Persian Sufi poet Jalaladdin Rumi: biography, creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Jalaladdin Rumi is a Persian Sufi poet who lived in the 13th century. He is known to many under the name of Mevlana. This is a sage and mentor, whose teaching has become a model of moral growth. We will talk about the biography and works of this great thinker in this article.

What is Sufism?

First, let's briefly explain why Rumi is considered a Sufi poet. The fact is that Sufis were called followers of Sufism, an Islamic esoteric movement, which was characterized by high spirituality and asceticism. Originated in the 7th century.

Jalaladdin Rumi: biography

The great poet was born in 1207 in the city of Balkh, which was located in the north of present-day Afghanistan. Bah ad-Din Walad, his father, was in those years the most famous theologian. He considered himself a spiritual and ideological follower of the famous mystic and Sufi al-Ghazali.

In 1215, the Valad family is forced to flee their hometown under the pretext of a pilgrimage to Mecca. The fact was that Rumi was afraid of possible reprisals from the Khorezmshah, against whose policy the preacher often spoke out.

On the way to Rum, travelers had to make a stop in Nashapur. Here the whole family met the lyricist Firuddin Attar, a famous Sufi preacher and teacher. Attar immediately saw in the son of Valad the gift of words and predicted a great future for him, not only as a poet, but also as a spiritual mentor. In parting, Firuddin gave young Rumi a very valuable gift - the “Book of Secrets”. Jalaladdin never parted with her throughout his life, keeping her as the most precious thing.

Relocation to Rum

There is a story that happened in Damascus. Ibn al-Arabi, a famous Sufi and teacher, saw Rumi walking behind his father and said: “Look at the ocean that follows the lake.”

Jalaladdin Rumi and his family wandered for a long time after leaving Balkh. In the end, Walad decided to stay in the city of Konya, the capital of Rum. In those years, this city became a refuge for all those who fled from the Mongol raids that devastated Islamic territory. Therefore, there were many poets, scientists, mystics and theologians here.

Rumi lived here for a long time. And soon he met an elderly Sufi named Shams ad-Din, whose views greatly influenced the formation of a young man. It was Shams who was able to kindle in the heart of Jalaladdin that very total and all-encompassing mystical love, which later became the basis of the poet's work.

Rumi's view of faith in God

Jalaladdin Rumi spent a lot of time in conversations with Shams ad-Din, which he did not like very muchfollowers of the first. It ended with Shams being sentenced to death and brutally murdered.

Incredible grief befell Rumi, who lost the person closest to him. This led to the fact that the poet became even more acutely aware of reality. Left alone with pain and death, the poet felt what injustice and cruelty are. He begins to be tormented by questions about how fair, loving and kind God could allow such evil to happen on earth, because everything is subject to him, and nothing happens beyond his will.

From these thoughts, the basis of Rumi's philosophy gradually begins to take shape. The poet understands that God is nothing but love for God, which by its nature is boundless and all-consuming. Like other adherents of Sufism, Rumi had an extremely negative attitude towards intellectual speculation. Therefore, he strove more for imagery, and drew comparisons between the love of God and the state of intoxication, which leads to ecstasy and madness. Rumi believed that only true recklessness and going beyond the usual boundaries can lead a person to true sobering and the ability to free himself from the shackles of rationality and mind.

Only unlimited trust in Existence (the process of life) can allow a person to feel the lightness and freedom of being and understand that life and everything that happens in it exists according to its incomprehensible laws, in which there is logic, but it is not subject to the human mind. The main thing that a person needs to master is trust and acceptance of what is happening as it is, because the fact thatan inquisitive mind, trying to find a pattern, will only look for nonsense, there is a deepest sacred meaning.

A question of free will

Jalaladdin Rumi, the poet's books confirm this, he seriously thought about the problem of free will - does each of us have our own destiny, which determines our whole life, or is a person's life a blank slate on which you can write your own story guided only by desires. However, Rumi understood that no one would ever be able to resolve the disputes of adherents of these points of view, since it is impossible to find the true answer through logical reasoning. Therefore, the poet believed that this question should be moved from the realm of the mind to where “the heart rules.”

A person full of love for God merges with the universal ocean of life. After that, whatever action he does, it will not belong to him, it will come from the ocean. Despite the fact that a person considers himself to be something separate, he remains another wave on the water surface. However, as soon as he looks deep into himself, turns away from the external, begins to focus on the center, and not on the periphery, he will understand that all Existing is an indivisible and unified whole. Comprehensive and all-encompassing love can transform a person so much that the questions that previously tormented him so much will disappear by themselves. He begins to feel oneness with Being itself, which gives him a feeling that can be described as “I am god.”

Sufi brotherhood

After the death of Shams, Rumi becomes a teacher at a Muslim school. Here he uses a new method for teaching - he introduces students to the Koran, using Sufi traditions.

Jalaladdin Rumi attached great importance to chants, dances and music. The poet's poems reflect his view of these arts: earthly music seemed to him a reflection of the melodies of the heavenly spheres, which signify the great mystery of creation; the dervish dance was the personification of the dance of the planets, filling the universe with jubilation and joy.

In the same years, Rumi creates the Maulawiya Sufi brotherhood, where the teachings of the founder are of great importance. The organization continued to exist after the death of the poet and gradually spread throughout the Ottoman Empire. In some Muslim countries it exists to this day. Young men are accepted into the brotherhood, who, after initiation, must live in the monastery for 3 years.

Death

Rumi devoted his last years to jurisprudence and literary work. The poet died in 1273 at the age of 66 in the city of Konya.

Today, Jalaladdin Rumi is recognized as the greatest mystic of all time. His philosophical views and foundations of teaching were reflected in poetry, which he considered the best way to express his gratitude and love for the divine.

Features of creativity

One way or another, but first of all Rumi was therefore. His lyrical "Divan" includes various poetic genres: rubais, gazelles, qasidas. Rumi Jalaladdin preached in them the idea of the value of human life and denied formalism, ritualism and scholasticism. The “Poem about the Hidden Meaning”, included in the collection “Masnavi”, most clearly reflected these ideas.

Despite the fact that the poems were written within the framework of religious idealism, they often evoked revolutionary sentiments and even actions of the masses.

Masnavi

Not so long ago, the book “The Road of Transformations. Sufi parables”(Jalaladdin Rumi). But few people know that this is not a whole work, but just a part of a large epic-didactic poem, numbering about 50,000 verses, which is called "Masnavi". Translated means "Couple".

In this work, in the form of instructive stories with lyrical and moralizing digressions, Rumi preaches his ideas. Masnavi as a whole can be called an encyclopedia of Sufism.

There is no single plot in the poem. But all stories are united by a single mood, which is expressed in rhyming couplets, sustained in a single rhythm.

"Masnavi" is one of the most read and respected works of the Muslim world. As for world literature, the poem earned Rumi the title of the greatest pantheist poet.

Jalaladdin Rumi quotes

Here are a few quotes from the poet:

• "You were born with wings. Why crawl through life?”.
• "Don't worry. All that is lost will return to you in a different guise.”
• "Repeating someone else's words does not mean understanding their meaning."

Despiteover the past centuries, Rumi's poetry and philosophy continues to be very popular not only among Muslim peoples, but also among Europeans.