Page 336 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

rumi 1637

A poem by Rumi

The man of God is drunken without wine,

The man of God is full without meat,
as a conventional scholar, jurist, and religious counselor
The man of God is distraught and bewildered, to his people.
All this was to change in 1244 when a charismatic and
The man of God has no food or sleep.
mysterious individual by the name of Shams al-Din of
The man of God is a king ‘neath darvish-cloak, Tabriz, popularly known as Shams-i Tabrizi, arrived in
Konya and entered Rumi’s life. Rumi described the trans-
The man of God is a treasure in a ruin.
formative aspects of this fateful encounter in his poetry:
The man of God is not of air and earth,
I was the country’s sober ascetic, I used to teach from the
The man of God is not of fire and water. pulpit—but destiny made me one of Thy hand-clapping
lovers; My hand always used to hold a Koran, but now
The man of God is a boundless sea,
it holds Love’s flagon; My mouth was filled with glorifi-
The man of God rains pearls without a cloud. cation, but now it recites only poetry and songs! (Chittick
1983, 3)
The man of God hath hundred moons and skies,
Rumi became inseparable from Shams as a friend and
The man of God hath hundred suns.
spiritual disciple. One prominent scholar said of Shams’
The man of God is made wise by the Truth, influence on Rumi: “(H)e was transformed from a sober
jurisprudent to an intoxicated celebrant of the mysteries
The man of God is not learned from book.
of Divine Love. One could say that without Shams, there
The man of God is beyond infidelity and religion, would have been no Rumi” (Chittick 1983, 3). This is
only slight exaggeration; the world might well have been
To the man of God right and wrong are alike.
deprived of what is now considered to be among the best-
The man of God has ridden away from selling poetry of all time if the two had never met.
Not-being, Roughly in the year 1247,Shams disappeared,perhaps
killed by Rumi’s followers, who were jealous of his influ-
The man of God is gloriously attended.
ence over their master. Rumi was rendered completely
The man of God is concealed, Shamsi Din; bereft at the permanent loss of his beloved master and
companion. But although Shams was no longer a physi-
The man of God do thou seek and find!
cal presence in Rumi’s life, he became immortalized as a
Source: Rumi. (1898). Selected poems from the Divani Shamsi Tabriz (R.A. Nichol-
son, Ed., p. 15.). London: Cambridge University Press. fixed, phantom presence in the latter’s heart and mind.
From this year until Rumi’s death in 1273,he stopped his
public preaching and wrote poetry incessantly, many of
Sufism. Rumi’s association with Tirmidhi continued until which are Persian ghazals,or love songs,in which he often
the latter’s death in 1240. speaks of the pain of being separated from Shams. How-
For the next four years, Rumi continued his activities ever,Rumi frequently invoked the name Shams as the rep-
as a preacher and as a doctor of law in the Hanafi school resentation of the image of God, the Divine Beloved.The
of Islamic jurisprudence, gaining widespread renown for word shams means“sun;” by its invocation,Rumi referred
his erudition. He also continued his Sufi practices, to both his friend and “the Sun of the Sun,” the Almighty
becoming a master in his own right, which means that he who is the true Beloved and the Ultimate Reality.
traversed the various stations of the Sufi path and Among his major compositions are the Diwan-i Shams-
attained the mystical vision of God. His Sufi practices iTabrizi (“the Collected Poems of Shams-iTabrizi”), which
appear not to have had much effect on his outward life consists of about 40,000 ghazals and quatrains, and the