Portal of Hope

By AA, "Turkey sends Mevlana's book to worldwide known people" - World Bulletin - Istanbul, Turkey
Friday, November 21, 2008

The Masnavi or Masnavi-I Ma'navi written by Mevlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism.

Turkey sent great Anatolian philosopher's work to some worldwide known people, a local executive said on Friday.

Tahir Akyurek, the mayor of the central Anatolian province of Konya, said that the municipality had sent Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi's book "Masnavi" to some internationally-known people. "Among them are Pope Benedict XVI, Queen Sofia of Spain, Prince Charles of Wales, and German coach Christoph Daum," Akyurek told AA correspondent.

Akyurek enumerated Vural Oger, a member of the European Parliament; Cem Ozdemir, the co-chairman of the German Green Party; Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, and Swiss President Pascal Couchepin among people to whom the municipality had sent the Masnavi.

The Masnavi, written in Persian, was translated and published in 14 languages including Turkish, English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Arabic, Japan, Albanian, and Swedish, Uzbek, Turkmen and Urdu languages. The mayor said that the book would also be published in several other languages and send to those countries.

Mevlana was born on September 30, 1207 in Balkh in present day Afghanistan. He died in Konya on December 17, 1273. He was laid to eternal rest beside his father and over his remains in a splendid shrine that was erected in Konya.

Mevlana devoted himself to the pursuit of Sufi mysticism, in which he was justly regarded as the supreme master. He was the spiritual founder of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes.

"Come, come again, whoever you are, come! Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times. Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are," is his famous motto that has been seen as a symbol of tolerance and love for centuries.

The Masnavi or Masnavi-I Ma'navi, written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature. Comprising six books of poems that amount to more than 50,000 lines, it pursues its way through 424 stories that illustrate man's predicament in his search for God.