November 15, 2024
How the 13th-Century Sufi Poet Rumi Became One of the World's Most Popular Writers

The Mid­dle East is tricky­ly the sector’s maximum har­mo­nious area, and it best will get extra frac­tious should you upload in South Asia and the Mediter­ranean. However there’s something on which many res­i­dents of that broad geo­graph­i­cal span can agree: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥam­mad Rūmī. One would possibly in the beginning imag­ine {that a} thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry poet and mys­ti­cal philoso­pher who wrote in In line with­sian, with occa­sion­al for­ays into Turk­ish, Ara­bic, and Greek, could be a distinct segment fig­ure as of late, if identified in any respect. Actually, Rumi, as he’s com­mon­ly identified, is now probably the most pop­u­lar writ­ers in no longer simply the Mid­dle East however the global; Eng­lish rein­ter­pre­ta­tions of his verse have even made him the best-sell­ing poet within the Unit­ed States.

“The trans­for­ma­tive second in Rumi’s existence got here in 1244, when he met a wan­der­ing mys­tic referred to as Shams of Tabriz,” writes the BBC’s Jane Cia­bat­tari. She quotes Brad Gooch, creator of Rumi’s Secret: The Lifetime of the Sufi Poet of Love, describ­ing them as hav­ing an “elec­tric pal­send for 3 years,” and then Shams dis­ap­peared. “Rumi coped through writ­ing poet­ry,” which contains 3,000 poems writ­ten for “Shams, the prophet Muham­mad and God. He wrote 2,000 rubay­at, four-line qua­trains. He wrote in cou­plets a six-vol­ume spir­i­tu­al epic, The Mas­navi.” He did all this paintings in ser­vice of what, in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above, Stephanie Honchell Smith calls his ulti­mate objective: “the reuni­fi­ca­tion of his soul with God during the expe­ri­ence of divine love.”

How is this sort of like to be accessed? “Love is living no longer in be told­ing, no longer in knowl­edge, no longer in pages in books,” Rumi declared. “Wher­ev­er the debates of guys might lead, that isn’t the lover’s trail.” He pur­sued it thru devo­tion to Shams’ Sufism, “par­tic­i­pat­ing in rit­u­al­ized danc­ing and pontificate­ing the reli­gion of affection thru lec­tures, poet­ry, and prose.” Lat­er in existence, he shift­ed “from ecsta­t­ic expres­sions of divine like to vers­es that information oth­ers to dis­cov­er it for them­selves,” incor­po­rat­ing “concepts, sto­ries, and quotes from Islam­ic reli­gious texts, Ara­bic and In line with­sian lit­er­a­ture and ear­li­er Sufi writ­ings and poet­ry.” In line with­haps there may also be no complete appre­ci­a­tion of Rumi’s paintings with­out a schol­ar’s beneath­stand­ing of the lan­guages and cul­tures he knew. But when his gross sales fig­ures are any­factor to head through, the lengthy­ing into which his com­plex paintings faucets is uni­ver­sal.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mys­ti­cal Poet­ry of Rumi Learn Via Til­da Swin­ton, Madon­na, Robert Bly & Cole­guy Barks

Be informed Islam­ic & Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy with 107 Episodes of the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­forged

The Com­plex Geom­e­check out of Islam­ic Artwork & Design: A Quick Intro­duc­tion

500+ Beau­ti­ful Guy­u­scripts from the Islam­ic International Now Dig­i­tized & Loose to Down­load

The Start and Fast Upward push of Islam, Ani­mat­ed (622‑1453)

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and huge­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the e book The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e book.


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