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.

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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