Book Review by Muhammad Khan - The Muslim News - UK
Issue 211, Friday 24 November 2006 - 4 Dhu al-Qa'dah 1427
Love: The Joy That Wounds, the Love Poems of Rumi, Preface by Jean Claude Carriere, London: Souvenir Press, pp. 96, 2005, HB, £9.99.
Living as we do at a very difficult and challenging time, when the voices of anger, hatred and hostility are increasing by the day, the enduring message of love, mercy and compassion championed by Rumi, one of the Muslim world’s most influential teachers and sages, and the world’s bestselling poet, could not be more pertinent than in this day and age.
In the book under review, it is stated that Rumi was born in 1211. This is not correct. He was born in September 1207 CE (604 AH) at Balkh, in the northern Persian province of Khurasan. Rumi’s father, Baha al-Din Sultan Walad, was one the leading Islamic scholars and thinkers of his generation. Profoundly influenced by the religious ideas and thoughts of Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, the celebrated Islamic thinker of the eleventh century, Baha al-Din developed a very critical attitude towards philosophy (falsafah) and – like al-Ghazzali – he found solace in tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism).
Young Rumi received his early education at home under the tutelage of his pre-eminent father, but he never really had a normal childhood. Thanks to the socio-political volatility and insecurity of the time, his family was forced to leave their home and travel to Samarqand, Nishapur, Baghdad and Syria before proceeding to Makkah to perform the sacred pilgrimage (hajj).
From Makkah, the family moved to Larinda when Rumi was only eighteen. He stayed here for seven years with his family before moving to Konya in 1229. Two years later, his father died and suddenly Rumi was expected to shoulder all the family responsibilities.
For a good understanding of Rumi’s religious ideas and thoughts, a thorough study of the social, political and intellectual condition of his time is essential. He lived at a time when the Muslim world was experiencing considerable socio-political problems, in addition to the widespread revolt spearheaded by the ‘ulama (religious scholars) against the philosophical sciences, which sparked off an intellectually damaging conflict between two of the leading scholars of the time, namely Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Rumi’s father, who, unlike the former, became a champion of Ghazzalian thought and worldview.
Rumi completed his advanced education in traditional Islamic sciences in difficult circumstances and became an eminent Islamic scholar and theologian in his own right. It was during his time as a professor at the college in Konya that he encountered an aged mystic named Muhammad Shams al-Din of Tabriz who completely transformed his life.
In Shams, Rumi saw what he did not perceive in others: the luminous light of Divine love, compassion and mercy exemplified at it best. In other words, Shams became a mirror in which Rumi could see his own spiritual weaknesses, moral failings and physical frailties like never before.
What he saw truly shocked and horrified Rumi: in his obsession with Islamic law he had overlooked the very substance of Islam. In the life and spiritual teachings of Shams, he thus discovered the true meaning and significance of Divine love; love as taught by the Lover to his beloved who, in turn, experienced Divine love at its highest form, and in so doing, he showed us how to experience Love as such.
As an eminent theologian and faqih (Islamic jurist), Rumi felt his decades of training in the traditional Islamic sciences – without much exposure to the true reality of tasawwuf – only helped to narrow his vision of the truth, but his timely encounter with Shams illuminated his heart, enlightened his intellect and shed fresh light on the Divine message and wisdom exemplified by the Prophet of Islam.
Inspired by his new vision of the truth, from 1245 when he was in his late thirties, Rumi became immersed in Sufi music and dancing. If his life – prior to his encounter with Shams – was dominated by dry, hair-splitting legalism of the religious scholars, but now it became thoroughly engrossed in love, love for the Lover and His beloved as symbolised by Shams.
Keen to capture the real meaning and essence of love, he began to compose poetry expressing his love for the Beloved.
During this period Rumi composed around thirty-five thousand verses which were collected under the title of Divan-i- Shams-i-Tabriz. The Divan was a precursor to his monumental Mathnawi, which the celebrated Persian poet Abd al-Rahman Jami once famously called ‘the Persian Qur’an’.
This remarkable work, wrongly referred to as the ‘Masnari’ in the book under review, was Rumi’s magnum opus. Comprised of 25,700 verses, dictated to Husam al-Din over a period of twelve years, it is not only considered to be one of the greatest works of poetry ever produced; the Mathnawi is also a great treasure trove of spiritual, moral and ethical teachings. Although this book, under review, contains only a small selection of his love poems, in truth, Rumi’s worldview revolved around some of the most fundamental questions confronting whole humanity, namely what is the true meaning and purpose of life?
What is human spirituality? Are Divine love, mercy and compassion necessary? And why do we need individual and collective responsibility?
He wrestled with these and other similar questions for most of his adult life and expounded his message of love, mercy and hope in the form of mystical poetry.
In the words of one of his biographers, “We cannot treat life and consciousness mathematically, scientifically and logically, for how can we depend upon our senses which do not carry us very far? Knowledge is and must remain a vision of reality, a weltanschauung, an intuition. Love alone takes us to the Reality.
For love, ceaseless effort is necessary…
Decadent Sufism had created useless drones and hypocrites. Such passive life is of no use to Rumi. In his world there is no scope for parasites. Rumi’s lover cannot afford to be static and ascetic. He is constantly at war – at war with his own baser self, at war with those elements in the world which hinder or prevent his ascent. It is the very fate of man to struggle…
Knowledge is itself a great power – and the ideal man of Rumi, purged of fear and anxiety, enriched by Divine knowledge, hold complete sway over the spiritual and material world. Such is the ‘Man of God’, the perfect man, who assimilates God himself but does not lose his own individuality. Such a man eludes all description.” (Afzal Iqbal, Life and Work of Muhammad Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, Delhi: Kitab Bahavan, 1999, pp 288-290)
Nevertheless, to Rumi, as Jean-Claude Carriere points out, love permeates everything; it leaves nothing untouched nor does it spoil anything, for “love is a grace…it is a fire, it is intoxication, an unceasing turning, a breath from heaven. It is a way for all lost people and a cure for every fever. And love is limitless, for it excludes nothing and no one. Here, lovers are not alone in the world. Quite the opposite; to love is to love the whole world.”
As Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said, “Love for humanity what you love for yourself.” (Sahih al-Bukhari). Since Rumi, like us, lived in an age when greed, anger, hatred and hostility led to considerable chaos, disorder and instability around the world, his message of love is as relevant today as it was during his own lifetime; indeed, his message of love, mercy and compassion is needed today more than ever before, and for this reason alone, it is worth reading this beautifully designed and illustrated book.
Those who wish to undertake a detailed study of Rumi’s mystical philosophy and thought, I would recommend Juliet Mabey’s Rumi: A Spiritual Treasury (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002) and Franklin D. Lewis’s Rumi – Past and Present, East and West (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000).
Muhammad Khan is author of The Muslim 100: The Life, Thought and Achievement of the Most Influential Muslims in History (due out in the new year).
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