Rumi Masnavi Summary

[Oliver Parkes]

Jalalad-Din Muhammad Rumi (also given as Jalal ad-did Muhammad Balkhi, best known as Rumi, l. 1207-1273 CE) was a Persian Islamic theologian and scholar but became famous as a mystical poet whose work focuses on the opportunity for a meaningful and elevated life through personal knowledge and love of God.

He was a devout Sunni Muslim and, even though his poetry emphasizes a transcendence above religious strictures and dogma, it is grounded in an Islamic worldview. Rumi's God is welcoming to all, however, no matter their professed faith, and one's desire to know and praise this God is all that is required for living a spiritual life.

He was born in Afghanistan or Tajikstan to well-educated, Persian-speaking parents and followed in his father's profession as a Muslim cleric, establishing himself as a well-respected scholar and theologian until he met the Sufi mystic Shams-i-Tabrizi (l. 1185-1248 CE) in 1244 CE and embraced the mystical aspects of Islam. After Shams disappeared in 1248 CE, Rumi searched for him until he realized that Shams' spirit was with him always, even if the man himself was not present, and began composing verse which he claimed to receive from this mystical union.

Rumi's poetry is characterized by a deep understanding of the human condition which recognizes the grief of loss as well as the ecstatic joy of love. The power of transcendent love, whether for another person or God, is central to his work and conveyed through images, symbols, and stories drawn from the Quran, the hadiths, Persian mythology, legend and lore, as well as specific tableaus of daily life.

He composed his verse by spinning in circles, receiving the images he put into words, and dictating these to a scribe, thereby developing the Sufi practice of the whirling dervish as a means of apprehending the Divine. He is considered one of the greatest Persian poets of the medieval era as well as one of the most influential in world literature and his works continue to be bestsellers in the present day.

Almost nothing is known of his mother, but his father, Bahauddin Walad, was a Muslim theologian and jurist with an interest in Sufism. Sufism is the mystical approach to Islam, which rejects dogmatic strictures in favor of a personal, intimate relationship with God. Sufism is not a sect of Islam, but a transcendent path of personal spiritual revelation based on Islamic understanding. Although many orthodox Muslims of the time (and still today) rejected Sufism as a heresy, the city of Balkh encouraged its development and supported Sufi masters. How deeply Rumi's father immersed himself in Sufism in unknown, but Rumi was instructed in the mystic aspects of Sufism by one of his father's former students, Burhanuddin Mahaqqiq, which lay the foundation for his later acceptance of this spiritual path.

His name, Rumi, comes from this period as Anatolia was still referred to as the province of the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire, 330-1453 CE) it had been until 1176 CE when most of it was lost to the Muslim Turks. Someone who came from Anatolia, therefore, was referenced as a rumi, meaning a Roman.

There are a number of different accounts of this meeting but the one most often repeated is the story of the meeting in the street and Shams' question to Rumi. In this version, Rumi was riding his donkey through the marketplace when Shams seized the bridle and asked who was greater, the Prophet Muhammad or the mystic Bayazid Bestami. Rumi instantly answered that Muhammad was greater. Shams responded, "If so, why is it that Muhammad said to God 'I did not know you as I should' while Bestami said, 'Glory be to Me' in asserting that he knew God so completely that God lived and shone from within him." Rumi replied that Muhammad was still greater because he was always longing for a deeper relationship with God and acknowledged that, no matter how long he lived, he would never know God completely while Bestami embraced his mystical experience with the Divine as a final truth and went no further. After saying this, Rumi lost consciousness, falling from his donkey. Shams realized this was the man he was supposed to find and, when Rumi awoke, the two embraced and became inseparable friends (Banks, xix-xx; Lewis, 155).

Their relationship was so close that it strained Rumi's established rapport with his students, family, and associates and so, after some time, Shams left Konya for Damascus (or, according to other reports, Khoy in Azerbaijan). Rumi had him return, however, and the two resumed their former relationship which took the form of mentor-mentee on one level, with Shams as the teacher, but primarily as intellectual equals and friends.

They were conversing one evening when Shams was called to the back door. He went out to answer, did not return, and was never seen again. According to one tradition, he was murdered by one of Rumi's sons who had grown tired of the mystic monopolizing his father's time and distancing Rumi from his students. According to another, Shams chose that moment to depart from Rumi's life, possibly for the same reasons.

Rumi understood there was no such thing as loss of a loved one because that person continues to live and speak and act through one's self. The depth of a close personal relationship cannot be diminished by the absence of the beloved because the beloved has become a part of the self. Rumi the theologian became Rumi the mystic poet at this realization and began composing verse which he believed came from Shams.

Rumi's grief at the loss of his friend found expression in the poetic form of the ghazal which laments loss at the same time as it celebrates the experience being mourned. One would not be feeling such depth of loss, so a ghazal would say, if the experience had not been so beautiful; one should, therefore, be grateful for that experience even as one mourns. Rumi's early poetry was published as the Divan of Shams Tabrizi (a divan meaning a collection of an artist's short works) which Rumi believed to have been composed by Shams' spirit dwelling with his own.

These poems are not monumental in the Western sense of memorializing moments; they are not discrete entities but a fluid, continuously self-revising, self-interrupting medium. They are not so much about anything as spoken from within something. Call it enlightenment, ecstatic love, spirit, soul, truth, the ocean of ilm (divine luminous wisdom), or the covenant of alast (the original agreement with God). Names do not matter. Some resonance of ocean resides in everyone. Rumi's poetry can be felt as a salt breeze from that, traveling inland. (xxiii-xxiv)

Rumi's best-known works are the Masnavi, the Divan of Shams Tabrizi, and the prose works of the Discourses, Letters, and Seven Sermons. The Masnavi's title refers to the form of the work. A masnavi (known as mathnawi in Arabic) is a Persian form of poetry comprised of rhyming couplets of indefinite length. Rumi's Masnavi is a six-volume poetic work, considered not only his masterpiece but a masterpiece of world literature, exploring people's relationship to God as well as to themselves, each other, and the natural world. Scholar Jawid Mojaddedi writes:

In this poem, Moses (known as Musa in Islamic tradition) overhears a poor shepherd who is praising God saying how he would comb God's hair, wash his clothes, care for his shoes, serve him milk, and clean his house, he loves Him so much. Moses sharply rebukes the shepherd, telling him that God is infinite and has no need for any human to do any of these things and the man should refrain from speaking such nonsense. The shepherd accepts the rebuke and wanders away into the desert. God then chastises Moses, saying:

In the Quran, Surah 18:60-82, Moses is depicted in similar fashion when God sends him to follow Al-Khidr (God's representative). Al-Khidr tells Moses outright that, if he would follow him, he must not question any of his actions. Moses agrees but then questions Al-Khidr repeatedly. At the end of the story, Al-Khidr explains himself and it is apparent that Moses had no patience in accepting God's plan without knowing what that plan might entail and the end result. The use of a famous religious figure as a character who still needs to be taught, and is open to learning from God, would encourage humility in an audience who were nowhere near Moses' spiritual stature.

In this same way, Rumi says, one should fall in love with the Divine and only then will one realize what is important in life and what can safely be let go of. Although Rumi was a devout Muslim, he refused to allow the dogma of his religion interfere with his relationship with God or other people. His poetry remains relevant in the present day for this very reason: the transcendence of Divine love does not recognize artificial human constructs and is open and welcoming to all people, no matter what they may believe or whether they believe at all.

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