The Islamic world · 1207–1273
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
Persian poet and Sufi teacher in Konya
The soul is a reed cut from its reed-bed and longs to return; love, not reason alone, is the way back to God.
Life and thought
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī was born in 1207 in Central Asia, in Balkh or nearby Vakhsh, and as a child left with his family, perhaps ahead of the Mongol invasions, for Anatolia, where his father became a preacher in Konya. Rumi succeeded him as a respected teacher of religious law. In 1244 he met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish, and the friendship overturned his life: he turned to poetry, music and ecstatic dance. After Shams disappeared for good around 1248, Rumi poured out thousands of lyric poems in his name. He died in Konya in 1273, and his followers founded the Mevlevi order, known for its whirling ceremony.
His Dīwān-e Shams gathers those lyrics. His Masnavi, six books of rhymed couplets, teaches Sufi ideas through stories, jokes and parables. It opens with a reed flute complaining that it was cut from its reed-bed: the soul, separated from its source, longs to return. The way back is love, which consumes the self; reason alone, like people feeling an elephant in a dark room, grasps only parts.
Works
Meanwhile, in other traditions
1200–1253DōgenJapanese monk who founded Sōtō Zen1225–1274Thomas AquinasDominican friar who wove Aristotle into Christian theology1238–1317 (some sources: 1199–1278)MadhvaFounder of Dvaita, the dualist school of Vedāntac. 1240–c. 1284 (born 1235–40, died 1281–84)Siger of BrabantRadical Aristotelian master at the Paris arts facultyc. 1266–1308John Duns ScotusFranciscan theologian, the “Subtle Doctor”On the record
The Dīwān-e Shams dates from about 1250.
It is not a single book written at one time: Rumi composed these ghazals from his meeting with Shams of Tabriz in 1244 and above all after Shams vanished in 1247–48, continuing into the late 1250s. His students collected them after his death; the standard edition by Forūzānfar has about 3,229 ghazals, some of doubtful authenticity. “c. 1250” marks the heart of that period.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi”