fĳirmament. I am drunken as Moses, with God within these tattered robes’ (Tarjīʿ I, 9: 34941).

Despite these many positive references to Jesus throughout the Dīwān-i Shams, the Prophet Muḥammad always retains his superiority in Rūmī’s prophetology over all other prophets, whether Jesus, Moses, or Zoroaster: ‘There are a million tendrils of the light of Muḥammad, each of which fĳills the rims and cornices of both the worlds. Were just one tendril of that light disclosed, a thousand Christian monks and priests would rend the thread [of their faith]’ (1137: 12051-52); ‘The light of Muḥammad leaves no place for any Jew or Zoroastrian in the world. May the protective shadow of his kingdom illumine all!’ (792: 8288). In another ghazal, he teasingly reproaches Christians using a Christian image, asking where the inspir-ing power of the lovely discourse of the Messiah (Masīḥ-i khwush-damī) has gone, which ‘could rouse the heart of the Christian (tarsā) to cut the thread [of his Christian faith]’ (24: 284).

SignificanceIt is clear that in Rūmī’s lyrical poetry as in his Mathnawī, poetic imag-ery and references to Christ and Christianity mostly belong within an Islamic and qur’anic context and that terms such as ‘Jesus’, the ‘Messiah’ and ‘Christ’ in his mystical lexicon are nominally Muslim rather than denominationally Christian.

ManuscriptsSee Furūzānfar’s defĳinitive edition of the text, i, introduction, pp. vav-yav, for a comprehensive and detailed discussion of the provenance and signifĳicance of all the extant MSS, as well as Lewis’ survey of all the key MSS (Rumi. Past and present, pp. 297-99).Editions & TranslationsThere are dozens of partial or full editions and translations of this work. The include:

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Dīwān-i kabīr. Kulliyāt-i Shams-i Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥusayn Balkhī Rūmī maʿrūf bi Mawlavī, ed. Tawfīq Subḥānī, 2 vols, Tehran: Anjumān-i āthār u mafākhir-i farhangī, 1386 AHsh [2007] (edition of the Konya Museum MS)

N. Rastegar, Nie ist wer liebt allein. Mystische Liebeslieder aus dem Diwan-i Šams von Maulana Ğalaluddin Rumi, Graz, 1994



Kulliyāt-i Shams yā Dīwān-i kabīraz guftār-i Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad mashhūr bi Mawlavī, ba tasḥīḥāt wa ḥawāshī, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, 10 vols in 9, Tehran: Sipihr, 13633 AH [1984]

R.A. Nicholson (ed. and trans.), Selected poems from the Dīvāni Shamsī Tabrīz, Cambridge, 1898

Arberry, Mystical poems of Rūmīstudies

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, Insānam ārizūʾst. Bar-guzīda u sharḥ-i ghazaliyyāt-i Mawlānā [Anthology and commentary on the ghaz-als of Rūmī], Tehran: Intishārāt-i Nigāh, 1386 AHsh [2007]

Mihdī Sitāyishgar, Rubāb-i Rūmī. Gashtī dar raftār u āthār mūsīqāʾī-yi jamāl-āfarīn-i Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Mawlawī), 2 vols, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Shirkat- taʿāvanī-yi kār-āfarīnān-i farhang u hunar, 1385 AHsh [2006] (a study of music and musical imagery in the Dīwān-i Shams, and the Mathnawī to a lesser extent)

M.A. al-Qāsimi, Iṣṭilāḥāt va mafāhīm-i ʿirfānī-i Dīvān-i Shams = Gnostic expressions and meaning of Divan-e Shams by Rumi, Tehran 2004/5

A. Dashti and S. Dahsti, A voyage through Divan-e Shams. Celebrating Rumi by ʿAlī Dashtī, Tehran, 2003

Taqī Pūrnāmdāriyān, Dar sāyih-i āftāb. Shiʿr-i fārsī va sākht-shikanī dar shiʿr-i Mawlawī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1380 AHsh [2001] (a study of Rūmī’s poetic originality and form-shattering innova-tions in the Dīvān-i Shams)

Asadu’llāh Īzad-Gushasb, Jadhbāt-i ilāhī. Muntakhāb-i kulliyāt-i Shams-i Tabrīz [Anthology of the ghazals of Rūmī with a useful introduction], Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ḥaqīqat 13782 AHsh. [2000]

ʿAlī Riḍā Mukhtārpūr Qahrūdī, ʿIshq dar manẓūma-yi Shams. Vāzha-yābī-yi ʿishq dar Dīvān-i kabīr-i Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad mashhūr bi-Mawlavī, Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1378 AHsh [1999] (study of all references to the word ‘love’ in the Dīwān-iShams-i Tabrīz)

Fīhi mā fīhi, ‘What is in it is in it’, ‘Discourses’

Date Before 1273Original Language Arabic



DescriptionIn Rūmī’s Discourses, or Fīhi mā fīhi, a miscellany of 71 of his lectures or extemporaneous talks gathered together by an unknown compiler after his death, several well-known anecdotes about Jesus from the Qur’an are related that expound a sort of Sufĳi esoteric Christianity (cf. Lewisohn, ‘The esoteric Christianity of Islam’). One fĳinds this, for instance, in Rūmī’s belief in the existence of an interior Jesus within each person, who must be born again (Fīhi mā fīhi, p. 21). In one fascinating passage, he contrasts the conjugal way of Muḥammad with the celibate path of Jesus. It is required that one marry women, he writes, just so one can endure ‘pain, ridding oneself of jealousy and manly pride, pain over extravagance and clothing one’s wife, and a thousand other pains beyond bounds, so that the Muḥammadan world may come into being. The way of Jesus, upon him be peace, was wrestling with solitude and not gratifying lust; the way of Muḥammad, God bless him and give him peace, is to endure the oppression and agonies inflicted by men and women. If you cannot go the Muḥammadan way, at least go by the way of Jesus, that you may not remain altogether outside the pale’ (Fīhi mā fīhi, p. 87, trans. Arberry, p. 99).

SignificanceThe work has been described aptly as ‘an indispensable source for both the thought of Rumi and his relations with the political fĳigures of his day’ (Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, p. 292).

ManuscriptsSee Furūzānfar’s edition of the text, introduction, pp. j-ya, for a compre-hensive and detailed discussion of the provenance and signifĳicance of all the extant MSS.Editions & TranslationsThere are numerous editions and translations of this work. The major ones are:

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Barneko liburua. Fihi ma fĳihi, trans. J. Arregui, Viz-caya, 2009 (Basque trans.)

Ğalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. Z. Yazdānī, Tehran, 2002Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, tr. J.G. Muro, Madrid, 2001 (Spanish

trans.)Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, L’essenza del reale. Fihi-mâ-fihi (C’è quel che c’è), tr.

S. Foti, Turin, 1995 (Italian trans.)Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Maqālāt-i Mawlānā. Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. J.M. Ṣādiqī,

Tehran, 1994



Jalāloddin Rumi, Von allem und vom Einen, trans. A. Schimmel, Munich, 1988 (repr. 2008) (German trans.)

Djalal al-Dîn Rûmi, Le livre du dedans. Fîhi-mâ-fîhi, trans. E. de Vitray-Meyerovitch, Paris, 1982 (repr. 1997 and Arles, 2010) (French trans.)

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Tehran, 1358 AH [1979]

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Het is wat het is, trans. R. Hartzema, Amsterdam, 1978 (Dutch trans.)

Ğalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. W. von Blücher, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 1962.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, s.n., Istanbul, 1958studies

F. Keshavarz, ‘Pregnant with God. The poetic art of mothering the sacred in Rumi’s Fihi ma fĳihi ’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 22 (2002) 90-9

W.M. Thackston (trans.), Signs of the unseen. The discourses of Jalalud-din Rumi, Putney VT, 1994

Ḥusayn Ilāhī Qumshaʾī, Guzīda-yi Fīhi mā fīhi, Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī va farhangī, 13666 AHsh [1987] (a selection from Rūmī’s Dis-courses and commentary by one of Iran’s most eminent thinkers)

A.J. Arberry (trans.), The discourses of Rumi, London, 1961

Leonard Lewisohn


Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (A Bibliography)

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Transcript of Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (A Bibliography)