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International Mevlana Symposiuın Papers
,.
Birleşmiş Minetler 2007 Eğitim, Bilim ve Kültür MevlAnA CelAleddin ROmi
Kurumu 800. ~um Yıl Oönümü
United Nations Educaöonal, Scientific and aoo:ı Anniversary of
Cu/tura! Organlzatlon the Birth of Rumi
Symposium organization commitlee Prof. Dr. Mahmut Erol Kılıç (President) Celil Güngör Ekrem Işın Nuri Şimşekler Tugrul İnançer
Bu kitap, 8-12 Mayıs 2007 tarihinde Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlıgı himayesinde ve Başbakanlık Tamtma Fonu'nun katkılanyla İstanbul ve Konya'da düzerılenen Uluslararası Mevhiııfı Sempozyumu bildirilerini içermektedir.
The autlıors are responsible for tlıe content of tlıe essays ..
Volume 3
Motto Project Publication
Istanbul, June 20 ı O
ISBN 978-605-61104-0-5
Editors Mahmut Erol Kılıç Celil Güngör Mustafa Çiçekler
Katkıda bulunanlar Bülent Katkak Muttalip Görgülü Berrin Öztürk Nazan Özer Ayla İlker Mustafa İsmet Saraç Asude Alkaylı Turgut Nadir Aksu Gülay Öztürk Kipmen YusufKat Furkan Katkak Berat Yıldız Yücel Daglı
Book design Ersu Pekin
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Publishing Motto Project, 2007 Mtt İletişim ve Reklam Hizmetleri Şehit Muhtar Cad. Tan Apt. No: 13 1 13 Taksim 1 İstanbul Tel: (212) 250 12 02 Fax: (212) 250 12 64 www.mottoproject.com yayirılar@mottoproject.com
Printing Mas Matbaacılık A.Ş. Hamidiye Mahallesi, Soguksu Caddesi, No. 3 Kagıtlıane - İstanbul Tei. 0212 294 10 00
Rumi's concept of love in the Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi
Ashk P. DahU:n* 1 Sweden
;:, y 01 ).J 0 _,.:.::: y.;-~ _, .yı 1 jl jiç
r.J )~j .ya\ <\.ı ;:, ).J <5" ~ _;::.
Reasoıı sets out oıı pilgrimage loııgiııg for the moment of uııity.
Iıı lo ve, it travels /ike a lıomeless foo/.
(D 2989)
JALAL al-din Rumi (1207-1273) has been read and admired by nu
merous intellectuals and scholars throughout the centuries. The British Orientalist
Reynold A. Nicholson called him 'the greatest mystical poet of any age' and Po
pe John XXIII declared in 1958: 'In the name of the Catholic world, I bow in res
pect to his memory'. Gandhi used to refer to Rumi's Masnawi in his preaching on
human peace and understanding, and Rembrandt was inspired by him in his pa
inting. The purpose of this article is to deseribe the Sufi concept of love that per
meates Rumi' s poetry and to .elucidate in what way this is related to his mysticism
in general. Initially, I will give a brief presentation of my methodological po int of
departure and also attempt to clarif)r the question of the ontological foundation
of mystical poetry. The main part of my study focuses on Rumi's idea of love and
likewise examines the tension between love and intellect in his poems. My analy
sis basically involves questions of an epistemological and hermeneutical nature
and is specifically grounded on a close reading of the Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi.
Phenomenology as a method of studying sufism
My study is based on a phenomenological approach, which has been adopted in
Islamic studies by, for instance, Annmarie Schimmel, Henry Corbin and to some
1'
* [Ashk P. Dahh~n is Lecturer in History of Religions at Stockholm University and Reader at The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in Stockholm. He has translated a selection of Rumi's poetry into Swedish, Vassflöjtens süng.]
1136 extent Louis Massignon. 1 The plıilosophical phenomenology, which springs out of
Husserl's (d. 1938) plıilosophy and his idea of Weseıısselıau (observation of essen
ce) and the distinction between experience and the experieııced, has some notab
le points in comman with modem hermeneutics after Schleiermacher. In contrast
to scientific positivism or empiricism, which emphatically objects to metaphysical
speculation, the fundamental idea of phenomenology is that the phenomena/ex
perienced are more or less directly 'given' (i.e. synthetic apriori). Rudolf Otto, van
W. Brede Kristensen, Friedrich Heiler, C. Jouco Eleeker and Mircea Eliade are the
most prominent phenomenologists of religion in modem times. Even if these phi
losophers have different definitions of the concept of phenomenology, they adopt
in general a comparative, histarical and empirical method in order to understand
the essence of the religious phenomena. In an epistemological sense the most dis
puted question of phenomenology perhaps concems the normative aspects of sci
ence, i.e. whether the approach of phenomenology remains faithful to a purely
descriptive, scientific discourse or whether it has normative implications. This qu
estion is especially relevant in the study of 'other' religious traditions and, with
reference to modem hermeneutics after Hans-Georg Gadamer, I presume that all
knowledge proceeds from certain presuppositions which are characteristic of
man's existential, cultural and histarical state.
According to Schimmel (1994a:xiii), the methodological point of departure
of phenomenology is to study religion and the human experiences of the Divine
as phenomena, in order to gradually understand the inner holy essence, deus
abscoııditus, which is the heart of every religion. She explains in her book De
ciplıering the Signs of God. A Plıenomenological Approaclı to Islam that the phe
nomenologist ought to formuiate his or her approach by considering that religi
on represents a holy sphere for the believers themselves and she argues that no
research at all is unbiased. Nevertheless, Schimmel does not categorise phenome
nology as an intemalistic perspective but refers to the German scientist Friedrich
Heiler's (d. 1967) idea about 'the objective world of religion' to demonstrate that
the phenomenologist can transcend his or her pre-understanding of the pheno
mena by examining the relationship that exists between the inner and the outer
1 For Massignon's study of early lslamic mysticism, cf. La Passian de Husoyn Mansur Hal/oj: Mortyr et mystique de /'islam, 4 vols, Paris, 1975.
Ashk P. Dahlt~n Rumi's coııcept of Iove iıı tlıe Diıvaıı-i Slıams-i Tabrizi
dimensions of religion. While she questions the possibility of achieving a comp
letely 'objective' study of 'other' religions owing to the significance that 'unders
tanding' and 'explanation' have within the human sciences, she suggests that
phenomenology, by being sensitive to the researcher's own givens and relating
these to the intrinsic structure of religion, provides him or her with the most use
ful, methodological approach:
Nevertheless, I believe that the phenomenological approach is well suited to
a better understanding of Islam, especially the model which Friedrich Heller de
veloped in his comprehensive study Erscheinungsfonnen und Wesen der Religi
on (Stuttgart 1961), on whose structure I have modelled this book. For he tries to
enter into the heart of religion by studying first the phenomena and the deeper
and deeper layers of human respanses to the Divine until he reaches the inner
most sacred core of each religion, the centre, the Numinous, the deus abscondi
tus (Schimmel 1994a:xiii}.2
In contrast to Schimmel, who is especially interested in Heiler's phenome
nological descriptions of the relationship between spirit and materia with regard
to the inanimate objects (for instance, objects in nature or of everyday life), Henry
Corbin has particularly developed the hermeneutical approach ofphenomenology.
Corbin was influenced by German phenomenology and Heidegger's existence phi
losophy in his early career but became deeply attracted to Shi'i theosophy ( 'iıfan)
after his encounter with the Iranian sages, in particnlar Shihab al-din Suhrawar
di (d. 1191), whose work he translated into French. In his book En Islam Iranien,
which was published in four volumesin 1971-72, he deseribes the ontological fo
undation of traditional hermeneutics in connection with the symbolism of religi
ous language. In the view of Corbin, who studies Sufism in his capacity as a com-
2 Schimmel's phenomenology is dosely akin to the ideas that have been presented by Mircea Eliade (d 1986), who from his Jungian vantage point attempted a psychological analysis in the study of religion. Eliade's point of departure is that the holy exists as an object for human worship and that man in his experience of the holy encounters hierophanies- physical manifestations or revelations- mostIy in the form of symbols, myths and ri tu als. According to this view, every phenomenon is an intrinsic hierophany that connects man with non-histarical time: what he ca lls il/ud tempus (Lat. 'that time'). lt is interesting to note that Eliade co-operated with Corbin and Gershom Scholem after the Second World War in the establishment of religious studies at Ascona University (Switıerland). The main philosophical theme of the discussions at their annual gatherings, which have been published in the journal Eronos-Jahrbuch, may be construed as phenomenologfcal (Wasserstrom 1999).
1138 parative philosopher, hermeneutics has a specific, ontological basis and airns at
exposing the 'inner reality' that is concealed by the extemal phenomena.3
Corbin (1998:26) considers religious science as a hierology, a knowledge of
the holy, which with phenomenology aims at achieving a hermeneutic of sacred
phenomena - symbols and texts. Inspired by Heidegger's metaphysical explana
tions of Dasein ('life') according to which existence can be understood only in
relation to itself (that is, as a form of presence), Corbin constructs the traditional
Sufi hermeneutic with reference to and by comparing it with Christian medieval
thinking. By emphasizing the symbolic and intuitive foundation of phenomeno
logy, Corbin (1998:24) suggests that hermeneutics cannot be formulated accor
ding to positivistic deductive method but only with reference to the 'transpa
rency' of phenomena:
The phenomenological method is exactly that: to hold and unveil consci
ousness just as it reveals itself in the object it reveals. This object, believed to be
visible and perceptible, is only unveiled inasmuch as it is revealed as conscious
ness of the object. It is through this revelation of itself, that it is revealed to it
self. The logos which composes the word 'phenomenology' means: to show ıvhat
is revealed in the apparent. [ ... ] However, this presence-otiented understanding,
or science of presence, is not structured along the lin es of a deductive science, an
explanation by genetic reduction, nor a reconstitution based on a pattem of ma
tetial causes. It is, instead, a call towards light, a progressive transpareııce of the
phenomenon. This is why phenomenologists charactetize it as henııeııeutic.
By following Corbin's and Schimmel's approach in the desetiption of Islam,
the following study airns at adapting the fundamental features of phenomenolo-
. gical method in the examination of Rumi' s Sufi concept of love. With my point
of departure in a direct, desctiptive and non-analytical desetiption of the central,
structural aspect of Rumi's lyrics, i. e. love, it is my view that a deeper und erstan
ding of the spiritual meaning of the poet's work can be grasped. Modem man is
3 Corbin suggests that the Ara b i c words zahir and bati n express exactly the contrast between the outer and the inn er dimensions of religion. The relationship between the outer and the inner is, in his view, not of an allegorical sort but symbolic, in the sense that the inn er essence is mediated through the external phenomena, which by definition are transparent. Corbin (1938) in fact wrote large portions of his commentary on his French translation of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (Being and time) in Arabic and Persian.
Ashk P. Dahlı~n Rımıi's concept of love in tlıe Dizvan-i Shams-i Tabrizi
no longer attuned to the traditional forms of expressian but immersed in a world
that grants very little reality to the religious dimensions of life. The keywords of
my reading of Rumi' s poems are hence 'openness' and 'empathy', through which
understanding equals participation and re-experience of the hermeneutical hori
zon of the text; the life of which it is an expression. Through this process, I pre
sume that I may transcend my own hermeneutical situation, modernity, and its
cultural, historical, linguistic and social symbols, in order to bring forth a frag
ment of the truth of which Rumi considers himself a bearer. However, it should
be emphasized that my definition of such a mediated understanding is different
from Gadamer's (1989) idea of'fusion ofhorizons', i.e. between the horizon ofthe
text and that of the reader, which according to him, is related to historicity. I wish,
in sum, to dwell upon the timeless and the archetypical in Rumi's thought.
The foundation of 1yrica1 poetry: Mystical appropriation and presence
Rumi's literary production consists principally of the two poetical works Masııa
ıvi-yi ma 'ııaıvi and Diıvaıı-i Shams-i Tabrizi, together with the prose work Filıi
ma .filıi ('In that exists what exists'). While the prose work is arranged as an in
timate discourse, a kind of 'tab le talk' on sp iritual subjects between Rumi and his
disciples, poetry is the form of literature with which we co mm only associate Ru
mi. Diıvaıı-i Shams, the work in which Rumi reaches his most sublime as far as
poetical elegance is concerned, consists primarily of his glıazal-Iyrics. The gha
zal is probably a heritage frpm the pre-Islamic love and wine songs of Persia that
from the ll th century onwards w ere also used to communicate mystical experi
ences. It consists of 5-20 couplets in which the lines in the first couplet rhyme
in pairs. This rhyme is afterwards repeated at the end of every line and the last
couplet rhymes, like the fust, in pairs.
The Diıvaıı-i Shams consists of around 40,000 couplets in 3230 poems in Ba
di' al-Zaman Furuzanfar's critical edition. An invocation to Shams al-din is to be fo
und at the end of the poems, where Persian poets generally mention their own ııoms
de plume. This is something that reveals a facet of Shams al-din's significance for
Rumi's spiritual and literary creativity. The affectionate ftiendship between Rumi and
Shams al-din is commonly seen as an illustration of how the mystic is capable of
opening his heart to a kindred soul, the master, and I et it be reflected in his heart, so
1140 as to surrender it to God. Rumi emphasises that mysticism contains earthly hamda
mi (sympatlıia), in that the mystic cannot do without a fiiend with whom to share
his experiences of the states (ahwaQ oflove. The fiiendship between Rumi and Shams
was unique in the sense that it involved not the customary Sufi adoration of the Be
loved in the shape of a young virgin but a meeting between two experienced men,
which is why their meeting is called 'the merging of the two seas' (majma' al-balıra
in) in the traditional sources. By depicting his divine love in human terms, Rumi fol
lows an established tradition in Persian poetry of describing spirituallove by the use
of erotic imagery. He is perfectly aware of the psychological nature of the love rela
tionship, i.e. it is only possible to love sameone silleerely whom you know loves you.
The human and metaphysical dimensions of love coincide since even if Rumi exp
resses his love to Shams (literally 'sun') and the sorrow over his absence, he eventu
ally draws our attention to the true hidden meaning; the love of God, the Sun of suns.
For Rumi, Shams assumes the function of the personal divinity:
A world slumbers in the dark night of forgetfulness,
but for me it is bright day and sunrise.
The one deprived of love lives in darkness.
The one who is filled by the passian of love d wells in the light. (D 8 ı 6)
In hermeneutical terms, Rumi's poetry is concemed with the mysteries of God
and it reflects his inner tension between tranquillity and bewilderment, sorrow and
joy, and anxiety and courage. Each of the lyrical poems in the Diwan-i Slıams rep
resents a symbolic realization or delineation of the spiritual mo des or stations (ma
qam) that spring from his divine love. The poems were composed when Rumi was
in a state of rapture and are typically musical and ecstatic. His language is ingenu
ous, vigorous and expressive. He recited his verses in the divine inspiration of the
moment, while his disciples wrote them down. The book is permeated by ecstatic lo
ve and does not primarily consist of rhymed and versified philosophical ideas but
of words, open in many directions. His experience or unveiling (kashjj of the Divi
ne is direct and personal and, as a true portrayal of human existence, the poetry
cannot be the object of a literary critique in the profane and modem sense of the
term. Rumi's hermeneutics is transcendent and trans-histarical and includes a mo
vement up the celestialladder of divine symbolism that culminates in unity with the
Beloved. This is, in his view, the true meaning of the Arabic term ta 'wil, 'to repla-
Ashk P. Dahlt~n Rumi's coııcept of love iıı the Diıvaıı-i 5/ıams-i Tabrizi
ce sometlıing with its origin and Archetype'. In itsfuror poeticus his poetıy is that
of inspiration par excellence. The meaning pre-dominates so much over the form
that in rare cases the ghazals even violate the rules of classkal Persian prosody w hi
le stili maintaining a strong rhytlım and melody (Schimmel 1994a:403).4
The ontological foundation of Rumi' s lyrics and their alıundant use of ima
ges which originate from the symbolical world (Pers. 'alam-i misal, Lat. mundus
imaginalis) is the presence of a cosmological hierarchy. A5 Corbin (1971: 138 and
159) puts it, traditional hermeneutics operates in a permanent hierarchical spa
ce, une spatialite qualitative pennanente et lıierarcJıisee, and alsa points towards
an interiorisation rather than a lıistoricisation. In contrast to the focus of mo
dem hermeneutics on the so-called hermeneutical circle, the continual recipro
city that takes place in understanding between the whole and parts of a text, Ru
mi's verses are concemed not with the histarical but with the symbolism that ari
ginates in the transcendent. In fact, Sufi symbolism includes an ontological hi
erarchy of reality and meaning and alsa, therefore, of knowledge and understan
ding, in order to serve as keys to Divine Truth. Through the symbols, the mystic
gains an intimation of w hat the images represent on a sp iritual level, as if each
object of love were a window into paradise.
William Chittick ( 1983 :248, 1996:7 4) agrees with Corbin and stresses that the
concept of mundus imaginalis belongs to the comman Sufi frame of reference in
the sense that the mystics adopt a range of diverse symbols to deseribe God's self
manifestation. He alsa argues that Rumi, in contrast to Ibn 'Arabi, who develops a
systematic teaching based on that concept, only touches upon the existence of an
intermediate symbolic world in veiled poetical language. In Sufi symbolism, the
transparency of the casmos consists in the belief that creation as a who le is symbo
lic in terrus of being a marrifestation or retleetion of the metacosmic reality, w hi ch
is realized through the inner power of the heart, man' s inmost reality. The Archety
pes are manifested in symbols or representations, like the Platonic Ideas: a num-
4 The Persian metre resembles the Greek and Latin in being quantitative, i.e. it is based on an alternation of long and short syllables and demands a strict observation of rhyme and arrangement of syllables. Rumi is fascinating in his defınite predilection for word formations and artistic turns and devices. Even if he cannot match Shamsal-din Hafız in his ghazal poetry as far as ambiguity is concerned, it is dear that he treats words and phrases more liberally than many other dassical poets. ·
1142 b er of ideal forrus or patterns that lie 'behind' the fluctuations of existence, acces
sible only through intellectual contemplation, aesthetic awareness and spiritual
participation.5 As Corbin (1998) emphasises, Rumi's imagery has a noetic (cogniti
ve) fıınction in its capacity as a ladder and an intermediate between the sensory
world of pure objects and the angelic world of pure spirits without being enclosed
by the cognitive (as in Kant's division between noumeııoıı and phenomeııoıı):
We observe immediately that we arenolonger reduced to the dileruma of
thought and extension, to the schema of a cosmology and a gnoseology limited
to the empirical world and the world of abstract understanding. Between the two
is placed an intermediate world, which our authors designate as 'aZam al-mithal,
the world of the Image, mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the
world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty
of perception belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive fıınction, a ııoetic va
lue, as fully real as the faculties of sensory perception or intellectual intuition.
This faculty is the imaginative power, the one we must avoid confıısing with the
imagination that modem man identifies with 'fantasy' and that, according to
him, produces only the 'imaginary'(Corbin 1995:9).
In the sense that esateric imagination is a relatively subjective state, which re
veals spiritual meanings beyond material existence, imaginative perception and
consciousness are endowed with a cognitive dimension or value. As the signifier in
the signified, the term misal designates an 'image', an intermediary, which is neither
the thing that it images nor completely different from it. Rumi's work of literature
has a distinctive symbol system. His aesthetic mysticism, which constantly amplifies
eternal Archetypes in constantly fresh images and symbols, adapts the profane and
· religious imageıy of earlier Persian poetry in turning the elements of derivative lo
ve, such as the attributes of a beautiful woman, into reflections ofDivine Beauty. The
fıınction of the symbols is to transform the loving mystic into the Beloved's image
and reality since, while the poetical images, in Rumi's view, correspond to the Belo
ved's transcendent reality, these canceptual representations ultimately only veil the
Beloved's face. In the sense that understanding is a form of modus essendi, intellec
tive imagination cannot deseribe the infinite attributes of love in any exhaustive
5 In Corbin's terminology, the concept of 'alum-i misal is identical with mundus archetypus, the world of Archetypes, which corresponds to Plato's theory of ldeas.
As h k P. Dahh~n Rımıi 's coııcept of lo ve iıı tlıe Diıvaıı-i Shams-i Tabrizi
manner. Rumi explains that the poetical images serve as clıannels to the Divine sim
ply in the sense of revealing inner meanings beyond the phenomenal world:
Everytlıing save my Beloved is appearance and impression.
Imagination is like the thorn, if you can perceive love's rose-garden. (D 1156)
Love's image is hidden and manifest all at once.
I have never witnessed its equal in concealment and revelation.
The world seeks it and the soul as well.
Behold the image. The soul outshines the world. (D 2701)
Rumi likens his po etical metaphors to the smell of the fruit -trees of paradi
se or shining stars that ultimately reflect the light of God. In his hermeneutical
concept of 'appropriation', he claims the absolute sovereignty of the text over the
human soul and stresses that the soul's noble trust is to be alısorbed by the pa
radisal ambiance (hal) that surrounds the living vocalization (qal) of the text.
Since truth and reality are like two sides of the same coin understanding is al
ways dependent on the existential state of the reader. The reader must not stand
'outside' the text and test its value analytically as a collection of hypothetical
propositions but appropriate it in a contemplative sense:
Listen to love's word and behold its life-giving breath.
Lo ve acts in the world of the Spirit and grants you a pure he art. (D 601)
According to Chittick (1983:358), the distinct ambivalence between love and
reason in Rumi's poetry results in his symbolic language and his desetiption of
'imagination' having a broader scope than those of other contemporary mystics,
such as Ibn 'Arabi. In addition, Rumi's terminology contains an almost limitless
spectrum of images that are used to concretise his spiritual and aesthetic vision.
His lyrics present a distinct symbol system made up of images, w hi ch as Amin Ba
nani (1996:38) expresses it, 'point towards a transcendence of speeclı itself. Ru
mi's mysticalhermeneutics is essentially a listening (s ama'), in which the Divine
breaks through the structural process and composition of understanding. His work
is truly Platonic, as mimesis (the highest form of 'imitation') of the Divine Arc
hetypes or Ideas: Truth, Beauty and Good, with which man can come into contact
through gnosis· when the symbolism is placed in the light of theophanic illumina-
1144 tion (islıraq). As a speaking artist, Rumi is unsurprisingly also creative and obser
ves eveıything as a creator. His art is the realization of the Divine in that man is
by his theomorphism a work of art, an image of the Divine Image, and at the sa
me time an artist. By letting the spirit enter in to the formal structure of the text,
w hi ch consists of metres and syllables, Rumi gives, in the words of Amin Eanani
(1996:31), also new life to the formal arrangement of the ghazal:
It is no mere coincidence that this prime period ofPersian glıazal is also the
time when it was the preferred vehicle for expressing the high mystical aspirati
ons of the soul. Of the three supreme practitioners of the art [Rumi, Sa'di and Ha
fiz], it was Rumi who fused the mystic vocabulary and the language of the gha
zal, the predominant ethos of mysticism as well as the intrica te fabric of symbo
lism, to such an extent that ghazal asa form takes ona unitary vision of the uni
verse. It could be argued, for example, that it was Rumi's conflating of the pu
rest mystical spirit with the most corporeal sensuality that paved the way for Ha
fez's tantalizing irony and ambivalence. This inherent affinity between the glıa
zal form and the mystic vision cannot be overemphasized.
In fact, Islamic mystics consider Rumi's poems not as literattire in the com
mon sense of the word but as a revelation (qur'an dar zaban-i pahlawi) that arigi
nates in the etemity that belongs to the uncreated. Mysticism is essentially a mo
de of revelation and its means of expressian are, therefore, different from the ver
bal language of the mind. Poetry is divine, similar to music and dance, which for
Rumi are fused into an artistic synthesis, a mode of invocation (dlıikr) that brings
man dose to God, who is therefore at once the supreme musician and poet.6 The
body is only a witness, w hile it is the eye of the heart that tums the symbols into
poetical communication. Rumi's poetry is truly literattire as categorie spirituelle:
O Esseneel I am the poetry's servant. My verses belong to you.
You who embodythe angel ofresurrection and the tone of the trumpet! (D 3073)
6 The sa ma' ceremony of the Maulawiyyah order unites music and dan ce, symbols of the celestial sphere, as instruments for the human presence, insight and absorption into the Divine. This order, which was founded by Rumi's son, Sultan Walad, is commonly known in the West as 'the Whirling dervishes'. In lslamic mysticism, dhikr constitutes a sanctification of the Divine N ames, an aspect of the timeless wisdom of Providence, through which the Sufi places himself in situations that produce visionary experiencesor mukashafat ('unveilings'}, i.e. enlightening symbols coming from higher worlds that bring about union with God's presence and beauty.
Ashk P. Dahlen Rumi's coııcept of love iıı tlze Diıvaıı-i Shams-i Tabrizi
God is love and beyond love
Divine love ('ishq) is the thematic heart of the Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi and on
the whole forms the central element of Rumi's mysticism. This magnum opus is
essentially a love letter written to his unseen Beloved. From the beginning to the
end, the book is permeated by longing and melancholy over the separation from
the Beloved, and thejoy and rapture over His presence or immanence. Rumi's lo
ve of God is personal; it overwhelms him and bums him; it is colourful and fla
ming. He is not primarily interested in the theoretical problem of love but seeks
rather to communicate his spiritual experience of love and its states. With an
outstanding fullness, he accomplishes something so significant as to uncover the
intrinsic life-giving and genuinely transforming potential of love in his personal
relationship to the Divine:
I am the moon's servant; Say nothing but the moon!
Say nothing but sweet and pleasant things to me.
Do not speak about pain but only about fortune.
Do not bather with all this stupidity. Say nothing!
Tonight I was bewildered. Love saw me and whispered:
'I am here, don't lament but tear off your dress. Say nothing.'
I answered: ' O love! I fear something else.'
Love said: 'Nothing else exists. Say nothing.' (D 22 19)
In Rumi's view, God is the nucleus and source from which all spiritual be
auty and joy has i ts origin. Love is a Divine Attribute (sifat-i khuda 'i) and, hen
ce, as sublime as God Himself. Islamic mystics frequently refer to the descripti
ons of love in the Qur'anic revelation. According to the Qur'an (85:14), God, the
most loving (al-Wadud), guides man by and through His love. For Rumi, God is
absolute love, but God passesses not only love but also other qualities, such as
compassion, grace and wisdom, since only the Divine Essence (Dhat) transcends
His Names. In this respect, there exists a sympathetic union among the Divine
Names insofar as, while all the Names refer to one and the same Named One,
each one of them refers to an essential determination, different from all the rest.
Each Name has its own 'reality', by which it is distinguished from the rest of the
Names. While all the Names point to one single reality, they do not stand on an
1146 equallevel. By considering a difference of degree among the Names, Rumi exp
lains that love is of a higher orderthan other N ames, such as will or knowledge:
('-4 -'.) c.S ~ _/> "-! ('.).? _;..-,
('-4...1..i c.S~ if~~~
I travelled from far away from city to city.
But I have never witnessed a city like the city of love! (D 1509)
Rumi is hence more interested in the Divine Names than his Essence, in God
as an artist and a performer. He m editates up on the cosmic drama of man, in the
sense that it is a retleetion of a higher existence, a realm of love (jahan-i 'islıq), in
which the human, contemplative eye can experience the uncreated love and be
hold its celestial beauty. Love is the quintessence oflife that encloses the world and
constantly descends, manifests and realizes itself as an epiphany. The world is, in
other words, a theophany of the Divine N ames that can be said to represent the im
manent aspect of the Divine. The Divine N ames, which are mentionedin the Qur'an
(41:53) as the most beautiful Names (al-asma' al-Jıusna), are keys by which the
mystic perceives God and ultimately is alısorbed by Him. The world is, in other
words, a sum of the signs of Go d, by w hi ch man breathes and acts in a universe
where the ayat Allalı are reflected within himself as well as in the extemal reality:
Since you have not the endurance for His Essence,
Tum your eyes toward the Attributes. (D 386)
The virgin nature of our world is, according to Rumi, not a temptation to the
sensual but a reminder of the realm of love, a mirror of the Divine (ainalı-yi tajalli).
He is in this sense a true inheritor of Plato, since his main theme, similar to Plato's
descriptions of eros in his dialogue Symposia, is love as aesthetic longing and creati
ve intuition: a spirituallove, which is the foundation of all physicallove and beauty?
7 Cf. Plato 1999. A number of authorities on Rumi, such as R. A. Nicholson, underiine the eclectic character of Rumi's poetry and point to a distinct Neoplatonic feature in his work. However, Rumi's terminology does not inci u de any well-defined idea of emanation or concept of the grades of emanation similar to that of the Neoplatonists.
1\shk P. Dahh!n Rıımi's concept of /o ve iıı tlıe Dizvan-i Shams-i Tabrizi
While Rumi and Plato unite in emphasizing the musical beauty of love, our poet
differs from the Greek truth-seeker in an important way. Rumi's aim is not only to
evoke retleetion in philosophical inquiry and excursus but also to transcend the
courteous beauty of love by integrating love with bewilderment, sometlıing that
bears a resemblance to madness (diwaııigi). He seeks not only to evoke man's as
piration towards immortality in union with the good, to the procreation and the
breeeling of the beautiful, but also to arause the fervour and passian of love. It is
significant that to denote his spirituallove in one verse, he adapts the Greek-Clıris
tian word agape, whiclı corresponds to the Platonic eros (D 2542).
Rumi formulates this etemal and emanating love with a remarkable since
rity and expressiveness. Love is etemal and ab aetenıo; it is the all-embracing
transcendence that transcends the ultimate outpost of human consciousness (D
391, 388 and 937). Love is the soul of the world-soul (jan-i jan-i jahaıı) that trans
cends the two worlds, and its ca use ( 'illat) is beyand and separate from all causes,
with all individual creatures participating in divine love as true lovers concealed
in extemal forrus (D 908 and 3026). Love is the directian of prayer (qiblalı-yi difj
and the enigma of God (sirr-i khuda) (D 29 and 1097). Rumi's friendship with
Shams al-din leads him to make alıundant use of sun symbolism. He suggests that
the sun of true knowledge (khurslıid-i Jıaqiqat) slıines through the Spirit, the east
of love (ınashriq-i 'ishq), and tempts the lover's heart to depart for daybreak. But
geographical definitions, such as east and west, are wholly insignificant compa
red with the abode or 'no-plate' (la-makaıı) of the pure Divine Self. For the true
sun is God, something that Rumi touclıes upon in a poem in which he compares
the light of early rooming to. a true testimony of the Islamic confession (slıalıa
dah) that rises above the dark night of the individual min d (D 2408).
In Rumi's poetry, love is inherently immanent and at the same time abso
lutely transcendent. It is the most distinctive, integrative force in the world and
is present in each little piece of God's creation, from the lowest particle of dust
to the highest sp iritual substance. Rumi finds imagery for various aspects of the
immense supremacy of love in the most trivial and ordinary, since for love the
re is no superior or inferior, no high or low. Love is like a dragon (izhdilıa) in its
power and repentance (taubalı) is like a petty worm (kinn). He compares love to
a bloodthirsty lion or slıir-i klıunklıwar that thirsts for the lover's heart and says
that the lover must make his heart a fair game so that the beast can perceive the
pulse of desire and the smell of passion. When the lion swallows the lover's he-
1148 art, the lover unites with the beast and is granted etemallife in the realm of lo
ve (D 747, 919, 1072, 1814). Love is the lion in thejungle of every lover of God
and is not intended for cowards (naznazan) but for the courageous (purdilan).
Love is therefore the pursuit of heroes (kar-i shinnardan), since no one can tri
umph over the power of love. The lion represents, like the dragon, the mystical
ability to act in contrast to mystical contemplation.
According to Rumi, the true mystic is a 'son of the moment' (ibn al-waqt)
who exists in a state beyond time and space. Even if Islamic mysticism trans
cends the world of forms, his transcendence is not a 'beyond' but a 'here and
now'. In rich, metaphorical imagery, he deseribes man's anticipation of the eter
nal attribute of the Spirit and regeneration as a sp iritual being in divinis. He pra
ises the unconstrained intoxication and inner rapture that springs from love, the
rapture that induces 'the housewife of the spirit to rush out into the sunshine and
tear her veil apart' and makes 'the shepherd of the self abandon his sheep flock
in enchantment to count the shining celestial bodies of the night' (D 1198). In a
word, the drama of the human soul is the nostalgic longing to embody the con
tinuity of love that God has established between Himself and His creation.
Rumi does not merely deseribe mystical love but manifests it linguistically
for the reader. Instead of explaining love verbally, he embodies it in his poetry.
The written word is, therefore, something more profound than the individual
expressian of the subject. The word is an impregnable endowment, which means
that faithfulness to the word is truthfulness to God. Considering spirituality as
an immediate, inn er vision of transcendent truths rather than theoreticalleaming
and speculation, he rejects the limits of methodological reason ('aql-i juzi) since
love cannot be contained within the norms and postulates of logic. Love can
deseribe and elucidate itself in the same sense, as man can comprehend Go d only
if absorbed by the Divine. In the hermeneutical sense, his ontology indicates that
the reader cannot understand or appreciate his romantic verses if he or she do es
not possess a spiritual heart. Since love transcends everything intelligible, its
mysterium tremendum is endlessly expressive and at once entirely indefinable:
Love's desetiption can only be brought into being by love.
The lover is a mirror; Speaking and speechless at once. (D 192)
My soul reveals a thousand mysteries in love.
But none of these secrets is enclosed in phrases and words. (D 1733)
Ashk P. Dahh!n Rımıi's concept of /ove in the Dizvan-i Shams-i Tabrizi
In Rurni's lyrics, as in all other, Persian, mystical poetry, the intellectual as
pect of mysticism is always connected with the phenomenon of love, and divine
knowledge is always dependent on the ontological experience of God as personi
fied love. By relying on 'unveiling' (kaslıjj as not only the corrective but also the
substitute of reason, his canception of love emerges as a lively participation in
God's presence, which is not processed by sensory data or discursive reasoning,
but a priori mediated by the 'imaginative' vision of the mystic's spiritual heart:
The intellect passesses great ability and much wisdom.
But it looses its mantle and turhan in love's ecstasy. (D 1288)
As far as love in the true sense is the only, reliable, epistemic source, it ac
quires a cognitive function, a noetic value, which is fully as real as the faculties
of sensory perception or intellectual reason. Intellection in terrus of l'intelligen
tia spiritualis is, in Rurni's view, a corollary of love, which pertains to the im
mediate and concrete realization of the Divine in the heart. His epistemology is,
in other words, based on a theory of knowledge through love and mystical uni
on between lover (subject) and Beloved (object), where the relative knowledge of
creation is ultimately identical with the Absolute. While Rumi formulates no
structural, philosophical system on his beliefthat love transcends the intellect in
sofar as it brings about man's annihilation (fana) in God, he believes that love
and intellect as divine aspects are complementary. In one poem, he declares that
both love and knowledge serve as celestialladders that lead man from the world
of multiplicity to the Divine .Unity:
Intellect, love and knowledge are ladders to Heaven's truth! (D 384)
As far as its etlıos is concerned, Rurni's mysticism differs essentially from the
complex theoretical speculation of lslarnic philosophy (falsafah), notwithstanding
the central function of love for a philosopher such as lbn Sina. Rurni's lyrics find
utterance in the language of emotion and imagination rather than in that of the in
tellect. As Corbin puts it, his mysticism is 'une soufisme des fideles d'amour', rather
than a religion of knowledge, and represents living experience rather than theore-
1150 tical abstraction. Rumi overturns the order of reason in order to move to life and its
divinations at the same time as he repudiates life as a concealment of the true life:
My heart of now is love. My heart of tomorrow is the Beloved.
My heart of now rests in the heart, my heart of tomorrow sornewhere else. (D 594)
I do not seek reason, science or learning.
The light of the Friend's face suffices in my home-less night. (D 2062)
Finally, Rumi's canception of the boundlessness of divine love is also reflec
ted in a universalism and philanthropy that reconcile and overcome all religious
creeds and doctrines. His poems are in this respect a testimony of the transcendent
unity that the Islamic mystics refer to as the inner wisdom ('ilm al-ladumıa) or the
religion of love (mazhhab-i 'ishq). Similar to the meaning of these concepts, Ru
mi's epistemological foundation is characterized not by a subjective, emotional ex
perience but by an experienced aspect of gnosis and knowledge of the transcen
dent reality of existence. As transcendent mysticism, his spirituality represents a
tradition within the perennial wisdom (jaıvidan khirad) that may be considered to
be present at the heart of Islam, as well as every other religion per se. In his po
etry, the religion of love signifies the common ground on which the world religi
ons meet, regardless of exoteric articles of faith and rituals. The religions are uni
ted in their transcendent dimension, insofar as they ultimately lead towards the
universal source of love. Rumi's assertian that love is the true measure of all things
includes the religions, insofar as they belong to the world, the transient and finite:
O lovers! The religion of love is not found in Islam alone.
In the realm of love, there is neither belief, nor unbelief! (D, Quatrain 758)
Conclusions
In this study, I have attempted to give an account of the love that permeates
Rumi's lyrics in Diıvan-i Shams with my point of departure in Corbin's phe
nomenology. Rumi's love is not only of a profane or ailegerical nature but can
be characterized as transcendent, metaphysical and, in his own words, all-emb
racing, all-present. Being concemed with the mysteries of God, he formulates an
Ashk P. Dahi en Rumi's coııcept of /ove i ız tlıe Diıvaıı-i Shams-i Tabrizi
esoterism that focuses on the most beautiful N ames. His lyrics deseribe the sym
bolic foundation of the phenomenal world or what Corbin calls 'transparency'.
This world is characterized as transparent in the sense that it represents a retlee
tion of a metacosmic reality to which man is exposed through his spiritual heart.
Since the phenomenon reflects the Divine on the level of imagination as a sort
of symbolic representation, whatever Rumi comes upon and puts into words is
for him an object manifesting an aspect of the Divine Reality. For him, the world
exists only as an image and the relationship between the transient and the Ab
solute is created and ultimately accomplished through love.
The metacosmic reality that Rumi calls 'the realm of love' or 'the soul of the
world soul' represents, in other words, like the Platonic world of Ideas, a calleetion of
transcendent Archetypes that are located beyond the variability of the external phe
nomena. In the light of Rumi's description of the concept of misal, one may observe
that his poetical images are related to the symbolic world (in Corbin's terminology,
mundus imaginalis), which functions as an intermediate between the material world
and the transcendent In Rumi's view, the transparency of the symbols facilitates
man's imaginative perception and ultimate identification with the Divine as love is
directed towards the symbolical. His poetical imageıy in Diwaıı-i Shams has a ratian
al function without being enclosed by the cognitive, as in Kant's philosophy, which
questions our ability to perceive das Ding an siclı (the thing-in-itself). By emphasizing
the symbolic and imaginative aspects oflove, Rumi not only guarantees the objective
certitude of contemplative discernment but also restares the spiritual ambience of in
tellectual intilition in order to bridge the chasm that today divides being from know
ledge. In other words, he not ·only ensures the metaphysical continuity of imaginaıy
perception but also guarantees the ontological objectivity of love itself. His religion is
quite rightly a religion of love (rather than a religion of knowledge), sin ce he iden
tifies love as the kernel of mysticism and gives precedence to love over reason. He
maintains that man must advance beyond his rational capacity in order to merge with
the uncreated world oflove, the inner sacred core (in Heiler's words, deus absconditus),
which in his view is the genuine essence of religion. Rumi centres this view on the
mysterious triad -love, lover and Beloved -which principally is of an ontological rat
her than an epistemological sort. By giving prominence to the aesthetic and spiritual
imperative of faith, the immortality of the spirit and the inn er joy that springs from
love's desire, his poetry is inspiring in the most positive sense of the word. As such, it
is itself a passicinate and vivid confessioıı of love.
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Ashk P. Dahlt!n Rumi's coııcept of love iıı tlıe Diwaıı-i Slıams-i Tabrizi
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