Reporting on how the world is and will celebrate Rumi

By Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi - Persian Heritage Monthly - U.S.A.
April 2007

Celebrations of the 800th Birth Anniversary of Moulana Rumi
This year (2007) marks the 800th birth anniversary of Moulana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi Rumi, the great Persian Sufi poet of the 13th century. People in the Eastern countries have traditionally called Rumi Moulânâ, an Arabic word meaning “our master,” or Moulavi (“my master”); (the Turkish pronunciation is Mevlana).

In the West, he is known as Rumi because he lived most of his life in Anatolia, eastern Rome or Byzantine kingdom called Rum in Persian. Rumi is currently one of the most-read poets in North America. He was born on September 30, 1207 (6 Rabi al-Awwal 604 according to the Hijra Lunar Calendar) in the city of Balkh in present-day Afghanistan and died on December 17, 1273 (5 Jamâdi al-Âkhar 672) in the city of Konya (“Guniyah” in Persian) in present-day Turkey.

Last year some mass media (for example, Today’s Zaman, March 8, 2006, published in Istanbul, and Iran Daily, April 8, 2006, published in Tehran) reported that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had declared 2007 as the International Year of Rumi. Later it was reported (Mehr News Agency, July 21, 2006) that UNESCO does not declare a year after any personality, but that it supports the celebration of the anniversaries of prominent cultural figures. In its report on “Anniversaries 2006-2007” (“with which UNESCO will be associated for the period 2006-2007”), UNESCO has indeed included Rumi among 63 world figures to be celebrated. The initiative for this came from the representative of Afghanistan, Egypt and Turkey, which were members of the Executive Board of UNESCO in Paris in 2005 when the decisions for the anniversaries were made. In its 175th session (October 3, 2006), UNESCO approved to issue a Commemorative Medal in honor of Rumi in 2007, and described Rumi as “one of the great humanists, philosophers and poets who belong to humanity in its entirety.”

Recently, I surveyed the Internet to find out how the world is and will be celebrating Rumi’s birth anniversary and here is a brief report.
There are two websites devoted to the 800th anniversary and they both have been launched in Turkey: One is www.rumi2007.net and the other is www.mevlana800.info. Both these websites provide information on Rumi as well as on Rumi events in 2007 held especially in Turkey and European countries. The website www.mevlana.com is another online service run by Rumi’s fan in Turkey and is in the Turkish language only.

Molana News Agency (www.RumiNews.com and www.MaolanaNews.com) has been launched in Iran in both Persian and English languages, and gives information about the Rumi events around the world.

The Turkish government has issued a coin, a currency note, and a stamp to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Rumi’s birth. I am unaware of similar valuable actions from the Iranian government this year.

The Chelebi (written Celebi in Turkish) family, Rumi’s descendants in Turkey, have a website (www.mevlana.net) that offers information about their lineage as well as on Rumi’s life and the Moulaviyeh (Mevlana) Order. “The current Celebi, Faruk Hemdem is the 20th great-grandson of Mevlana (22nd generation descendant) and he is the 33rd Celebi to occupy the post.”
The Mevlevi Order of America (www.hayatidede.org), based in Honolulu, continues the tradition of the Konya Sufi master Suleiman Hayati Dede (death 1986) through his son Postneshin Jelaleddin Loras. The group offers samâ (music and whirling dance), zikr (chanting and Divine remembrance) and soh’bat (discourses).

Kabir (formerly Edmund) Helminsky (born 1947) and his wife Camille have organized the Threshold Society (www.sufism.org), based initially in Vermont and recently in California. Their activities include publishing books and records, and offering lectures and retreats. (Kabir Helminisky was permitted to be a Sufi Shaykh by the late Dr. Jelaleddin Chelebi of Istanbul.)

Dr. Nevit Ergin (born 1928), a native of Turkey and a retired surgeon living in California, has translated Rumi’s Diwan Kabir (from a Turkish translation by the late Abdulbaki Gopinarli) in 23 volumes. He runs the Society for Understanding of Mevlana (http://sfumevlanamorg), founded in 1992.

Coleman Barks (born 1937), who has successfully popularized Rumi’s poetry in North America through rendering the literal translations into the modern English style of the free verse, has his own website and activities (www.colemanbarks.com). A retired English literature professor, Barks lives in Georgia.

Nader Khalili, an Iranian architect and a Rumi translator, founded the Californian Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth) in 1986, inspired by Rumi’s poetic imagery. His website is www.calearth.org.

Shahram Shiva, another Iranian translator of Rumi, also conducts Rumi poetry reading and whirling dancing sessions; his website is www.rumi.net (launched in 1998) and he lives in New York.

Shahriar Shariari (born 1963), an Iranian mechanical engineer, writer, and translator of classical Persian poetry, runs a website (www.rumionfire.com) as a tribute to Rumi from his base in Los Angeles.

Dr. Majid Naini, a native of Iran and a former electronic engineer and computer scientist, has devoted his life (since 2002) to Rumi’s vision of universal love through lectures, translations, and producing CDs and DVDs. Naini lives in Florida and his website is www.naini.net.

Ibrahim Gamrad (born 1947), a self-taught Persian and Rumi scholar and an American converted to Islam, runs the website Dar al-Masnawi (www.dar-al-masnavi.org) which contains a vast collection of Rumi’s poetry in English translation.

Rumi Forum for Interfaith Dialogue (www.rumiforum.org) founded in 1999 and located in Virginia aims to “foster interfaith and intercultural dialogue” in the spirit of Rumi’s thought and poetry. Its president is the Turkish Islamic scholar Fetullah Gulen. Part of the group’s activities is to give Rumi Peace and Dialogue Awards, starting 2007, to individuals and organization.

This year’s Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi Award goes to Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University.
Several Rumi Clubs have been established in recent years in various US universities. These include the Rumi Club (www.therumiclub.org) at the University of Maryland; the Rumi Club at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (www.umass.edu/gso.rumi/rumiclub); the Rumi Students Association at University of Houston (www www.uh.edu/rumi); and the Rumi Club for Interfaith Dialogue at Princeton University (www.princeton.edu/~rum).

A group of Rumi’s fans in the UK maintains the websites www.khamush.com and www.rumi.org.uk and hold poetry and music (samâ) sessions. Nihat Tsolak (born in Greece in 1965) manages these activities in the UK.

Overall, cultural and religious groups as well as Rumi translators and scholars are all engaged in some activities this year including conference and poetry reading sessions to celebrate Rumi’s birth anniversary.

These events and meetings are too numerous to be listed in this brief report, but the websites mentioned above contain and regularly update this information.

Visit them, pick your favorite event and celebrate Rumi – a spiritual poet badly needed in our world and century.

The Iranian/Persian community around the world need demonstrate more appreciation of this anniversary and to support and participate in various cultural events on Rumi this year.


About Author: Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi, a native of Iran and a Research Professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, coordinates the Rumi Poetry Club in Utah. He is working on an original translation and anthology of Rumi’s poetry. Contact: rumipoetryclub@earthlink.net.

[From the same Author, read also: http://sufinews.blogspot.com/search?q=ma+eshg+khoreem]