BACKGROUND
A hagiogrphical tradition grew up around Rumi rather quickly after his death the devotion and veneration of these hagiographers (Sultan Valad, Sepahsâlâr and aflâki – about whom much will be said later) for Rumi led them to write about him in a way that obscures our view of the historical person.
Despite several centuries of celebrating Rumi’s memory, only during the last half century have scholars begun to penetrate to the man behind the legend. But even though we may reject the accounts to the miracles supposedly preformed by Rumi, no academic enterprise will ever be able to dull the wonder we feel when reading his poetry or to unravel the essential mystery at the core of his life. How is it that a Persian boy born almost eight hundred years ago in Khorasan, (Balkh) the northeastern province of greater Iran, in a region that we identify today as Central Asia, but was considered in those days as part of the greater Persian cultural sphere, wound up in central Anatolia on the receding edge of Byzantine cultural sphere, in what is now Turkey, some 1,500 miles to the west? How is it that after training as a Muslim preacher and jurist, Rumi developed into an ecumenical teach of poetic bent, now recognized as one of the most profound mystical teachers and poets in human history, and revered as a saint by people of many faiths, such that Muslims and Westerners alike make pilgrimage to his resting place in Konya, Turkey?

RUMI AS NAME
The full complement of names and titles pertaining to Mowlânâ Khwodâvandgâr Jalâl al-Din Mohammad b. mohammad al-Balfhi al-Rumi would require a small caravan to carry it. Rumi, as he is known in the West, is a toponym and refers to the fact that he lived in Anatolia, what is now Turkey, but was then considered, from the Islamic point of view, Rome. The Anatolian peninsula, which had belonged to the Byzantine, or eastern Roman empire, had only relatively recently been conquered by Muslims and even when it came to be controlled by Turkish Muslim rulers, it was still known to Arabs, Persians and Turks as the geographical area of Rum. As such, there are a number of historical personages born in or associated with Anatolia known as, literally “from Rome.” In Muslim countries, therefore, Jalâl Al-Din is not generally known as “Rumi.”

His given name at birth was Mohammad, like his father and, of course, like the prophet of Islam. From an early age, however, his father apparently called him Jalâl al-Din, a title meaning “The Splendor of the Faith.” Such titles were common for religious scholars, man of letters and politicians in the medieval Islamic world, and Rumi’s was rather similar in meaning to his father’s title Bahâ al-Din, “The Glory of the Faith.” Many of Rumi’s Persian-speaking disciples called him khwodâvandgar, meaning “Lord” or “master.” However, the earliest Persian sources, such as Sultan Valad’s Ebtedâ name (Valad nâme), sepahsâlâr and Aflâki, usually refer to Rumi by the Arabic title Mowlânâ, “Our Master,” which was his father’s title before him. Two early non-Mevlevi sources, Semnâni’s Resâle-ye eqbââand Mostowfi’s Târikh-e gozide both refer to him as our Master of Rum (Mo“”wlânâ Rumi, ME 1:xiv). Rumi himself appears to allude to this title (D 1493) and it therefore must have already gained currency during his lifetime. In later Persian sources, we find a variation on this title: Mowlavi, “My Master,” first attested in the poetry of Qâsem- Anvâr who died in 1434, or the work of Anvâr’s contemporary, kamala al-Din Hosayn-e Khwârazmi (Mei 423 n.2).

Because Mowlavi (Indo-Pakistani “Maulvi”) and Mowlânâ are applied as honorific titles to refer to literally dozens of other Islamic figures, particularly in the subcontinent, encyclopedia entries and the indexes of Persian books will sometimes refer to the subject of our book as Mowlavi, Jalâl al-Din al-Balkhi, with Balkhi specifying the family’s origins in Balkh (situated in what is now Afghanistan), though as we shall see, Rumi probably did not come from Balkh itself, but from a smaller town in what is now Tajikistan. But our Rumi is the master par excellence, and Mowlânâ or Mowlavi serve to identify him immediately for most Persians, who do not perceive Mowlavi or Mowlânâ as Arabic titles, but as the pen name of the poet. We are told that the title Mowlânâ had already taken on the quality of a proper name, meaning Rumi to the exclusion of other masters within a few generations of his death (Af 597). In Turkey, he is known by the Turkish pronunciation of this title: Mevlânâ. In the west, of course, he is known primarily as Jalâl al-Din Rumi.

How did Rumi introduce himself? In the prose preface to the Masnavi, he writes: This meek servant, dependent on the mercy of the Almighty God, Mohammad, the son of Mohammad, the son of al-Hosayn al-Balkhi.”

RUMI AS MUSLIM
It will simply not do to extract quotation out of context and present Rumi as a prophet of the presumptions of an unchurched and syncretic spirituality. While Rumi does indeed demonstrate a tolerant and inclusive understanding of religion, he also, we must remember, trained as a preacher, like his father before him, and as a scholar of Islamic law. Rumi did not come to his theology of tolerance and inclusive spirituality by turning away from traditional Islam or organized religion, but through an immersion in it; his spiritual yearning stemmed from a radical desire to follow the example of the Prophet Mohammad and actualize his potential as a perfect Muslim.

Islam itself was an ecumenical religion, teaching that Mohammad, Jesus, Moses, Abraham and the lesser prophets of the Hebrew Bible were all sent by the one true God as successive messengers to mankind. God sent Mohammad as a messenger (rasul) to the Arab peoples, just as Sâleh and Hud had been sent before him, but the message, the Koran, had a wider relevance for the whole world. The voice of God in the Koran speaks of having revealed or sent down (nazzalnâ) to Mohammad from the Mother Book (Omm al-ketâb) a tablet preserved (lowb mabfuz) in the realm of God. Throughout history, God has sent down successive chapters of this pre-eternal book to mankind through various men-such as Jesus and Abraham-chosen to be His prophets (nabi) or messengers. The Koran brought by Mohammad was the most recent reading from the divine scriptures, the heavenly prototype of God’s message to man. Indeed, the Arabic word qurân, from which the English word “Koran” derives, means “recitation,” for it was that portion of the heavenly scriptures which God revealed to Mohammad through the angle Gabriel and entrusted him to recite to his fellow man.

Orthodox Muslim theology views Mohammad as a human being, and not as the son of God or same other kind of divinity whose essential nature is distinct from ordinary mortals. Nevertheless, the fact that God singled him out and selected him from among all other men (one of Mohammad’s epithets is Mostafâ, the Chosen One) to bear the revelation of the Koran, testifies to God’s special favor toward Mohammad and Mohammad’s closeness to God. As such, Mohammad’s morality, his action and his pronouncements all point out the path, or Sunna, to piety. By the third and fourth centuries after the advent of the Prophet Mohammad, a highly elaborate system of law and theology had been worked out on the basis of the Koran and the body of tradition, or Hadith, about how the Prophet acted and what he said. Discussions about the law (feqb) and the theory of law (osul –al-feqh), as well as the theosophy and praxis of the mystical life, were carried on mostly in Arabic, though Persian had increasingly become a medium for such discussions from the twelfth century of our era onward.

To understand Rumi one must obviously understand something of the belief and assumptions he held as a Muslim. Rumi’s beliefs derived from the Koran, the Hadith, Ialamic theology and the works of Sunni mystics like Sanâ I, Attâr and his own father, Bahâ al-Din Valad. A preacher by profession, Bahâ al-Din chose to settle down in Konya in part because a good deal of the nearby populace was either not yet fully committed to or educated in Islamic doctrines and/or was not observing Islamic laws, and in part because he had been unsuccessful in securing a professorship of law elsewhere. Anatolia was a frontier area only recently Isalamicized. The populace of Asia Minor had been mostly Greek for centuries, but beginning in the late eleventh century, it was conquered and populated by Turkmen tribesmen and urbanized Turkish Muslims. It still needed to be conquered by the civilizing forces of religion and the Persian culture that dominated the courts of the Turkish Seljuk governors and sultans. Bahâ al-Din hoped he, or his son Jalâl al-Din Rumi, could reach these people and teach them the rites, beliefs and theology of Islam.

As a Muslim, Rumi acknowledge Mohammad’s prophethood and professed himself submissive to God. Rumi himself states in one of his letters (Mak 227) what should be obvious to any careful reader of his poems: he performed the five obligatory prayers that constitute one of the central tenets and requirements of an observant Muslim. Other sources indicate that Rumi performed the pilgrimage to mecca with his father and not only observed the obligatory period of fasting during the mouth of Ramadan, but also pursued ascetic exercises and voluntary fasting at other times of the year, as well. We also know from our sources and from Rumi’s own letters that he acted charitably with his disciples and their dependents, helping to distribute alms and needed assistance. Rumi thus conscientiously upheld the five principal “pillars” of Islam and encouraged others to do so, both in word and deed. However, Rumi held the spirit behind the observance of these laws of Islam far dearer than the outward performance of any rite.

RUMI AS HANAFI
Academic institutions in the medieval Islamic world focused primarily on the sciences of religion, as in medieval Christendom. Though Islam lacks a precise parallel to the institution of the clergy in Christendom, it was to the class of men considered scholars of religion and theology, the ulama (olamâ), literally the men of knowledge or science, that the populace generally looked for instruction in matter of low, ritual and belief. To be recognized as one of the ulama, one had to have knowledge of Arabic grammar, Koran, Hadith and a variety of other disciplines. The pride of place among the religious sciences belonged to the study of law, feqh, which elucidated the Shari a, the prescriptions for proper and divinely sanctioned behavior. Islamic law did not encompass political matters per se, but it addressed a wider range of questions than Christian canon law, including not only prescriptions about matters of ritual and worship, but also contracts (including marriage, which Islamic law views as a contract rather than a sacrament) and inheritance. Knowledge of the basic laws of fasting, prayer, alms and pilgrimage was incumbent upon every believing Muslim, as well as the laws pertaining to their particular profession. Abu Hanifa describes feqh as an individual’s “knowledge of his rights and duties” (Zar 24). As Abu Hanifa’s student al-Shaybâni put it, knowledge of feqh “is the best guide to piety and fear of God.” It protected the believers from tribulation, such that a pious man versed in feqh was able to combat Satan with a thousand times the strength of an ordinary believer (Zar 21-2).

By the eleventh century, legal and ritual practice within Sunni Islam congealed around four canonically recognized schools, or mazhabs: Hanafi, Mâleki, Shâfe i and Hanbali. In Rumi’s time, Iranian Sunnis mostly followed either the Hanafi or the Shâfe i school. Though both were considered canonical rites, in practice, the two creeds were often at odds in the local level. The rationalist theology of the Mutazilites (Mu tazilî), with its affinity for Greek logic and philosophy, was in decline and Asharite (Ash arî) scholasticism, which the Shâfe ite school favored, was officially sanctioned by the Nezâmiye colleges. The Hanafis’ legal principles were more liberal than those of the other schools. In addition to Koran and Hadith, Hanafi teachings allowed for considered opinion (ra y) and juridical preference (estehân) to serve as a basis in Islamic legal rulings. Hanafi judges also frequently took the common law praxis (orf) of the areas conquered by Islam into consideration, whereas the other schools often did not, at least in theory, recognize these as legitimate sources of authority. The thrust of the teaching s of Mohammad al-Shâfe i (d. 820) was to base legal principles and decisions on traditions that reflect the praxis of the prophet, and to eliminate human reasoning as much as possible, though not to the radical extent on which the fourth canonical school, the Hanbali, insisted.

The teachings of Abu Hanifa (d. 767), the eponymous founder of the Hanafi school in Kufa in Iraq, were presented in the works of his pupils Abu Yusof (d. 795) and Mohammad al- Shaybâni (fi. C. 800). Though considered a single school, the Hanafi teachings represent diverse influences and preserve internal differences of opinion much more than the other three schools, which reflect the conscious efforts of a specific founding authority at codification and consistency. Favored by the early Abbasid caliphs (most judges appointed by the Abbasids were Hanafis, including, for example, the famous Hanafi theorist al-Khassâf [d. 874] at the court of the caliph al-Mohtadi), the Hanafi School spread to Khorasan (where special laws of irrigation were developed), Transoxaina and into, who carried the Hanafi doctrines into Anatolia as that area was conquered.

The Hanafi school continued to take shape throughout the tenth century with the compilation of a number of summaries and handbook of its teachings. In the work of Shams al-A emma al-Sarakhsi (d. c. 1090), who wrote a systematic book on the application of Islamic law and another book on the theoretical principles of jurisprudnce, Hanafi teachings assumed a more cogent, uniform, and therefore somewhat more rigid character, a tendency which continued in the work of al-kâsâni (d. 1191), writing a generation before the birth of Rumi. However, the Hanafi school was still producing important new theoretical works during the lifetime of Bahâ ai-Din, such as the “Guide to the Branches of Feqh,” al-Hedâyat fi foru al-fewh, by Ali B. Abu Bakr al-Marghinâni (d.1196), about which commentaries continued to be written through the sixteenth century. Likewise at this time, the Hanafi ulama were compiling collections of fatwas, legal briefs or response about specific questions, by famous Hanafi authorities like Borhân al-Din b. Mâza (d. c. 1174) and Serâj al-Din Sajâvadi.

Rumi’s thinking, especially his attitude toward logic and reason, would have been strongly shaped by the teaching of another Hanafi jurist and theologian, al-Mâtoridi, who lived in the area of Samarqand. Mâtoridi, who died sometime in the 940s, wrote a Koran commentary, a work on theology and several other works, many of which have been lost, including refutation of the teachings of the Ismailis, the Twelver Shiites and the Mutazilites. Mâtoridi elaborated a Hanafi theology opposed to the radical traditionalism reflected in the scholastic theology of the Asharites, whose view the Shafe ite school by and large adopted. At the same time, Mâtoridi rejected many of the mutazilite doctrines, but retained a greater respect for the faculty of reason than did the Asharites, acknowledging that man could come to know God through reason without recourse to divine revelation. Likewise, his views on the question of predestination versus free will moderated between the extremes of the Asharite and Mutazilite views.
Mâtoridi’s views were especially influential in the eastern Islamic world, specifically in Transoxania, the area where Rumi was born. The Seljuks promoted Mâtoridis doctrines and even ordered that al-Ash ari be cursed from the pulpits in the mid-eleventh century, a fact which explains the animosity and occasional violence between the Shâfe-i and Hanafi schools. By the mid-twelfth century, the Hanafis in Syria and Damascus were teaching this eastern doctrine, so that in Rumi’s lifetime the Matoridi doctorine of his homeland prevailed even in Anatolia.

Another influence on some Hanafis in Khorasan were the Karramites (Karrâmi), often treated as a separate sect of Islam. Relatively little is known about the Karramite doctrines, though the movement seems to have appealed to a number of mystically minded people. Whether or not Bahâ al-Din was attracted to the Karramites, his strong mystical preoccupations may have left him somewhat outside the inner circle of Hanafi theologians and legal theorists. This, or perhaps political frictions with the Khwarazmshah, may in part account for his relative obscurity and his failure to secure a legal professorship in Khorasan(see chapter 1).

Despite the fact that Sufism and mysticism permeated Persion and Turkish religious culture after the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Hanafis, along with other schools of Islamic law, continued to produce compendiums of law and theoretical works, through which they exercised an important and sometimes stifling influence over religious praxis in cities and towns throughout the Islamic world. The rigidity of thought and spirituality often reflected in the concerns and works of Islamic law and its practitioners is precisely the sort of religiosity that Rumi often rejects in his poetry.

The study of the law
Classes on the religious sciences began originally as regularized gathering (majles, halqe) at a mosque around a particular learned speaker. This speaker might preach proper Islamic behavior and ethnics, interpret the Koran, or relate traditions about the Prophet. Eventually, during the Seljuk period, the transmission of Islamic law (feqh) became semi-professionalized in the madrase system, though religious scholars might still emerge from the milieu of the mosque or the Sufi lodge. The madrase was a private sectarian institution, usually teaching one particular school of law-mostly either Hanafi or Shâfe-i in the case of eastern Iran-with different legal texts for each school. Following the example of the Sekjuk vizier Nezâm al-Molk (d. 1092), after whom the exemplary Nezâmiye college in Baghdad was named, private citizens wishing to do a pious deed-in this case, the furtherance of religious knowledge-would establish a college of law by legal endowment (vaqf), often in a bequest, with a charter stipulating the purposes of the college. By the end of the reign of Saladin (Salâh al-Din), who encouraged the establishment of madrases in Syria and Egypt, the institution had become firmly entrenched in the Levant.

The madrase building typically included a lecture hall and small apartments for students, usually around twenty students per school, though the number was less in the college of Anatolia. It also provided a stipend for the students and a salary for the professor (modarres), there being usually one professor per college, except in the very large madrases of major cultural centers such as Baghdad and Damascus, where some schools taught all four schools of law with a different professor for each. The optimal ratio of students per professor appears to have numbered around twenty, and the students would typically pursue an initial four-year curriculum of study, though those wishing to obtain a professoriate of their own would often study for a decade or more with one or various professors. The favorite student at the beginning level might be made a teacher’s aid (mofid), though it does not appear to have been a paid position. The endowment would usually include provision for a drill assistant, or repetitor (moid). Although writing was considered more accurate than memory (Zar 62), medieval Islamic culture thrived on oral transmission of knowledge. Study of a text consisted in large part in memorizing it-students were recommended to memorize at least one law book in its entirety (Zar 54). One Hanafi student manual recommends repeating yesterday’s lesson five times, the lesson of preceding day four times, the lesson of the day prior to that thrice, and so on, all of them aloud (Zar 53-4). Advaced students who knew a text or a given professor’s lectures by heart could take on the role of moid a paid position, and help new students memorize their lessons.

After completing his studies, the successful students, now known as a faqih, often translated as jurisconsult, would defend his knowledge in an examination (monâzere) and then obtain a document of permission (ejâze) to teach from his professor. Recognized henceforth as a legal scholar, the faqih would typically attempt to secure his own position as a professor of law, modarres, in a madrase. Other functions associated with the madrase and often funded by pious endowments included preachers, a Koran reciter (qâri), a librarian, occasionally a professor of Hadith (mohaddes, though this position tended to be associated with another institution, the Dâr al-Hadith), a muezzin to call to prayer (though this is more properly associated with a mosque), and a number of janitorial positions as well as a director to oversee the finances and approve appointments.

The anonymous author of “The Acts of Owhad al-Din Kermâni”(Mânâqeb-e Owhad al-Din Kermâni) gives us further details about the social and scholastic hierarchy of the medieval madrase. Owhad al-Din (c. 1164-c. 1238), a famous Sufi and a contemporary of Rumi’s father, Bahâ al-Din Valad, left home at the age of sixteen, fearful for his life as a result of the conquest of his hometown, Kerman, and journeyed alone and on foot to Baghdad. He had no trade or skill and was not able to perform the hard labor of construction (mashshâqi),4 but he had gone to primary school and acquired a basic education (siâb o sepdi âmukhte-am). He determine to enter a madrase where he could be a student (taleb-e elm) and learn the sciences (tâlim-e olum), from which he might make ends meet.

He proceeded to an unnamed madrase and went to see the professor (modarres), announcing himself as a seeker of knowledge. The professor set him to the study of Islamic law (faqâhat) and appointed a room for him in the dormitory of the college. This professor had Owhad study the Meftâh, one of the principal books of Shâfe I law, which he learned in a short period of time. Having thus proved him self a quick study, Owhad soon moved on to read several other books and was eventually appointed as a repetitor, or moid, for which he received a stipend, clothes and a mount. He began to win a reputation about town and when the teacher of the Hakkâkie Madrase in Baghdad died, the position of professor of law (modarres) at this college was given to “Shaykh” Owhad. After this, Owhad supposedly won great fame, though this did not mean he stopped studying and acquiring knowledge (Owh 2).

Though the historical sources make no mention of a Hakkâkie college in Baghdad, educational prestige in the Islamic world was associated not primarily with individual college or institutions, but with particular professors, who might hold simultaneous posts in more than one college. The absence of written testimony about this Hakkâkie college need not therefore provoke undue consternation, although Sufu hagiographer does not tell us who Owhad al-Din’s professor had been, we may conclude that Owhad and his teacher were not among the best-known or even intermediate professor of their day.

Even though the standard medieval works do not mention Owhad al Din’s Hakkâkie Madrase, the position of professor must at least have provide him with a steady income. It would appear that Rumi, by the 1240s, held a similar professorship in just such a school in Konya, with the exception that colleges had been introduced to the city only relatively recently; there were far fewer institutions of learning that in Baghdad, Damascus, or Aleppo, and the professors who taught there would probably not have been among the most famous professors or juriconsults. Aflâki tells us that Rumi was engaged in teaching the religious sciences (tadris-e olum-e dini) at the professorial rank (moarresi mikard) in four different institutions, all of them respected (Af 618). One of these was the Cotton Sellers’ Madrase, a college most probably endowed by the guild of cotton merchants/growers, or at least located on their street.

The Practice and Abuse of the Law
Owhad al-Din of Kerman lays out the scholarly and social hierarchy of the legal profession for us. At the bottom of the academic ladder stood the rank or condition of feqâhat, apparently designating both students of the law and those who held minor or irregular position in a college. The next stage of the profession was teaching the law (tadris, Owh 3), normally undertaken by the modarres, or professor of a college. The best legal scholars received permission from their teachers not only to teach the law (tadris) but also to render opinions on matters of law or doctrine (eftâ), allowing them to perform the function not only of professor, but also of mofti, issuing legal or doctrinal opinions-fatwas-in response to various questions put to them. A fatwa had no authority behind it other than the reputation for learning of the jurisconsult or faqih who issued it; other equally qualified faqihs might issue contrary fatwas. But the highest rank among the ulama, beyond which there was no higher position (mansab), belonged to those who rendered binding legal verdicts (qaza) in the capacity of judge, or qâzi (Owh 3).

While many professors could also act as moftis, this did not give them the right actually to enforce or try legal cases. This right was reserved for the qâzi, a position usually appointed by the ruling political authority. Although a qâzi might also hold a professorship at a college, not many professors of law could aspire to this position; there was usually only one qâzi in town, except in larger cities, where the Shâfi i and Hanafi schools might each have their own judge. In major metropolis, such as Baghdad and Cairo, more than one judge per school was needed, in which case one individual was usually appointed chief judge, or Qâzi al-qozât. By virtue of his learning and his reputation for piety, a judge would command respect and, by virtue of his office, he could wield considerable influence. Since a judge would make tremendous profit from his office, it was not unknown for an aspiring judge to bribe his way into the position. Rashid al-Din Fazl Allâh (1247-1318) complains in his history of the Mongols that

Some qâzis go far as to take securities before reaching a decision. A judge must rule constructively and sympathetically, and must not take anything from anyone. When judgements are rendered by securities and bargaining, one can imagine what the situation is! (cited in Mov 28-9)

A century earlier Sanâ ??i (d. 1131) had denounced the behavior of such worldly judges and men of religion in an ethico-religious poem which created the prototype for the long mystical-didactic masnavi, of which genre Rumi’s own Masnaavi is the premier example. In this poem of Sanâ ?i, “The Garden of Truth” (Hadiqat al-haqiqat 670-71), we read the following description of a qazi:

Good-for-nothing, two-faced, full of nonsense!
A tyrant, grief-mongering, life-sapping!
He threatens you with prison or with pain
and treats you like no dog would treat a man.
He is bad, bad, though he knows what is good;
He’s a dog, dog, though he heads up the flock.
He sits there coldly poring over books,
You shiver, fearful of his sophist tricks …

Likewise, Sanâ i castigated the ambitious men of religion who seek gold while pretending to be dervishes (Hadiqat 676-9):

Estate-mongers, heart-set on the heartlands
Can’t keep the heart of reason, law and faith …
The very founts of friction, lacking knowledge,
Their tongues are greased, their piety starved
Full of vim and leisure, all void of light,
Now all wove and loss, now all full of lies …
Writing fatwas calling for all men’s blood
Moved by malice, ignorance and by greed …
All of them full of words and thin on facts
All of them ghouls, monstrous shapes in barren sands
In speech, stampeding like unbridled camels
Like the ostrich, all consumers of the fire …
In enmity, treachery, deception
More deep in hell’s depths than the devil
Holding orphan’s property as lawful
Living on the wealth of kids and widows,
Breathing of piety’s scent not one whiff
Bone dry as potsherds empty of water …

All taking bribes and writing up rules,
All lowly and load-burdened, like the ass

The last line alludes to the Koran (K62:5),which indicates that those who carried the Torah but failed to observe it benefited from it no better than an ass that bears a load of books; God will not guide those who oppress people and distort the meaning of his scripture.
Corruption and temptation, then, might seduce a judge from the path of righteousness. Furthermore, the position of judge was also fraught with political dangers, since either the local prince, the sultan or the caliph might try to impose certain doctrines, or otherwise involve the office of qâzi in partisan matters. A number of pious and holy scholars were known to refuse judgeships on these grounds, fearing the application of the law would entangle them in politic or tempt them into the lap of luxury. This moral austerity certainly fit with the idea of spiritual poverty and humility, which the Sufis championed. Shams al Din says (Maq 178):

By God, to God and for God!!! Those people studying in the madrases do so in order to
Become reptitors (moid), to get their own madrase and to win place and position. They
Say, “ We have to make a good impression, this is what should be said in these gathering
In order to get such and such position.”
Why do you acquire knowledge for the purpose of a worldly morsel? The purpose of
This rope is to lift yourself out of the pit, not so that you can climb out of this pit and into
Deeper pits. Fix your sight on knowing who you are, what your essence is, why you have
Come here, where you are going, and what the source of your being is. What are you doing
at this very moment? Where are you headed?

TOP

RUMI AS SUFI
The movement we know as Sufism began as a confluence of ascetic exercises (zohd), sharing much in common with Christian monasticism in Syria and Gnostic attitudes toward the material world, and of mystical speculation (erfân), fed probably by Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Buddhist and Hindu theosophical teachings. Sufism entails, self-renunciation exercises and other forms of discipline (in addition, of course, to the ritual prayers and obligatory fasting required of all Muslims) as a means to approach God. In same individuals it might also include a predilection for divine visions, including lights, glimpses of heaven, angels, or even God, As such it involved an individual and personal orient5ation toward God. As such it involved an individual and personal orientation of god, often at odds with the communal and legalistic definition of piety expounded by the legal scholars (foqaha) and other men of religious learning, collectively known as the ulama. The ulama concerned themselves with the domain of acquired knowledge (elm) – knowledge of the Koran and knowledge of the praxis, or Sunna, of the prophet, as reconstructed from traditions, or Hadith, handed down about Mohammad. Religious scholars might specialize in the study of history and genealogy as a means of verifying the authenticity of the chains of transmission (esnad) of prophetic tradition, or Hadith; in interpretation of the Koran (tafsir); in the jurisprudential principles (osul al-feqh) by which religious law (Shari a) was ascertained; in dialectical argumentation about specific matters of law (qil o qal), or in speculative theology (kalam).

Practitioners of a personal devotional approach to God were called at different times and places zahed (ascete), darvish (poor man), salek (sojourner on the spiritual path), aref (gnostic) and Suifi. The word “Sufy” has been explained variously as a borrowing from Greek Sophia (wisdom); a derivative of the word soffe, or stone bench outside the the mosque at Medina,where certain ascetic-minded companions of the prophet used to sit (soffe is also the sourse of the English word “sofa”); or as a reference to the wearing of shirts or cloaks of wool (suf) by early Islamic ascetics. This latter explanation seems the most likely source of the word, as Sufism was early on associated with the self-renunciation practiced in the hermitages of the Syrian desert.

Many Sufis came from the class of the ulama, religious scholars by training who had developed a mystical or interior spirituality. They concentrated on a person’s inner attitude and orientation, in contradistinction to the conventional, piety-minded, who seemed to the Sufis preoccupied with legalistic and ritual matters, content tally their good versus bad deeds as indices of spiritual advancement (similar in some respects to Calvinists in Europe). A judge (qazi) respected for his devotion, piety and political independence might be considered a Sufi, as in the case of Hasan al-Basri (d.728) .A religious scholar such as Abd Allah Ansari (d.1089) might also attain the status of saint through learning, insight piety and devotion. In the early years of Sufism many acquired saintly reputations by virtue of their acts of asceticism and self-renunciation; likewise preachers or holy men with reputations for working miracles might attain the status of saint among the local populace. From the twelfth century onward, many Sufis would study the religious sciences in a Sufi lodge or cloister (khaneqah ,rebat ,zavie). Here they might also learn the law (feqh), but the Sufi orientation toward the law reflected a divergence from the professionalism of the legal colleges and their orientation toward the law. The members of a Sufi lodge did not, generally speaking, follow as rigorous a course of study as in the legal colleges, and were sometimes criticized (as in the Talbis-e Eblis of Ibn ai-Jowzi) for their laziness and false claims to religious knowledge. Not every Sufi, therefore, came from the ranks of the learned, though often times the subsequent hagiographical tradition exaggerated the extent of a saint’s learning of power.

While most Sufis did not advocate an antinomian rejection or suspension of religious law – the Shari a – they did privilege the meaning (ma ni) of deeds and the intention (niyat) motivating them above the actual deeds, since one’s inward orientation could not be measured simply on the basis of outward compliance with religious law. A person’s observance of religious law, his acts of worship and charity, might proceed in varying degrees from the prideful desire to appear pious. Even worse, the ambitious or greedy might pretend hypocritically or deceitfully to piety; in the words of the beloved Persian poet, Hafez:

Va ezan k-in jelve dar mehrab o manbar mikonand
Chon be khalvat miravand an kar-e digar mikonand

Preachers give glorious talks in the pulpit;
But, oh, what they won’t do when in private!

Owhad al-Din of Kerman, whose career in the madrases of Bagdad we have noted above, determined not to pursue a judgeship and the more worldly ways of religious knowledge of the religious sciences by following the spiritual path (soluk) that leads to apprehension of the divine mysteries (asrar-e elahi) like the Sufis before him (Owh 2-3) . His hagiographer tells us that Owhad eventually quit his position at the college and set out to purify himself by acts of asceticism. These included fasting, in which exercise he would eat only once in seven days; continual devotions, during which he prayed throughout the night and denied his body sleep, and undertaken the pilgrimage to Mecca in preparation for which he sold all his belongings, manumitted his household slaves, and set out on foot through the desert (Owh 3-4).
The locus classicus for this abandonment of academe and the life of knowledge in favor of the life of the soul is, of course, Abu Hamed Mohammad al-Ghazzali (1058-1111). His autobiographical work “Deliverance from Error” (al-Monqez men al-zalal) poignantly illustrates the dilemma felt by some medieval Muslim scholars in relation to the status, wealth and power conferred upon them by society as men of religion, and the desire for authenticity, integrity and purity in worship of God. Ghazzali chose to leave his teaching position and rededicate himself to enlivening Islamic spirituality, which he did by straddling the world of Sufism and orthodoxy (his brother Ahmad al-Gazzali was a more thorough-going mystic). Gazzali’s magnum opus, the” Vivification of the Religious Sciences”(Ehya olum al-din), written circa 1106, constitutes one of the important sources for later Sufis in the Iranian cultural sphere, as well as for the more conventional ulama. The Masnavi’s paraphrese of passages or stories from Gazzali’s “Vivification” testifies to Rumi’s familiarity with this work.

Some Sufis, such as the Malamati and the Qalandars, addressed the spiritual dangers of pious reputation by intentionally acting in apparent contradiction to religious law or social standards. In order not to succumb to the temptations of sham piety, they might drink wine in public (or feign to), and shear themselves of all outward signs of social respect, such as the hair and beard, respectable clothes (which even more then now indicated rank and standing), and so forth. Most Sufis did not go this far, choosing instead to concentrate with minute attention on the states (hal, plural ahval) which the soul experienced and the stages (maqamat) of development through which it progressed. Harith al-Muhasibi of Basra in Iraq (d.857) composed a treatise on this method of interior compliance with the will of God. By following a via purgativa and subduing his concupiscent soul (nafs-e ammare), the Sufi could purify his immortal spirit (ruh) from the pollution worldly desires that his own personality could be effaced or absorbed in the spirit of God. Western scholars have commonly described this state, fana, as annihilation of the self, but the term refers not so much to an annihilation of the individual consciousness, as in the Buddist concept of nirvana, as to the effacement or dissolution of the concupiscent or selfish self in the ocean of God’s attributes. Sufis considered this spiritual straggle to conquer the self the greater jihad (jehad-e akbar), as opposed to the lesser and far easier jihad of defending and spreading the temporal dominion of the faith of Islam.

Above and beyond acquired knowledge (elm), the Sufis therefore concerned themselves with an intuitive and experiential knowing of God, or ma refat, a term used, if not coined, by Dhu-al-Nun of Egypt in the 800c. Ma refat, or gnosis, is achieved not by studying the law, but by loving God. As Rumi explains (D 395):

Love resides
not in learning
not in knowledge
not in pages and pamphlets
Wherever the debates of men may lead that is not the lovers’ path
Love’s branches arch over pre-eternity
its roots, you see, delve in Forever
a tree resting not in soil
not trunk
not even Haven’s throne
We deposed reason,
Punished passion with the lash:
For such reason and such morals
Were degrading to such glory
You see,
So you long as you long
You idolize longing;
But become the beloved
And then no being longs
The incessant hopes and fears
Of the sea-faring man
Float upon planks;
But obliterate
Both planks and seaman
And only submersion remains
Shams of Tabriz! The sea is you,
The pearl, too,
Because your being
Head to toe
Is nothing
But the mystery

A Sufi did not necessarily experience progress along the spiritual path (tariqe) as a constant intensification of illumination or Gnostic understanding. His soul might be subject to alternating periods of divine grace (bast), during which visions and intimations might come upon him, and of spiritual contraction (qabz), periods of frustration or despair during which he could not feel God’s presence. However having advanced far enough along the journey to God, a Sufi might attain the ecstatic state of fana. In the throes of fana a Sufi would perceive himself and his self effaced in God. Feeling thus submerged in the divine, a worshiper might give voice to this sensation in expressions, which appeared to the orthodox as sherk (joining partners with God) or kofr (utter blasphemy). Such ecstatic outbursts, known by the technical term shathiyat , included “Glory be to me” (sobhani) ,shouted out by Bayazid Bestami in eastern Iran (d.874) and “I am the Truth” (ana al-Haqq) ,spoken by Mansur al-Hallaj, executed in Bagdad in 922 for the likes of this and other statements. Most Sufis, such as Hallaj’s contemporary Jonayd (d.910), argued that even if a mystic did experience states of God-intoxication (sokr), he must not share such mysteries with the uninitiated, but should instead maintain a sober demeanor that did not offend those who had not reached this plane of enlightenment. Rumi and other Persian Sufis admired Hallaj for his honesty in sharing his vision of the mysterium tremendum and championing the mystical mod of worship, despite the knowledge that this would lead to martyrdom. Hallaj was thus rightfully executed for speaking the mystery which must not be revealed. Most later Sufis, like Rumi, while revering Hallaj as a martyr of divine love, refrain from outwardly blasphemous or “drunken” exclamations of mystical bliss.

Though Sufism oriented the spiritual quest toward experience (zowq or “tasting”) and gnosis (ma refat) rather than book learning (elm), by the eleventh century several manuals about the theory and praxis of Sufism were available. These include Kalabadi’s “Introduction to the school of Sufism” (Ktab al-ta^arrof le mazhab al-tasavvof, tenth century), the “Book of Flashes” (Ketab al-loma) of Abu Nasr al-Sarraj (d.988), the “Provisions for the Heart” (Qut al-Golub) of Abu Taleb al-Makki (d.996), the “Treatise” (Reasale) of oshayri (986-1072), all in Arabic, and the Persian “Lifting of the Veil” (Kashf al-mahjub) by Hojviri (d.1072). Likewise, vitae of the Sufis were first compiled by al-Solami (d.1021) in his “Biography of Sufis (Tabaqat al-sufiye) and in the “Adornment of the Saints” (Helyat al-owlia) of Abu No aym Esfshani (d.1038). For a deeper understanding of a sources and assumptions of Rumi’ mysticisms, a thorough study of such works is necessary. Space does not permit us to go into such matters here, but the interested reader may refer to a number of widely available works.

Some later Sufis espoused quasi-pantheistic doctrines, with Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) usually singled out as the outstanding exponent of this idea. Ibn Arabi argued that while the Koranic doctrine of unity (towhid) means that the believer should seek union with God, cosmologically it signifies that the created universe, as a manifestations or effulgence of God, is in some respect also a continuation of God’s being. Those who helped spread Ibn Arabi’sideas, either by espousing them, like Sadr al-Din of Konya in his Meftah al-ghayb, or by opposing them in various degrees, like Ala al-Dowley Semnani and Ibn Taymiya ,formulated this as a doctrine of the unity of being, vahdat al-vojud , a term which, though not used by Ibn Arabi,ecame forever associated with his name. Nicholson ascribes this pantheistic trend in large part to the tide of Neoplatonism that eventually swept away the essentially dualist mysticism of al-Ghazzali (NiM, 222-4. This speculative and esoteric theosophizing would come to dominate Sufism in later centuries and divert it from its original ascetic and pietistic roots (NiM 229):

The typical saint is no longer one who has sought God with prayer and aspiration and found Him, after sore travail, in the transfiguration of dying to self through an inexplicable act of grace depending on nothing but the personal will of the Creator; he is rather the complete theosophist and hierophant from whom no mystery is hidden, the perfect man who identifies himself with God or the Logos.

Though this transformation was already underway during Rumi’s lifetime, his own course to sainthood more closely resembles the conventional one of sore travail and self-transfiguration, though many have seen in Rumi’s theosophy the influence of Ibn Arabi (see chapter 9 (, below)

Shaykhs, Saints, Spiritual Confraternities and the Sufi Orders
As far as the praxis of Sufism is concerned system of discipleship to spiritual guides and teachers began to develop in which the aspirant (morid) would train and discipline his spiritual powers under a supervision of a guide (morshed), usually known as Shaykh or Pir, the Arabic and Persian words, respectively, for elder or sage. Once a shaykh or pir attained a saintly reputation, he was numbered among the friends of God, or owlia Allah, owlia being the plural form for vali, “ one befriended by God”. Depending upon the spiritual station attained and the particular school to which he belonged, a vali, through his powers and mystical dominion (velayat), might might also be viewed as a qotb (an axis mundi), or pole of the spiritual word) or as a perfect man, al-ensan al-kamel, a concept elaborated by Ibn Arabi and Abd al-Karim al-Jili (1366-1403). Whether generally recognized by the people or not, the world must always be graced with and sustained by the living presence of a qotb, who acts as a conduit for the release of spiritual energies.

In the course of the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the disciples of various pious scholars of religion and mystical teachers began to construct hospices or centers in which to gather, hold devotions, discuss the meaning of the Koran, the spirituality of Prophet, and so forth. Although religious discussions typically took place in the mosques, the scholars, theologians, judges and jurists of the conventional religious sciences, whose mode of discourse dominated at most mosques, did not particularly encourage or create a conducive atmosphere for the non-traditional modes of spiritual knowledge. Circles of the spiritually and gnostically minded would therefore convene in alternate venues, variously called khanekah (among eastern Iranians), zavie (cloister or shrine), rebate (mostly in the Arabic –speaking world; origionally meaning a fortress), or takye (a support for the poor, or religious institution; a Persian word mostly used however among Turks, where it is pronounced tekke). A khanekah might typically include lodging for travellers or disciples who wish to live in a cloister – like atmosphere, a library for religious and mystical literature, as well as a place for lectures, worship, devotions, and the Gnostic approach to God. A mosque or saints shrine might develop into a khanekah if the founder, director or an important later donor had Sufi proclivities. Like the madrases, however, Sufi centers could be established in perpetuity by the pious endowment of the wealthy benefactor. Many khanekahs were expressly built for and dedicated to the modes of Sufi worship, often in the name of a particular spiritual teacher.

We have a description of one such khanekah in Sarakhs, in Khorasan, not to far from where Rumi was born. Sana i, writing in about 1120, composed the following dedicatory verse for this khanekah, built by or for the chief Qazi in Sarakhs, Sayf al-Dan Mohammad b.Mansur, who, like Rumi, was a mystically minded Hanafi scholar:

Is this the breath of God,
this khanekah
of Muhammad Mansur,
Or has the hornblast ushered in the Resurrection?!
For from three directions,
with its classes, books and medicines,
It lays a festal board
for creed and soul and body
In this building three things
are preserved from two:
body, heart and soul
from grave and languor
Each and every corner resounds with beauty:
The ornamentation of this edifice
Obscures glow of Mercury’s orb
And from its glorious effulgence
Sinai’s shattered stones are put to shame
Any ailment afflicts your body?
Ask here for lozenges, concoctions
That will wet and warm your humors
Any doubts plague your heart?
Read here the sealed Tablet and the Hidden Scroll
There are books here for the heart of the seeker
There are medicines here for the suffering flesh
Jesus is here to dispel the foul air
Khezr is here to dispel the mirage

From now on, this pillar will uphold
Fortune and mercy and palaces of learned men [?]
When you take it in
It exceeds in appearance
The sound of spirit
The sight of houris
Even with two good eyes you cannot comprehend it
So there’s no need to wish:
“May the evil eye be far from you.”
In the face of such grandeur
How can one sigh praises
Equal to your radiance?
For this, Sana i must be excused.

To this same patron, Mohammad –e Mansur, Sana I dedicated his allegory of the soul’s ascent to its creator, the Sayr al-ebad ela al-ma ad, along with a few other odes. These suggest that sermons (majles-e va z), classes on Koran interpretation, zekr sessions and even sama ceremonies took place in this khanekah.

One of the disciplines or modes of worship that spiritual masters would prescribe for their students was the meditative repetition or chanting of certain formulas or mantras – zekr. Though specific meditations might be handed out to disciples according to their particular personality or level of development, each teacher or order might have a particular zekr, or mantra, which he taught to all of his disciples. This would effectively constitute the motto of the order and was performed congregationally, accompanied by rhythmic breathing and sometimes movement, usually in the Sufi lodge.

The Sama ceremony, of which of not all Sufis and certainly not all jurisconsults approved, consisted in listening to music or even dancing, once again a congregational activity held usually in the lodge. Since music or dancing were associated with royal courts, slave girls, wine drinking and debauchery, Islamic law generally did not encourage it, though it did not necessarily forbid it outright, as has often been claimed. Sultan Valad, Rumi’s son, defended the practice against the objection that it contravened the Sharia. The Sufi undertakes sama, a kind of instrumental and motive orison, only after years of spiritual poverty, fasting and retreats, when he has attained a certain state of mystical development. In Sama, this mystic state intensifies, for the goal is a closer approach to God. If one can attain this state through the ritual prayers, so much the better, but if not, the goal of the Shari a is to bring everyone closer to God. Since sama helps the spiritually disciplined to achieve that goal it cannot be contrary to the Shari a.

Prior to joining this congregational forms of worship, novices would be assigned exercises of self-discipline such as fasting, hermitic retreats, etc. Formal acceptance as a pupil or disciple of a master might also require the shaving off of one’s hair and the swearing of an oath to follow his directives and any tasks or disciplines he might assign. In the Mevlevi order, for example, a disciple must first serve in the kitchen of the khaneqah for 1,001 days before being accepted as a novice. For some dervishes, initiation required not only shaving of the head, but also of the face, including the eyebrows. After heeding his master’s followers (khavass). A teacher might convey authority on one or more of this close, hand- trained disciples to initiate others on his behalf. A master might typically deputize such disciples by bestowing upon them a ceremonial dervish cloak, or kherqe, and perhaps giving them authority to represent the master’s teachings in another city. It was usually through the efforts of such disciples, rather than the direct efforts of the shaykhs and sainta themselves, that the disciplines and teachings of the master were codified and systematized into the rules of the order. The founding figures of these larger orders traced (or their follower traced for them) a spiritual lineage stretching back in a chain (selsele) through various well-known Sufis, all the way back to the Prophet. In this manner, the Sufi teacher could claim to possess the esoteric knowledge of the scripture in addition to the conventional outward knowledge of the Koran.

Eventually, certain mystically oriented teachers gained a wider reputation as their followers spread their fame and teaching during visits to other lodges. The local centers in other areas began to affiliate with these teachers and spiritual disciplines they practiced. Many of the itinerant promoters and organizers of Sufi centers were Iranian; as Ibn Battuta tells us, even in Cairo, as late as 1326,most of the members of Sufi zavies were cultured Persian men, who even used the Persian word khanekah to describe their lodges (Bat 37-8), suggesting that the practices of Khorasan had made an impact on the structure and organization of mystical confraternities as far west as Egypt.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the formalization of many such spiritual confraternities or Sufi orders. For example, the Sohravardi order formed around the example, of Abu Najib Sohravardi (1097-1168), who followed Ghazzali’s example and left the Nezamiye Madrase for the mystical life, initiating disciples like Ruzbehan Baqli from Shiraz (d. 1209) and others who exercised their influence, in turn, upon Najm al-Din Kobra. However, Abu Najib’s nephew, Shehab al-Din Omar Sohravardi (1145-1234), actually shaped the Sohravardi order under the patronage of Caliph al-Naser in Baghdad, who encouraged the formation and structuring of the youth guilds (fotovvat) in Baghdad. Sent by the caliph on various embassies, Shehab al-Din Sohravardi spread this model to Konya, Aieppo and Damascus (TrS 34-6). The Yasavi order, active among Turkish-speaking tribes in Central Asia,trces its lineage to an eponimus founder, Ahmad al-Yasavi (d.1166) ,whose practice of spiritual retreats also inspired the Khalvati order and Bektashia (TrS 58-60), both of each would later prove rivals to the Mevlevi order in the Ottoman lands. The Naqshbandis, though named after Baha al-Din Naqshband (d.1389), trace their lineage back to Abu Yusof Hamadani (d.1140), but were shaped into an order w9ith codified rules by Abd al-Khaleq Ghodjvani (d.1220). The Naqshbandis were centered in Central Asia, but also proved popular in Ottoman Turkey and the Cuacasus. In India the Cheshtie, promoted by Baba Farid Ganj-e Shakar (1175?-1265) , a follower of Mo in al-Din Cheshti (d.1236), began to spread at about the same time Rumi came under the influence of Shams.

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RUMI AS KOBRAVI ?
It has often been suggested that Rumi’s father, Baha al-Din Valad disciple, Borhan al-Din, were both members of the Kobravi order or somehow associated with Najm al-Din Kobra (1158-12210) and his followers. Najm al-Din Kobra was initiated in Egypt to the teachings of Abu najib Sohravardi and then devoted himself to the Sufi path of Baba faraj of Tabriz.He returned to his native Khwarazm where he built khaneqah (TrS 55-6) and produced so many disciples that he earned the epithet vali-tarash,”the sculptor of saints”(JNO 419). Hamd Allah Mostowfi, writing in 1330, reports in the Tarikh-e goside (ed.E>G> Browne,Gibb Memorial series facsimile edition Leiden: Brill,1910,1:789 that Najm al-Din accepted twelve people as disciples in his day,all of them great Shayakhs. Mostowfi names only seven of these: Majd al-Din Baghdadi,Sa d al-Din Hamuye, Razi al-Din Ali Lala, Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, Jamal al-Din Kili and, finally, ”Mowlana Jalal al-Din Baha al-Dowle”. Of course, it is chronologically impossible for Rumi to have a member of the Kobravi order and a successor to Najm al-Din Kobra; Rumi left eastern Iran when still a boy about nine, or twelve at the very most, and would not become a great shaikh until circa 1240, some twenty Years after the death of Najm al-Din. Some have tried to resolve the discrepancy by assuming that Mostowfi or one of the scribes who copied his history confused Mowlana Rumi with his father,Mowlana Baha al-Din (indeed, the text appears rather confused on this score). Similar reports of Kobravi affiliation may also be found in the introduction of the Javaher al-asrar of Kamal al-Din Hosayn Khwarazmi (written c.1432) and the Nafahat al-ons of Jami(1414-92),though Jami himself seems reluctant to give this claim full credit (JNO 457). We may assume both of these authors had access to Mostowfi, who may therefore constitute the primary authority for this claim.
Early scholarship on Rumi (e.g. BLH 2:493) tended to take these reports at face value and to assert the influence of the Kobravi teachings on Rumi and his father. Even foruzanfar credited these reports in his early work on Rumi (FB 9). However, a closer examination of the writings of Baha al-Din and Borhan al-Din eventually led Foruzanfar to rule out the possibility of any direct relationship between them and the founders and followers of the kobravi order (FA 69-70 and Bor yw-yt). As a result, persian and Turkish scholars no longer generally credit the claim of kobravi influence (e.g., GB 395; ZrP 23; ME 1:xv). Meier is aware of this (Mei 74), but other Western scholars still the ciecumstantial reports (ScT 13) as does Muhammad Isa Waley (IS 89), at least as regards Baha al-Din.
The reasons for rejects the notion of direct kobravi influence on Baha al-Din are manifold and compelling. First of all, there is no mention of Najm al-Din kobra, Majd al-din Baghdadi (killed 1219) or Najm aldin Razi (also known as Daye, 1177-1256) the principal promoters of the kobravi order, in the extansive writing of Baha alDin Borhan al-Din or Jalal al-Din Rumi. Shams al-Din Tabrizi does mention not in favourable terms (Maq 183, 495). On the other hand, Shams al-Din Tabrizi speaks highly of the Shafe I school Abu Mansur mohmmad of Nayshapur, known as Imam Hafade (d. 1175 in Tabriz), reputedly one of the teachers of najm al-Din kobra. However, Shams-e Tabrizi explicitly talls us that that Rumi revealed things in his sermons that the great Imam Hafade had never mentioned (Maq 284-5).
The rules of etiquette among Sufis required disciples to acknowledge the debt to their mentors and to mention the names of their teachers. The kobravi disciple Najm al-Din Razi mentions the name of his teacher, Majd al-Din Baghdadi. Borhan alDin and Rumi both mention the names of their spiritual mentors, but make no mention of any Kobravis. Shams-e tabrizi talks freely about a wide variety of the famous people whom he had me6t or whose works he had, yet he makes only one passing comment about a known kobravi, and that not complimentary.
Rumi does quote a quatrain from Najm al-Din razi (Daye) in his Discourses (Fih 76, 290), and two quatrains also appear in Shams al-Din Tabrizi’s Maqalat (Maq 138, 463 and 234, 530) but in all cases without attribution. Likewise unattributed is Shams al-Din’s quotation of a quatrain from Sayf al-Din Bakharzi (1190-1261), a close disciple of Najm al-Din kobra based Bokhara (Maq 247, 537). Rumi and Shams quite possibly quoted these quatrains without knowing their source, as such poems circulated extensively in oral form; Abu Nasr al-Sarraj notes that Sufis would sing such quataring during musical sema sessions. Indeed, the manuscript tradition attributes the first of the quatrains of Najm al-Din quoted by Shams to the pen of Rumi and even Foruzanfar’s critical edition of the Divan-e Shams includes this poem, probably erroneously, as a composition of Rumi’s (D R620 or R738)! Najm al-Din Razi’s Mersad al-ebad (“Provision for the Servants of God”) itself includes a line apparently borrowed from a poem of the little-known thirteenth-century peot Rafi al-Din Lonbani (Maq 282-3). So, the quotation of a quathor or scribe.

Even so, it is not implausible that either Shams al-Din or Rumi had read Najm al-Din Razi’s Mersad. In the event that they did, the extant of their indebtedness would appear to be a couple of poems which they did not even remember to attribute to Najm al-Din Razi, whereas Rumi frequently acknowledged his indebtedness to Sana I and Attar, attributing poems to them by name. We may also note that Najm al-Din Razi, whereas Rumi frequently acknowledge his indebtedness to Sana I and Attar, attributing poems to them by name. We may also note that Najm al-Din Razi dedicted poems of his Mersad al- ebad to the Seljuk sultan Ala a-Din kay Qobad in 1223 in hopes of gaining kay Qobads patronage (Mei 41-2). Ala al-Din kay Qobad was apparently not impressed enough to retain Najm al-Din, though within a few years (no more than six), Ala al-Din did establish Baha al-Din valid in a college in konya, apparently under princely patronage.

Sepahsalar (Sep 25 indicates that while in Damascus, Rumi spoke with several famous Sufis, including Sa d al-Din Hamuye (d.1252), a noted successor of Najm al-Din kobrs. It is not clear that Rumi and Sa d al-Din were both in Damascus at the same time, but in any case, Rumi dose not speak of any of the individuals with whom he supposedly met in Damascus as major influences on him. On the contrary, we know that either Rumi or Shams al –Din Tabrizi formed critical opinions of several of these individuals (see chapter $, below). And while Jami noncommittally relates one report linking Baha al-Din with Najm al-Din Kobra (JNO 457), he also relates an anecdot suggestive of antipathy between Najm al-Din Razi (Daye) and Rumi. Though probably antrue, the anecdot nevertheless reveals early Mevlevi perceptions about Najm al-Din and his relationship to Rumi, and is therefore worth retelling. When Najm al-Din Razi came to Konya, he met with both Rumi and Sadr al-Din of Konya, the son –in low of Ibn Arabi. Asked to lead the evening prayers, Najm al-Din selected a Koranic verse for recitation during the two prostrations of the prayer which included the phrase “ O you infidels”. When the prayers were finished, Rumi turned to Sadr al-Din and jokingly told him, “He pronounced it the first time on me and the second time on you”.
Baha al-Din, as we learn from his own writings, used to repeat “ Allah, Allah” (God, God) as his zekr, “because we are the Allahis – we come from Allah and we return unto Him”. In contrast, the zekr of the early Kobravi order, as Majd al-Din Baghdadi indicates, was La elaha ella Allah – “There is no god but God” (Bor yh). This leaves only the importance of light and color in Baha al-Din’s visions in common with the Kobravi heritage of Majd al-Din Baghdadi and Najm al-Din Razi.

But the visionary imagery of divine colors and lights also appears in the writing of other Iranian mystics (e.g., Ggazzâli’s important treatise “The Niche of Lights,” Meskhâ al-anwâr) and does not necessarily point to kobravi influence. Since al-Din kobrâ and Majd al-Din Baghdâdi were about the same age as Bahâ al-Din, and since Najm al-Din Razi was actually a generation younger than he, if further research does establish a direct link between the chromatic and photic symbolism (such as shared terminology or phrasing) in the writing of Baha al-Din and those of the kobravi founders, it might derive from earlier common sources in the Iranian Sufi tradition, and not directly from one another.

When Aflaki traces the Mevlevi order’s spiritual heritage or selsele, he dose not link it to any of the kobravi teachers, but has Jonayd pass on his knowledge to Abu Bakr Shebli (d. 946), who transmits it to Mohammad Zojjaj (d. 1091), and then through Abu bakr Nassaj (d. 1094) to Ahmad Ghazzali (d. 1123 younger brother of the famous Abu Hamed Mohammad Ghazzali), Ahmad khatibi (d. 1123?, the grandfather of Baha al-Din), Shams al-A emme Sarakhsi (d. 1090), Baha al-Din Valad, then Borhan al-Din Termezi, and finally to Rumi, who passes it to sultan Valad, Rumi’s son. Though the chronology of this spiritual lineage seems extremely doubtful, it is significant that no mention is made of Najm al-Din kobra or his disciples, only of Ahmad Ghazzali. Aflaki (Af 143-4) relates atale that showa the son of Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, the kobravi Shaykh of Bokhara, upstaged by Rumi while visiting konya. We may dismiss this as an exaggerated or misremembered, but Aflaki probably had first-hand knowledge of the following report. Aflaki tells us (Af 933) that a copy of Najm al-Din Daye s Koran commentary (Tafsir) was given as a gift to Chelebi Amir Aref (Ulu Aref Chelebi), the head of the Mevlevi order the after the death of Rumi’s son, Sultan Valad. Apparently Ulu Aref Chelebi had no interest in this precious book, on copy of which was at that time available in Anatolia, as he simply gave it away.

All this clearly6 shows that Kobravi order or place any special importance in their teachings. It is only in a source which was not close to the Mevleis, the “Selected History” of Mostowfi, who probably did not know the details of the origins of the various orders, that such a rumor begins sixty years after the death of Rumi.

Sufi Bohemians: Ovaysis, Khezr ande the Qalandars

Everything we know abut Baha al-Din, Shams al-Din and Rumi indicates that they were not attached to any of the famous spiritual teachers or Sufis of their day. They believed in the praxis of mysticism more than its theory, in what the Sfis called “tasting” (zowq) or experiencing for oneself. Baha al-Din himself experienced frequent mystical visions, for which he was not indebted to the theosophical doctrines of a particular mystical teacher. Rather, the path chosen by Rumi and his predecessors was to “follow the Prophet” by disciplining and training one’s soul, watching over one’s heart and concentrating the mind on God. Shams, as revealed in his Maqâlât, was an eclectic person who listened to many thinkers and Sufis without being particularly attached to any of them. Shams was not the type to fit in easily and formally join an order.

Some Gnostics laid claim to esoteric insight derived not from one of the established teachers, but from their own efforts, effectively placing themselves outside the conventional Sufi orders and their spiritual lineage. Such Sufis were often referred to as Ovaysis, taught by the mysterious figure Ovays al-Qarani, who Supposedly had his inspiration directly from Khezr is a mythical figure, sometimes associated with the Biblical Elijah, believed to have initiated Moses into the ways of esoteric knowledge and guided Alexander through the realms of darkness to the fount of life. Since Rumi’s own son, Sultan Valad, explicitly compared the relationship of Shams and Rumi to that of Khezr and Moses (SVE41-2), we would do well to recall the basic outlines of the Koranic basis for the story of Khezr and Moses.

The Koran does not mention Khezr by name, but commentators identify him with the man described as “one of God’s servants” in a parable from the Sura of the Cave (Surat al-kahf, K18: 65-82). God has, however, endowed this particular servant (as the deity’s voice, which narrates the passage, confirms) with a special divine wisdom. Though the Koran reveres Moses as a prophet sent by God, just like the Prophet Mohammad, nevertheless, in this particular vignette, Moses proves lacking in the patience and supernatural insight of Khezr. When Moses sets out to find the junction of the two seas, he walks a long way through the desert with his servant. Eventually they come upon Khezr (K18: 65-82), and recognizing that he possesses the wisdom of the Lord, Moses asks if he may follow Khezr in the hope of learning this special divine guidance. Khezr demurs, explaining that Moses would never be able to keep patience with him, insofar as he would encounter things beyond the compass of his experience and would fail to comprehend them. Moses persists: “God willing, you will find me patient and I will not rebel against your command.” Khezr relents, warning Moses not to question him about anything unless Khezr were to first broach the subject.

Along their journey, they embark in a boat. Khezr pierces a hole in the hull and Moses, incredulous, reprimands him, demanding to know if Khezr would have all the passengers down. Khezr reminds Moses, “Did I not tell you that you will never keep patience with me?” Moses apologizes for his heedlessness and they go on.

Khezr comes next upon a youth and kills him. Moses, wondering aloud why he would kill an innocent soul, chastises Khezr. Khezr again reminds Moses of his vow to remain silently patient. Once again, Moses apologizes: “If I ask you

about any thing else again, cut me off from your company and I will not blame you in the slightest.”
Next they come upon a village and ask for food, but the people there refuse them hospitality. Khezr nevertheless repairs a wall in the vicinity that was about to cave in. Moses blurts out in his impatience that Khezr could have at least asked the townspeople to pay him for his labor.

Here Khezr parts company with Moses, but not before revealing the reasoning behind his inscrutable behavior. In the case of the boat, it belonged to poor working people. A certain king in those parts was expropriating every vessel he came upon, and he was about to overtake this particular boat. Khezr, by rendering it temporarily unseaworthy, wished to save it for its rightful owners. As for the young man, Khezr feared that he would rebel against God and commit blasphemy, brining great anguish to his parents. Khezr intended that in his stead, God would grant them a more compassionate and pious son. Finally, in the case of the wall, a treasure lay buried beneath it, the legacy of a righteous man. He had died, leaving behind two orphaned boys, who knew nothing about their inheritance. God wished for these boys to prosper, and so caused Khezr to uncover their treasure as he rebuilt the wall.

Moses’ impatience, as Khezr had predicted, kept him from seeing the wisdom in all these acts, which Khezr explains he committed not by his own volition, but by the command of God (K18: 82). Many Sufis concluded from this passage that certain saints might receive inspiration directly from God; such direct knowledge from God could complement or even surpass the knowledge revealed to humanity by the messengers chosen by God to reveal His will to all mankind.

Another type of unaffiliated Sufi was the Qalandar. Qalandars were typically mendicant Sufis who signalled their withdrawal from all social conventions by shaving their faces and heads and travelling from town to town in little bands, sometimes flaunting antinomian behavior. Many poems describe the arrival of a Qalandar-like figure in the bazaar as a disruption of the social order; like a beautiful beloved, his overpowering charisma creates chaos, causing the merchants and townsmen to forget religious law and piety in their desire to please him and do his bidding. This motif of the Qalandar appears in the eleventh-century poems of Abu Said Abi al-Khayr (967-1049) and recurs throughout the work of Sanâ i, Attâr and others, though the relationship of this literary motif to the actual practice of Qalandar Sufism is not well established.

It would appear that Hâji Bektash (d. 1271?) came from just such a Qalandar milieu in Khorasan, only to settle down in Anatolia sometime before 1240 (Hamid Algar, “Bektas,” EIr). His spiritual lineage is traced to two Turkish saints, Ahmad al-Yasavi and to a certain Bâbâ Rasul, executed in Amasya in 1240. Although the order now associated with the name of Hâji Bektâsh did not assume its current structure until later, certain remarks by the

Mevlevi disciple Ahmad Aflâki indicate that Bektâsh had a sizeable circle of disciples around him, and that the Mevlevis considered him a rival. Aflâki (Af 318) critiques Hâji Bektâsh as one who, though an illuminated gnostic at heart, failed to follow the ways of the Prophet (dar motâba at nabud), which, as we shall see (in chapter 4, below) was the animating spirit of Rumi and his teachers. Aflâki recounts an anecdote, probably greatly embellished, in which Hâji Bektâsh sends his deputy, Shaykh Eshâq, to sniff out the secrets of Rumi’s popularity and success as a spiritual teacher. Rumi discerns the adulterated motives of Eshâq and composes a poem for him (D 3061), beginning:

If you don’t have somebody to love,
Why don’t you seek somebody?
And if you’ve found that someone to love,
Why don’t you sing out for joy?

Upon Eshâq’s return to Hâji Bektâsh, he learns that Bektâsh has had a dream in which he is forced to admit the inferiority of his own spiritual attainments and to submit to the greatness of Rumi’s station (Af 382-3). The point of the anecdote, of course, is to reassure Mevlevi disciples that they have nothing to learn from Bektâsh and his followers which cannot be learned more fully from complete devotion to their own master, Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Rumi, and the disciplines taught in his Mevlevi order.

A phenomenon perhaps not unrelated to the Qalandars is the Malâmati strain of Sufism, “the blamers.” Since a Sufi could win a public reputation as a saint for remarkable acts of piety and asceticism, he might be tempted to work miracles or parade his powers for social gain. In order to avoid such worldly distractions from the spiritual path, Malamti Sufis might purposely discredit themselves by acting in an impious manner, or at least seeming to, by appearing drunk in public, for example. Of course, in the long run this might also have the converse effect of making debauchery appear religiously permissible in the pursuit of mystical insight.

Although the early Sufis generally tended toward asceticism and the reclusive lifestyle, refusing affiliation with political authority, many of the orders eventually developed relations with the princely courts and governors, many of whom had a genuine interest in the spiritual life. Besides, the patronage of pious persons could be politically provident, helping to create good impressions with the ulama and the artisan classes. From about 1126 to his death in 1131, Sanâ i, though not a member of a formal order, became the personal poet and spiritual adviser to Bahrâmshâh (r. 1118-52), the Ghaznavid ruler. Jâmi (d. 1492), a member of the Naqshbandi order, developed close relations with his disciple Ali Shir Nava I (1441-1501), poet and vizier to the Timurid ruler of Khorasan, Hosayn Bâyqâra (1468-1506). Rumi’s father, Baha al- Din, accepted the patronage of Alâ al-Din Kay Qobâd, and Rumi himself advised Mo in al-Din Parvne on political relations with the Mongols (e.g., Discourse 1, Fih 4-5). In later centuries, the Mevlevi order became integrally involved with the ceremonials of the Ottoman state (see chapter 10

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A RUMI VIEW
ISLAM, THE LAW, THE SPIRIT
In the prose introduction to the fifth book of the Masnavi, Rumi tells us exactly where he stands within the Muslim tradition of law (shari at), the way of the Sufis (tariqat), and gnosis or the attainment of truth (haqiqat). He tells us that the law of religion is like a candle that shows us the way; without that candle we cannot even set foot on the spiritual path. Once the way is lit with the light of the law, the wayfarer begins his spiritual quest, which takes place on the Sufi path. At the end of the journey, one arrives at truth.

Rumi uses alchemy as an analogy. The theories behind the transmutation of metal as learned from a teacher or a book are like the laws of religion. One needs to know these before one can begin walking down the path, but one only comes to see how the theory applies to real life as one walks the Sufi path. It is in the experience of the spiritual path that we actually apply the chemical agents to the metal, as it were. Only by following the path to the end can turn the actual copper into gold and attain the truth.
At any given moment we all stand at different points on this spiritual path and, as humans, we tend to rejoice in and champion the particular stage we happen to occupy at the moment. Those who know the theory of alchemy boast of their attainments. Those who actually perform alchemy rejoice in their transformative magic. But those transmuted into gold have left behind the preoccupations of either knowing or applying the theory.

Rumi next compares the three stages of religion to the field of medicine. Religious law is like learning the science of medicine. Actually taking the appropriate medicine and observing a proper diet is what the Sufi path is all about. But true health consists in dying to the passions of the world, and when we die both the law and the path fade into nothingness; only the face of God remains in our field of vision (K28:88). Therefore, those who wish to meet their Lord should do good works and keep their hearts and minds focused on the worship of the one true God, allowing nothing and no one else to adulterate their aspirations, as the Koran demands (K18: 110).

Though Rumi had a wealth of approaches and manuals to draw upon for his Sufi practice, his theosophy and mysticism, we should look directly to his immediate formative influence-his father, his teacher Borhân al-Din, and his spiritual master, Shams al- Din-to learn more about how and what he learned and taught. The following chapters in part I of this book therefore focus in depth on the influence of Rumi’s fathers of the blood and of the spirit.

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