Love in a time of war

At the beginning of the 13^th century the Mongol hordes burst upon the world like a thunderclap. From relative obscurity they went, in little more than a generation, to a world bestriding empire sweeping with fire and sword from China to the very door step of Medieval Europe. In the midst of all this blood and misery a man was born in a remote part of modern Afghanistan whose poetry and philosophy of peace, love and the brotherhood of all humanity would continue to exert a powerful influence on the world long after the last echoes of the Mongol empire had faded away. His name was Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī but the Western world knows him simply as Rumi.

At the time of Rumi’s birth his home town, the city of Balkh, was part of Greater Khorasan in the eastern territories of what was left of the Abbasid caliphate. Internal conflicts break away kingdoms, border wars and battles against the Crusaders had reduced this once mighty empire to little more than Persia and a few outlying provinces. Despite its straightened circumstances however the Abbasid caliphate was still one of the great intellectual powerhouses of the world. In Baghdad the Bayt al-Hikma or “house of wisdom” was one of the largest, most well stocked libraries in the world. Its mission was not to simply warehouse books but to translate and disseminate knowledge from a wide variety of sources. Originally charged with translating Persian manuscripts into Arabic it soon added the translation and perseveration of ancient Greek and Roman works as well as offering refuge to scholars persecuted fleeing war or persecution regardless of religion or national origin. In this great bastion of learning Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, men and women worked side by side in the service of knowledge united by the honored title of scholar.

Rumi came from a famous family of famous scholars, jurists and teachers and claimed descent from Abu Bakr, companion of the Prophet and the first Caliph of Islam. Both Rumi’s father and grandfather were renowned intellectuals and his father was so widely acclaimed that he bore the title Sultan-ul-‘Ulama “King of Scholars. Rumi was a worthy successor to this heritage and showed great promise at a very early age.

The story is told that Rumi’s father, who had made a dramatic speech in the Great Mosque of Balkh attended by the king and the local people, predicted the coming of the Mongols and the destruction of the city He then packed up his family and fled to Anatolia (modern Turkey) ahead of the invading armies. On the road the family met Farid al-Din Attar, one of the most famous mystic poets in Persian history and author of the Conference of the Birds, a story that is still famous in the West.

The great mystic saw Rumi’s eminent father walking in front of his teenaged son and exclaimed “Here comes a sea followed by an ocean.” One wonders if the old mystic had any idea of just how prophetic his remark was for the young man he was greeting was destined to write more than 3,500 odes, 2,000 quatrains in addition to the monumental six volume Masnavi-ye Manavi (Spiritual Couplets) regarded by Sufis as only slightly less important than the Qur’an itself in spiritual matters. Before they parted Attar gave Rumi a copy of his book Asrarnama a philosophical work which was to have a great influence on the young man’s spiritual development.

While it might seem a great coincidence for such celebrated scholars to meet by accident on the road it must be remembered that the 13^th century of the Common Era was a time of great turmoil in the Middle East. Not only were the Mongols a gathering storm in the East but dynastic struggles and border wars wracked the whole area, staining the map with internecine bloodshed pitting Muslim against Muslim and weakening the fabric of Islamic society in the face of the growing threat. In 1212 the fabled city of Samarkand fell to the armies of Khwarizm and there is evidence that Rumi, who was no more than five at the time, had been present at the time of the siege.

In the West the Crusaders were still active, though waning threat to Islam but in 1204 they managed what Muslim warriors had not yet archived and sacked the Christian city of Constantinople, causing many Orthodox Christian scholars to flee to Islamic countries to avoid persecution by the Roman Catholics. Wherever one looked there was war and the rumor of war and the roads were filled with refugees, many of them scholars looking for a quite corner to pursue their studies.

For many that island of peace in a sea of war was the city of Konya in the north of modern Turkey. A legend popular in the city holds that long ago two angles, one coming from the west and the other from the east, each looking for a suitable place to call home, met in the air above site of the future town. Descending to ground level one angel asked the other “Shall we sit down? In asking the question he used the word Konya which means to sit down. Not to be outdone the other angle replied “Do sit down,” using the word Konayim which has the double meaning of to sit down and to perch as birds do. No doubt pleased with their puns the two angles decided that this was a good place to found a city.

And a great city it turned out to be. Under the name of Iconium it had once been the capital of the Eastern Empire but it was also central to the rise of the Seljuqs and indeed became the capital of their empire as well. Being situated on the main trade-routes from Syria, Iraq and Iran and Constantinople it boasted not only an affluent citizenry but a rich blend of cultures for the caravans that carried the trade goods that made the city rich also carried the books, scholars and ideas that made it great center learning.

After several years of wandering which took Rumi, his illustrious father and the rest of the family first to Nishapur, and then to Baghdad, where they met many of the famed scholars and Sufis of the city, to Hejaz from where they preformed the pilgrimage at Mecca. At long last, perhaps at the invitation of the ruler of Anatolia the family settled in Konya where, except for a few trips, Rumi was to spend the rest of his life. Once there Rumi’s father set up a madrassa which immediately began to attract a large group of students.

By this time Rumi was a young man of perhaps twenty-three and in only two years his father died, leaving him in charge of the school he had founded. Although ostensibly the head of the school Rumi continued his religious training under the tutelage of one of his father’s most learned disciples for the next nine years until the death of his teacher left him in true command of the school.

This was sometime around 1240 and at the time the Mongol armies known as the “Blue Horde” under Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan were rampaging through Poland, Hungry and the Balkans. In 1244 Rumi met a man who was to dramatically change his life.

The dervish, or mendicant ascetic, Shams Tabrizi had been traveling far and wide through the Middle East praying to find “someone who could endure my company.” In a vision a voice asked him “What will you give in return?” To which he replied without hesitation “My head!” The voice then told him “The one you seek is Jelaluddin of Konya.” The two men formed an immediate and powerful bond which, while brief, was to have a lasting impact on Rumi’s life. One night some four years later the two men were talking when Shams was called to the back door. He went out and was never seen again. He may have been murdered by some or Rumi’s pupils, jealous of the hold the dervish had on their master and there is even evidence that Rumi’s own son may have been involved in the plot.

Although devastated with grief at the loss of his friend Rumi consoled himself with a veritable flood of music, dance and poetry. Some forty thousand of his verses, mainly odes, eulogies, and quatrains, were collected together to form the Diwan-e Shams-Tabrizi in honor of his lost friend. This is considered by many a masterpiece of the Persian language although it also contains poems in Arabic and even a few in a mixture of Persian/Greek and Persian/Turkish dialects, a testament to Rumi’s eclectic learning.

Following rumors that Tabrizi had been spotted in Damascus Rumi journeyed there but failing to find him and finally resigned to his loss he wrote:

Why should I seek? I am the same as

He. His essence speaks through me.

I have been looking for myself!

Returning home Rumi began to live in ascetic life of seclusion and abstinence practicing a rigorous regimen of three periods of forty days each, eating little, talking little and sleeping little.

Rumi was well known for his love, compassion and tolerance. It was virtually impossible to provoke him and he cared little for petty differences in creed. He was even kind and considerate towards his enemies. Famed as a teacher as well as a poet he assembled about him a devoted cadre of students who gathered to hear him teach his philosophy of love and toleration.

One day as Rumi sat in his madrassa in deep meditation, surrounded by his students, a drunk staggered in off the street shouting. Stumbling he fell on top of Rumi who did not seem to notice. As a body Rumi’s students rose in wrath and there is no telling what they would have done to the offending man but the master waved his hand and silence descended on the room. Smiling, and in a gentle voice he said: “I had thought that the intruder was drunk but now I see that it is my own disciples who are drunk.”

So great was Rumi’s fame by this time that kings and princes vied for a place in his company and many were welcomed but he preferred to spend most of his time in the market place discussing mystical love with its denizens and his followers included merchants, butchers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, painters, goldsmiths, and prostitutes. It is said that it was the rhythmical tapping of the hammer of Rumi’s friend Salah al-Din Zerkub, a goldsmith that established the cadence of Rumi’s ecstatic dance.

In his great work the Manaqib al-Arifin Rumi writes of the spirit which compelled him to proselytize his message of love and tolerance: “The first Cause…has brought us from Khorasan and sent us to Asia Minor…so that we might generously spread the philosophical stone of our mysteries over the copper of the existence of its inhabitants, in such a manner that we shall transform them alchemically, and they shall become confidants of the world of gnosis and companions of the mystics of the entire world.”

One of the major appeals of Rumi’s philosophy was its latitudinarian approach to religion believing that God cares more about the moral state of a person’s soul than in the finer points of dogma. Rumi, and the order founded by his followers appealed directly to the religious sensitivity of common people by means of music, dance, poetry, and the use of the vernacular language of their converts. This was in strong contrast to the stuffy legalistic wrangling of the Ulema, the community of legal scholars of Islam and the Sharia and was instrumental in the wholesale conversion of many Central Asian Steppe Nomads such as the Seljuqs and, eventually, even the dreaded Mongols themselves.

When Rumi’s light passed from the world, at sunset on December 17, 1273 CE and his body was placed on the litter a crowd Muslims drawn from the great and humble alike gathered and, weeping marched in procession to the cemetery. To their surprise they were joined on the way by crowds of people of every description, Christians, Jews, Greeks, Arabs, Turks in solemn convocation, each group bearing their sacred scriptures before them, singing Psalms or reciting verses from the Gospels or the Pentateuch, crying in lamentation each according to their customs.

A disturbance arose and the sultan, summoning the chief religious leaders of each group before him, demanded that they explain what possible connection they could have with this funeral. They replied:" In seeing him we have comprehended the true nature of Christ, of Moses, and of all the prophets. . .such as we have read about in our books. If you Muslims say that our Master [Rumi] is the Muhammad of his period, we recognize him similarly as the Moses and Jesus of our times. Just as you are his sincere friends, we also are one thousand times over his servants and disciples.”

One Greek priest spoke for all the men and women who have basked in the beauty of Rumi’s poetry and his message of love down through the centuries: "Our Master is much like unto bread which is indispensable to all the world. Has a hungry man ever been seen to flee from bread ?”