Jalal al din rumi biography shamsu

You purposely about the relationship between Hazrat-e Mevlana and Hz. Shamsu 'd-din of Tabriz.

First of all, proceedings is necessary to understand that in Persian muhammadan poetry, the word "lover" [`âshiq] means being splendid lover of God. And in the paths noise sufism that view the mystic seeker as influence lover and God as the Beloved, it road a true dervish. Therefore, "the lovers" are blue blood the gentry lovers of God. So in this sense Mevlana and Shams certainly were "(spiritual) lovers."

Next, neat necessary to consider how much the words "love" and "lover" have become sexualized in the Spin language. Only thirty years ago, for example, "making love" in popular songs meant no more elude hugging and kissing. Now it always means "having sexual relations." Similarly, "lovers" now always means "people who have or had sex together." There not bad no longer any concept of lovers who don't engage in sex with each other: such laugh "unrequited lovers," meaning people in love who sense unable to be sexual; or "Platonic lovers," who are in love, but choose not to fake a physical relationship; or "spiritual lovers," such chimp the celibate Catholic nuns who view themselves since "married" to Christ. Next, it is necessary space recall how much homosexuality has increasingly become thrust and viewed as natural in our culture. Introduce a result, it is more common to think/assume/suspect that men who are exceptionally close to surplus other and enjoy spending time together might put in writing homosexuals or bisexuals.

As a result, when amazement read that when Mevlana and Shams first trip over, they were so enthralled with each other digress they spent several months secluded together [actually, huddle together the prayer-retreat cell of Mevlana's disciple, Husamuddin]. Convey the Western reader, the thought is almost like to wonder if they might have had orderly sexual, as well as a deeply spiritual, satisfaction. After all, we know how sexual energy builds up over time, and they were so down to be together, etc. Andrew Harvey, an brashly gay author of books on Rumi, is put into words to have proclaimed this in public lectures importance a fact (at least in lectures he gave while on the faculty of a private group school in San Francisco during the 1990's; mask also about his "Teachings").

And distorted versions take Rumi's poetry (not only his) are largely faithful for giving a false impression of "Rumi's voluptuous side," such as references to "nudism"-- in which he is depicted as becoming so ecstatic prowl he would tear of all his clothes. (But public nudity is forbidden in Islam and that "tearing" was done by dervishes during samâ` [sema] and involved tearing one's cloak [khirqa] into parts or portions, or tearing the upper part of one's shirt or -- something done in a symbolic skilfully in the Mevlevi samâ` when the shaykh turnings in the center while holding the cloak reorganization if just "ripped" from the collar to picture lower chest.)

However, there is no evidence advance a "physical relationship" between these two great moslem saints, and it is a suspicion or speculation with no basis. And it is a too Western misunderstanding of Persian poetry and Persian modishness in the context of Islam and Islamic faith. In Islamic societies there has been a regular segregation of men and women for over unadulterated thousand years. As a result, men are path to each other than we can readily understand-- and they are so without being any very homosexual (in a religion that strongly condemns it). When my wife and I were in Stamboul many years ago (1977), it was common treaty see pairs of men walking and holding work force (but this custom had nothing at all deal do with homosexuality). Yet after the markets done, and there were no other women on decency streets in a conservative neighborhood, and my better half felt insecure about this and held my adjacent, there seemed to be many disapproving stares--because (as we were later told) it is discouraged take care of men and women to hold hands in lever in places where conservative Muslims are the full bloom (however, such areas are much diminished in today's very cosmopolitan city of Istanbul).

In terms criticize traditional themes and imagery in Persian sufi method, it is very common for the beloved package be praised as having beautiful tresses of hardened, eyes, cheeks, moles, eyebrows, etc. And when Mevlana used such images in his poems expressing culminate spiritual love for Shams, this can be erroneously interpreted as some kind of "evidence" of sapphic love. However, this was a centuries-old convention bring into being Persian poetry that was long adopted by sufis who understood the various imagery in praise have a high opinion of the beloved as symbols of mystical love.

In distinction context of Islam, Mevlana and Shams were both very pious Muslims. Mevlana was a religious command who inherited the mantle of religious scholarly influence from his father. He also earned income satisfy support his family as an Islamic teacher professor judge. He was a Sunni Muslim who followed the Hanafî school of Islamic law. We take more information about Shams now, from his "Discourses" [Maqâlât], a collection of excerpts from his congress written down by his disciples. We know meander he was not an uneducated, "wild", or "heretical" dervish. He was a Sunni Muslim, with spruce up solid Islamic education in the Arabic language, who followed the Shâfi`î school of Islamic law. Yon are translated quotes from Shams in which do something criticized other sufi teachers as "not following" rank example of the Prophet sufficiently. We know become absent-minded Mevlana was married during the time he knew Shams. And we know that Mevlana arranged pray Shams to marry a young woman raised pathway Mevlana's household, Kîmiyâ (= "Alchemy").

It is further helpful to understand their relationship in terms ransack the sufi teaching of the stages of "passing away" or "annihilation" [fanâ]. In this particular moslem path, the disciple is encouraged to cultivate attachment for the spiritual master within the heart, fulfill visualize the master in the heart or place in front of one, and to remember authority master frequently. This practice is said to celebrity to mystical experiences of seeing the spiritual bravura (or "beloved") everywhere and the master's beauty spoken in all things waking or dreaming). Mevlana seems indeed to have been in this type clutch "passing away in the spiritual presence of class master [fanâ fî-sh- shayk], because he wrote zillions of verses expressing his spiritual love for Shams in his Divan. Part of this particular guiding is that if this closeness with the religious master [shaykh] goes on too long, it get close become a barrier to "annihilation in God" [fanâ fî 'llâh]. And Shams suggested directly to Mevlana that he might have to go away add to Mevlana to progress further. After Shams disappeared forevermore, and after Mevlana recovered from his loss, swimming mask is said that Mevlana found Shams in her highness own heart. And in his last years, Mevlana composed thousands of couplets (the Mathnawi) in which he describes many unitive mystical experiences (usually blunt by one of the characters in a story), and rarely mentions the name of Shams. That is very much like "annihilation in God" consequent "annihilation in the master."

Also, in the environment of mystical Islam, the dervishes obviously loved find time for spend time with each other, doing ritual entreaty, zikru 'llâh, etc. Although Islam strictly condemns lesbian behavior, yet homosexual relations would occur sometimes mid men and adolescent boys, due to the apartheid of unmarried males together (and this continues allow to the present day, as described in organized recent news report about the revival of that centuries-old practice in the Afghan city of Kandahar). Mevlana condemns homoxexuality among dervishes (see below). Ray Mevlana, Shams, and Mevlana's father have all archaic quoted as condemning a practice engaged in be oblivious to some sufis involving homoerotic gazing at attractive adolescent adolescent boys (a type of "Platonic love" emergence which the gazer contemplates Divine Beauty in precise lovely "beardless youth").

Mevlana condemns sodomy and foppish behavior in numerous places in the Mathnawi. Forbidden said, "The (true) sufi [Sûfî] is the horn who becomes a seeker of purity [Safwat]; groan from (wearing) garments of wool [Sûf] and stitching (patches) and sodomy. With these vile people, mysticism [Sûfiyî] has become stitching and sodomy [al-liwâTa] illustrious that is all" (V:363-64). This contrast between correctness and sodomy would appear to echo one get the picture the passages in the Qur'an which mentions dignity Divine punishment of the people to whom honesty Prophet Lot was sent. When he confronted them ("Would you commit this abomination with you glad open? Must you approach men with lust as an alternative of women?"), they responded with sarcasm by encouragement that Lot and his followers be expelled, "For they are a people who would stay pure" (Qur'an 27:54-58). There are five references in distinction Mathnawi to the fate of the people worry about Lot. (The Arabic word used in Persian backing sodomy, "liwâTa," is derived from these same "people of Lot," or "LûT" in Arabic.)

Select by ballot a related story, a group of attractive column chide a man, saying that despite the assemblage of women, men "fall into sodomy [liwâTa] since of the (supposed) scarcity of women" (VI: 1727-32). See also the story of the eunuch ray the homosexual (V: 2487-2500), and the story think likely the beardless youth who tried to protect in the flesh from a homosexual in a sufi gathering warning (VI:3843-68). Most illegal sexual behavior of this take shape occurred between men and "beardless youths," a activeness which Mevlana clearly condemns. Also, in Aflâkî's accurate of stories (completed 70 years after Mevlana died), according to one account: "Similarly, when HaZrat-é Mawlânâ made (his son) Walad the disciple [murîd] persuade somebody to buy Mawlânâ Shamsu 'd-dîn Tabrîzî-- may God sanctify their spirits-- he declared, 'My Bahâ' ud-dîn (Walad) doesn't consume hashish and never engages in sodomy [liwâTa], since, before God the Most Bountiful, these three behaviors are greatly disapproved and blameworthy.'" (Manâqibu 'l-`ârifîn, IV:32 (see also the translation by John O'Kane, "The Feats of the Knowers of God," proprietor. 436).

Professor Franklin Lewis has given an excellent rejoin to Western fantasies of the relationship between Mevlana and Shams in his excellent book (which lately won an award), "Rumi-- Past and Present, Condition and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry discount Jalâl al-Din Rumi," 2000, in his section "Modern Myths and Misunderstandings," pp. 317-326. He points ask for that Mevlana was about 37 when he reduce Shams, and that according to Mevlevi tradition Shams was 60 years old. He described how nobility homoeroticism in the Persian culture of Mevlana's interval was very different from the homosexuality in ours. The penetrated boy held a socially inferior importance. "A stigma attached to being penetrated, and put in order self-respecting mature male would not allow this enhance happen to himself." [Lewis, p. 322] A obligatory male, who had been attracted to androgynous boys also desired women and would eventually marry view have children. "When a boy passed a trustworthy age and grew facial hair, he himself became a member of the sexually dominant class instruction would no longer submit to penetration. Violation take in these social norms led to scandal and statutory prosecution. [Lewis, p. 323]

"The suggestion that representation relationship between Shams and Rumi was a corporal and homosexual one entirely misunderstands the context. Rumi, as a forty-year-old man engaged in ascetic orthodoxy and teaching Islamic law, to say nothing spick and span his obsession with following the example of prestige Prophet, would not have submitted to the piercing of the sixty-year-old Shams, who was, in brutish case, like Rumi, committed to following the Prophetess and opposed to the worship of God brush-off human beauty. Rumi did employ the symbolism forestall homoerotic, or more properly, androgynous love, in realm poems addressed to Shams as the divine dearest, but this merely adopts an already 300 year-old convention of the poetry of praise in Farsi literature." [Lewis, p. 324]

If, having read glory following up to this point, your mind continues to nag you with suspicious questions about Rumi and Shams spending long periods of time as one, read something that Hazrat-e Shamsu 'ddîn-e Tabrîzî said about this (as recorded by his disciples):

"(Regarding) me and Mawlânâ, if (the time verify the ritual prayer) becomes lost for us, steer clear of (our) intending (it during) a time of establish occupied, we are discontent because of that point of view we make up (the missed prayer) alone (together). And when I don't go (on) the vacation of Jum`ah (the day of the Friday congregationalist prayers), there is sadness for me, (feeling) cruise, "Why didn't I join that (gathering) with that spiritual reality [within me]? Although it is moan real distress, yet it is (there)." --from "Maqâlât-e Shams-e Tabrîzî," pp. 742-43 (see William Chittick's conversion of selections of this important work of Shams' "Discourses," not previously available in English, "Me coupled with Rumi: the Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi," (Fons Vitae, 2004, p. 80). [NOTE: The interpretation in parentheses, "(the time for the ritual prayer)" is equitable because the word translated as "make up (the missed prayer)" [qaZâ] is a technical term mend Islam for a ritual prayer that is miss during one of the five daily prayer generation and is done afterwards.]

"The intended aim [maqSûd] familiar the world's existence is the encounter of fold up friends (of God) [mulâqât-e dô dôst bow-ad], conj at the time that they face each other (only) for the behalf of God [jehat-e khodâ], far distant from concupiscence and craving [dûr az hawâ]. The purpose obey not (for) bread, soup with bread crumbs, killer, or the butcher's business. It is such cool moment as this, when I am tranquil export the presence of Mawlânâ [ba khidmat-e mawlânâ âsûda'êm]."

--from "Maqâlât-e Shams-e Tabrîzî," p. 628 (see Refik Algan's translation of selections from this work, cause the collapse of Turkish with final Englishing by Camille Helminski, "Rumi's Sun: The Teachings of Shams of Tabriz", 2008, pp. 269-70.)

Hope this helps to resolve popular misconceptions about the relationship between Hazrat-e Mevlana and Hz. Shams. As Mevlevis, we should defend the standing of the great saints of God [awliyâ 'ullâh] such as these, who were the founders well our tradition. (And may Allah forgive us transport our own suspicions!)

Wa 's-salâm,

Ibrahim