Search results
Sixty-four thousand lines
- The resulting masterwork, the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi (Spiritual Verses), consists of sixty-four thousand lines, and is considered Rumi’s most personal work of spiritual teaching.
poets.org/poet/jalal-al-din-rumi
People also ask
How many lines did Jalal al-Din Rumi write?
Who wrote Rumi the Persian?
How many lines are in Nicholson's poem Rumi?
What languages did Rumi use?
Why is Rumi a great poet?
Is Rumi's Masnavi the greatest mystical poem ever written?
Preceded by a short biographical sketch, this new translation from the original Persian text offers nearly 3,000 lines in 161 luminous poems from one of Rumi’s great works, the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi.
He is more commonly known as Molānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (مولانا جلالالدین محمد رومی). Jalal ad-Din is an Arabic name meaning "Glory of the Faith". Balkhī and Rūmī are his nisbas, meaning, respectively, "from Balkh " and "from Rûm ", as he was from the Sultanate of Rûm in Anatolia.
To bring the work of the globally celebrated Persian poet and Sufi mystic Maulana Jalaluddin Balkhi popularly known as "Rumi" the work has been translated in Hindi. This will be the first time when such a volume of Rumi's work will be translated to Hindi directly from Persian.
- Overview
- Early life and travels
- The influence of Shams al-Dīn
Rūmī was a great Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic Mas̄navī-yi Maʿnavī (“Spiritual Couplets”), which widely influenced mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world.
What is Rūmī’s philosophy?
According to Rūmī’s philosophy, life should be a journey to union with the one true God, which is achieved by practicing love—by disregarding oneself as an independent being and turning toward the truth of God’s oneness. Aided by spiritual guides, one lives—loves—into that truth, gradually ascending to full knowledge of the one divine presence, then guiding others.
What did Rūmī write about?
Rūmī’s experience of love, longing, and loss made him turn to poetry. He wrote mystical love songs to his mystic teacher Shams al-Dīn, the Prophet Muhammad, and God; ghazals (short lyric poems, each cohering by a unity of subject and symbolism rather than by a logical sequence of ideas); and many robāʿīyyāt (quatrains with the rhyme scheme aaba).
Rūmī (born c. September 30, 1207, Balkh [now in Afghanistan]—died December 17, 1273, Konya [now in Turkey]) the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic Mas̄navī-yi Maʿnavī (“Spiritual Couplets”), which widely influenced mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world. After his death, his disciples were organized as the Mawlawiyyah order.
Jalāl al-Dīn’s father, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad, was a noted mystical theologian, author, and teacher. Because of either a dispute with the ruler or the threat of the approaching Mongols, Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his family left their native town of Balkh about 1218. According to a legend, in Nīshāpūr, Iran, the family met Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, a Persian mystical poet, who blessed young Jalāl al-Dīn. After a pilgrimage to Mecca and journeys through the Middle East, Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his family reached Anatolia (Rūm, hence the surname Rūmī), a region that enjoyed peace and prosperity under the rule of the Turkish Seljuq dynasty. After a short stay at Laranda (Karaman), where Jalāl al-Dīn’s mother died and his first son was born, they were called to the capital, Konya, in 1228. Here, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad taught at one of the numerous madrasahs (religious schools); after his death in 1231 he was succeeded in this capacity by his son.
A year later, Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq, one of Bahāʾ al-Dīn’s former disciples, arrived in Konya and acquainted Jalāl al-Dīn more deeply with some mystical theories that had developed in Iran. Burhān al-Dīn, who contributed considerably to Jalāl al-Dīn’s spiritual formation, left Konya about 1240. Jalāl al-Dīn is said to have undertaken one or two journeys to Syria (unless his contacts with Syrian Sufi circles were already established before his family reached Anatolia); there he may have met Ibn al-ʿArabī, the leading Islamic theosophist whose interpreter and stepson, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qunawī, was Jalāl al-Dīn’s colleague and friend in Konya.
Britannica Quiz
Islam
The decisive moment in Rūmī’s life occurred on November 30, 1244, when in the streets of Konya he met the wandering dervish—holy man—Shams al-Dīn (Sun of Religion) of Tabrīz, whom he may have first encountered in Syria. Shams al-Dīn cannot be connected with any of the traditional mystical fraternities; his overwhelming personality, however, revealed to Jalāl al-Dīn the mysteries of divine majesty and beauty. For months the two mystics lived closely together, and Rūmī neglected his disciples and family so that his scandalized entourage forced Shams to leave the town in February 1246. Jalāl al-Dīn was heartbroken, and his eldest son, Sulṭān Walad, eventually brought Shams back from Syria. The family, however, could not tolerate the close relation of Jalāl al-Dīn with his beloved, and one night in 1247 Shams disappeared forever. In the 20th century it was established that Shams was indeed murdered, not without the knowledge of Rūmī’s sons, who hurriedly buried him close to a well that is still extant in Konya.
This experience of love, longing, and loss turned Rūmī into a poet. His poems—ghazals (about 30,000 verses) and a large number of robāʿīyāt (“quatrains”)—reflect the different stages of his love, until, as his son writes, “he found Shams in himself, radiant like the moon.” The complete identification of lover and beloved is expressed by his inserting the name of Shams instead of his own pen name at the end of most of his lyrical poems. The Dīvān-e Shams (“The Collected Poetry of Shams”) is a true translation of his experiences into poetry; its language, however, never becomes lost in lofty spiritual heights or nebulous speculation. The fresh language, propelled by its strong rhythms, sometimes assumes forms close to popular verses. There would seem to be cause for the belief, expressed by chroniclers, that much of this poetry was composed in a state of ecstasy, induced by the music of the flute or the drum, the hammering of the goldsmiths, or the sound of the water mill in Meram, where Rūmī used to go with his disciples to enjoy nature. He found in nature the reflection of the radiant beauty of the Sun of Religion and felt flowers and birds partaking in his love. He often accompanied his verses by a whirling dance, and many of his poems were composed to be sung in Sufi musical gatherings.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
Learn More
A few years after Shams al-Dīn’s death, Rūmī experienced a similar rapture in his acquaintance with an illiterate goldsmith, Ṣālāḥ al-Dīn Zarkūb. It is said that one day, hearing the sound of a hammer in front of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s shop in the bazaar of Konya, Rūmī began his dance. The shop owner had long been one of Rūmī’s closest and most loyal disciples, and his daughter became the wife of Rūmī’s eldest son. This love again inspired Rūmī to write poetry.
After Ṣālāḥ al-Dīn’s death, Ḥusām al-Dīn Chelebi became his spiritual love and deputy. Rūmī’s main work, the Mas̄navī-yi Maʿnavī, was composed under his influence. Ḥusām al-Dīn had asked him to follow the model of the poets ʿAṭṭār and Sanāʾi, who had laid down mystical teachings in long poems, interspersed with anecdotes, fables, stories, proverbs, and allegories. Their works were widely read by the mystics and by Rūmī’s disciples. Rūmī followed Ḥusām al-Dīn’s advice and composed nearly 26,000 couplets of the Mas̄navī during the following years. It is said that he would recite his verses even in the bath or on the roads, accompanied by Ḥusām al-Dīn, who wrote them down. The Mas̄navī, which shows all the different aspects of Sufism in the 13th century, often carries the reader away with loose associations of thought, so that one understands what subjects the master had in mind at a particular stage of his life. The work reflects the experience of divine love; both Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn and Ḥusām al-Dīn were, for Rūmī, renewed manifestations of Shams al-Dīn, the all-embracing light. He called Ḥusām al-Dīn, therefore, Ḍiyāʾ al-Ḥaqq (“Light of the Truth”); ḍiyāʾ is the Arabic term for sunlight.
- Annemarie Schimmel
Rumi quickly gained a reputation as an ecstatic visionary, and devoted the rest of his life to writing and worship. Rumi’s major works all date from after Shams’s disappearance: Diwan-e Shams-e Tabiz, or “The Collected Poems of Shams,” written partially in the voice of Shams; Mathnawi, or “Spiritual Couplets,” sometimes known as the ...
Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), also called by the honorific Mawlana (Our Master), is a jurist, poet and one of the leading luminaries of Sufism. His masterpiece, the Masnavi-ye Manavi (Spiritual Couplets), is a didactic epic that is famous for his lyrics, which dives deep into the heart of the Islamic tradition with an outlook of love, tenderness ...
Jalal ad-Din Mu?ammad Balkhi (Persian: ????? ???? ????? Persian pronunciation: [d?æl??læddi?n mohæmmæde bælxi?]) is also known as Jalal ad-Din Mu?ammad Rumi (????? ???? ???? Persian pronunciation: [d?æl??læddi?n mohæmmæde ?u?mi?]). He is widely known by the sobriquet Mawlana/Molana[1][4] (Persian: ?????
