Interpreting Rumi in the context of cross-cultural studiesBut to go back again to the question of fact. If we want to see the consciousness of the One – not as with the Hindus split between the featureless unity of abstract thought, on the one hand, and on the other, the long-winded weary story of its particular detail, but – in in its finest purity and sublimity, we must consult the Mohammedans. If, e.g, in the excellent Jelaleddin Rumi in particular, we find the unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as love, this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and vulgar, a transfiguration of the natural and spiritual, in which the externalism and transitoriness of immediate nature, and of empirical secular spirit, is discarded and absorbed. (G.W.F. Hegel)1
In this age of globalization, Hegel’s words may once again serve as a motto, telling us that by recalling the cosmopolitan nature of Rumi’s oeuvre the recollection itself acquires new relevance, while our reflections on his cosmopolitanism should demonstrate that his philosophy of Love has gained even greater importance in the global world of today, particularly in our present-day Bosnian profiling of a plural European identity. For this reason, I have attempted here to highlight the necessity of introducing cross-traditional, cross-cultural, cross-systemic, more integrative, more global cross-cultural studies of Rumi here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by means of existing studies in European languages to which I draw attention here.2 It is a regrettable fact that since Abdullah Bosnawi (d. 1644) and Sudi Efendi (d. 1595), another of our countrymen who wrote an outstanding commentary not only on the Mathnawi but also on Hafiz’s Divan (though his commentary has yet to be published), few here have written anything on Rumi: except, of course, the translation of the first two volumes of the Mathnawi from the original Persian3 and of the remainder from an English translation,4 R. Hafizović’s translation of William Chittick’s fine study,5 and yet another translation of his Divan,6 plus a few incidental texts in this field.
Rumi once again reminds us of that message of love, of embracing diversity and transcending the self, which is the true essence of Islam, though often forgotten these days. Love, warmth towards all beings as Rumi expressed it, is the outward expression of the deeply rooted divine Love. Thus Rumi, whose nature was steeped in the draft drunk from the chalice of love, embraced all of creation with the projection of that love. He was involved in dialogue with all creatures, and all this was the result only of his deep love of God and relationship with the Beloved.7 In short, as Gülen was to say, “He was the blessed fruit of a hallowed family tree”, and “Eventually, he became a central star, the North Star, in the sky which houses sainthood. He was like a bright moon that rotates on its own axis”.8
Thus Şefik Can writes, in his Fundamentals of Rumi’s Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective,9 that Rumi came to the conclusion that to love people means to love God (p. 147), quoting from his Divan in support of this assertion:
Come, come, get closer. Till when is this banditry going to continue?
Since you are I and I am you, what is this “us and them”?
We are God’s holy light; we are God’s mirror.
So why are we struggling with each other? Why is one light running away from another light so much?
We, all humans, are gathered like a body in the being of a mature person.
But why are we squint-eyed? Although we are limbs of the same body, why do the rich look down on the poor?
Why does the right hand look down on the left hand of the same body? Since both of them are hands of your body, what is the meaning of lucky and unlucky on the same body?
We, all humans, are in reality all one essence. Our minds are one, and our heads are one.
But we have seen one as two because of the curvature of the heavens. Come, liberate yourself from this selfishness and reconcile with everybody and be nice to people.
As long as you are in you, you are a grain, a particle. But when you mix and unite with others, then you become an ocean, a mine.
Every human carries the same soul, but the bodies are in hundreds of thousands.
Similarly, there are countless almonds in the world, but there is the same oil in each of them.
There are many tongues and dialects in this world, but the meaning of all of them is the same.
Waters put in different containers unite when the containers are broken and start to flow together as one stream.
If you understand what unity, tawhīd, means, if you attain unity and if you rip and throw away meaningless words and thoughts, the spirit sends news to those whose hearts’ eyes are open and tells them the truth.10
In fact, Rumi was always speaking of love and lovers; his focus was always on love, and for this reason he is also known as the Sultan of Lovers. Throughout his work, he emphasizes and develops the concept of love over everything else, and he can truly be understood now only by those who place the unendurable pain of spiritual love above all other pain or joy. However, this is not love as seen today, love that is more about possessing whom or what one loves; rather, it is a true, selfless attitude towards the Beloved. It is not that love is lacking these days, but that it is misdirected, wrongly channelled. The love that Rumi speaks of is not metaphorical love (‘ishq majāzī ) but real in nature. It is the love of the True, also known as divine Love (‘ishq ilāhī), the love one feels for God. Properly to understand Rumi’s all-important concept of Love, let us see how it has been addressed by one who actualized this Mevlevi Sufi perspective in his own 95 years of life on this earth - Şefik Can (1910-2005), ser-tariq, until recently the leading Mevlevi shaikh and most authoritative spiritual figure of the order, the last Mesnevihan, and author of nine books on Rumi:
“In order to understand the concept of love, we have to elaborate the concepts of Ishq Majazi and Ishq Ilahi, which also are known as real love. These two kinds of love are known in the teaching of Rumi. The first one, Ishq Majazi, is related to the material world and bodily love, like the love between male and female. As the real love, Ishq Haqiqi, is the love which is felt toward God. In other words, the metaphorical love is transient and, therefore, fleeting. However, real love is eternal and infinite.”11
Rumi, for whom love, love of God and love of humankind as the manifestation of God’s love, is central, explains it thus:
Whenever I need to explain the concept of love and think of it,
I feel repentant when I become influenced by love.
My pen moves over the paper, and the pen would not dare and splits.
Reason, as far as the explanation of love is concerned, is like a donkey stuck in the mud.
Finally, love has provided the explanation of love and the lover.12
Guide to reading Rumi and RumiyatWhere then are we to seek refuge in thought in an age of globalization and cross-cultural processes, and above all of our profiling of a plural European identity, if not with Rumi, the most glorious representative of the Sufi metaphysics of love, who did not see religion as settling for fundamentalism of any kind, but as our earthly garb, in which we clothe ourselves on our own personal path towards the Sublime, the Beloved. Religion is not a god, but a path, a way, truly leading to God, the Beloved. Prompted by the approach of Rasoul Sorkhabi,13 then, I resolved to offer this audience something similar, which will make Rumi’s thinking, life and poetry a little more accessible to our modern European recipient. The colleague I refer to here has quite rightly entitled this Rumiyat – everything that belongs to or concerns Rumi.
1) The Diwân Shams Tabrizi (also known as the Diwân Kabir or Kulliyât Shams Tabrizi) consists of Rumi’s lyrical odes (ghazal) (about 3,300 poems) and quatrains or rubâi’yât (almost 2,000 of them), or a total of more than 45,000 verses. The authoritative version in print of the Diwân is the one published by the late Badi al-Zamân Foruzân-far (1900-1970), professor of literature at the University of Tehran (ten volumes, University of Tehran Press, 1336-1346/1957-1967 and several times reprinted).
2) Masnawi Ma’nawi (“Spiritual Couplets”), a work in six volumes consisting of more than 25,000 verses or couplets. Professor Reynold Nicholson (1868-1945) dedicated more than three decades of his life to a critical edition of an English translation and commentary on Rumi’s Mathnawi, published in eight volumes (London: Luzac, 1925-1940). There are dozens of different editions of the Mathnawi in Persian, Turkish, Italian, French and English.
For those who wish to read Rumi in Persian, Badi al-Zamân Foruzânfar’s scholarly analysis of Rumi’s biography, Zendegâni-e Moulânâ Jalâluddin Muhammad (Tehran: Zovvâr, 1333/1954, several editions) is essential reading, while those who know Turkish could consult Abdolbâki Golpinârli’s work Mevlana Celaloddin: Hayati, Felsefesi, Esserlerinden Secmeler (Istanbul, 1951, 1985). Nor should we overlook other works from Rumi’s oeuvre: Fihi ma fihi (discourses on a range of subjects), Majalis-i Sab’a (seven discourses given at various gatherings), and Maktubat (147 collected letters). Let us recall, however, that this body of brilliant universalistic and inclusivist literature was created at a very sombre time, when the Mongols were laying waste the Muslim world. Despite the horrific extent of the destruction, Rumi is not pessimist, but speaks of Love and arouses hope. As a result, he influenced not only Muslim thinkers such as Ibrahim Hakki of Erzurum (d. 1780) and Muhammad Iqbal (d.1938), but also many others. Among those enchanted by the fragrance of his rose-garden of Love one may find European thinkers, poets and translators, such as Goethe, George Bernard Shaw (d. 1951) and many others, of whom only the most eminent will be referred to in the following paragraphs.
All that remains here is for me to reaffirm Şefik Can’s observation that “A careful study will show that among all European nations, the Germans and the British are the nations that have concentrated most on Rumi. The disciplined, hard working, skillful German nation has at the same time a mystical spirit.”14 To this one might add the American context, where Rumi has acquired the status of most widely read author. Let us proceed in orderly fashion, however, and perhaps this paper will prompt other scholars to work on this in the Bosnian context.
German scholars and studies on RumiFriedrich Rückert (1788-1866, pseudonym Freimund Raimar), German poet, translator and professor of oriental languages. Published a collection of poems, Östliche Rosen (Eastern Roses), in 1822; between 1834 and 1838, published his Gesammelte Gedichte (Collected Poems) in six volumes, a collection that went into several editions. Rückert, who knew about thirty languages, became known principally as a translator of oriental poetry and a poet who composed on the spirit of the oriental masters. He was blessed with a brilliant imagination, giving him his intimacy with oriental poetry, and continues to influence studies in German (in particular, Annemarie Schimmel). Hegel, a great admirer of Rűckert’s translations, regarded Rumi as one of the greatest poets and thinkers the world had ever known (see the title quotation of this paper).
Hans MeinkeTwentieth-century German poet, who regarded Rumi’s work as “the only hope for the dark times in which we live.” Many people today might well agree with this, since Mawlana has influenced not only the East but also the West, given the large number of poets and thinkers who have written books about Mawlana and his thought.
Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003)
Born in Erfurt, a delightful town in central Germany, boasting several Gothic cathedrals and in addition a centre of horticulture. The great mediaeval mystic Meister Eckhart preached there; Luther was ordained into the priesthood there and lived there for a number of years; and Goethe met Napoleon in Erfurt, which is not far from the centres of classical German culture, Weimar and Jena.
Annemarie Schimmel was known the world over as an influential German Iranologist and scholar who wrote extensively on Islam and Sufism and who visited Sarajevo shortly before her death. She gained her doctorate in the field of Islamic languages and civilization at the University of Berlin at the age of 19. At 23 she became professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Marburg (Germany), where she gained her second doctorate in the history of religion in 1954.
The turning point in her life was in 1954, when she was appointed professor of the history of religion at the University of Ankara in Turkey. She spent five years there, learning Turkish and steeping herself in Turkey’s culture and mystical tradition. She was also a great admirer of Muhammad Iqbal, and translated his Javidnama into German. She taught at Harvard from 1967 to 1992, and became professor emeritus of Indo-Muslim culture at the University of Bonn after taking retirement. She was also an honorary professor of the University of Bonn. She published more than one hundred books on Islamic literature, mysticism and culture, and translated Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Sindi and Turkish poetry and literature into English and German. She received many prestige awards for her work. She was able to lecture without notes in German, English and Turkish, and with note in French, Arabic, Persian and Urdu. In this she was an apt disciple of her model, the late Romantic poet and orientalist Friedrich Rückert, who was at easy in at least six languages.15
Her publications in English include: As Through A Veil; And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill, 1985); A Dance of Sparks: Imagery of Fire in Ghalib’s Poetry, A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (New York, 1992), Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (Edinburgh, 1994); Gabriel’s Wing: Study into the Religious Ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal (Leiden, 1963); Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975); Rumi’s World: The Life and Works of the Greatest Sufi Poet; Look! This Is Love: Poems of Rumi. Boston, Mass.: Shambhala Publications, 1991; The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi (London, 1978); Islam: An Introduction; Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (Leiden, 1980); Islamic Calligraphy; Make A Shield From Wisdom: Selected Verses from Nasir-i Khusraw’s Divan (London, 1993); My Soul is a Woman: the Feminine in Islam. Continuum Publishing Group, 1997; Ernst Trumpp: A brief account of his life and work; The Mystery of Numbers, and many more.
British scholars and studies on Rumi Sir James W. Redhouse (1811-1892) Of incomparable importance in the development of Turkish lexicography, Redhouse owed his professional formation to a series of events that led him at a young age to the Ottoman service. Gaining expertise and technical abilities, he served the Ottomans as an interpreter in the navy and diplomatic service until 1853. After beginning to publish his own works, he returned to England and took up the life of a scholar. Since some of his works were published in Turkish, or remained unknown, while others were never completed, the importance of his contribution has yet to be fully assessed. Finally, it was none other than Sir James Redhouse who first translated parts of the Mathnawi into English, in 1881.16
Whinfield, E.H. (1836-1922) Educated at Rugby public school (i.e. exclusive private school), and gained his master’s degree at Magdalen College in Oxford in 1859. Served in the Bengali Civil Service, which no doubt gave him the opportunity to become acquainted with Rumi. He also translated a number of major Sufi works: Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, Shabistani’s Gulshan i Raz, and Jami’s Lawa’ih. It is not entirely clear from the edition when the translation was made. The language is somewhat old-fashioned, but the power of Rumi’s thought permeates the translation. Whinfield provided excellent notes, including references to quotations from the Qur’an and hadith, and to his other translations. This is invaluable in enabling the reader to locate the Mathnawi in the Islamic context. Finally, Whinfield remained extremely faithful to Rumi in his translations, rather than recasting the work in his own words.17
Edward Henry Palmer (1840-1882), English orientalist, born in Cambridge and educated at the Perse School. A talented pupil, he was sent to London as a clerk in the city. He disliked this life, and varied it by learning French and Italian, mainly by frequenting the society of foreigners wherever he could find it. In 1859 he returned to Cambridge, where he fell in with Sayyid Abdallah, teacher of Hindustani at Cambridge, under whose influence he began his Oriental studies. He matriculated at St John’s College in November 1863, and in 1867 was elected a fellow on account of his attainments as an orientalist, especially in Persian and Hindustani.
During his residence at St John’s he catalogued the Persian, Arabic and Turkish manuscripts in the university library, and in the libraries of Kings and Trinity. In 1867 he published a treatise on Oriental mysticism, based on the Maksad-i-Aksa of Aziz ibn Mohammed Nafasi. He was engaged in 1869 to join the survey of Sinai, undertaken by making friends among the Bedouin.
Palmer’s highest qualities appeared in his travels, especially in the heroic adventures of his last journeys. All his works show a great linguistic range and very versatile talent. His chief writings are The Desert of the Exodus (1871), Poems of Beha ed-Din (Ar. and Eng, 1876-1877), Arabic Grammar (1874), History of Jerusalem (1871), by Besant and Palmer – the latter wrote the part taken from Arabic sources, Persian Dictionary (1876) and English and Persian Dictionary (posthumous, 1883); a translation of the Qur’an (1880) for the Sacred Books of the East series, a spirited but not very accurate rendering. An important source is: W. Besant: Life and achievements of Edward Henry Palmer. London 1883.
Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1868-1945) was an eminent orientalist who is widely regarded as the greatest Rumi scholar in the English language. He was for many years a lecturer at Cambridge University in England. He dedicated his life to the study of mysticism, and was able to study and translate major Sufi texts in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish to English.
His monumental achievement was his work on Rumi’s Masnavi (done in eight volumes, published between 1925 and 1940). He produced the first critical Persian edition of Rumi’s Masnawi, the first full translation of it into English, and the first commentary on the entire work in English. This work has been highly influential in the field of Rumi studies, world-wide. Nicholson also wrote an abridged version of his work on the Masnawi, in two volumes, intended to introduce Rumi to a more general readership.18
Arthur John Arberry (1905-1969) was a respected scholar of Arabic, Persian and Islamic studies. Formerly Head of the Department of Classics at Cairo University in Egypt, he was also professor of Arabic at Cambridge University from 1947 until his death in 1969. Arberry’s translation of the Qur’an is widely respected, one of the most prominent written by a non-Muslim scholar.
Arberry is also notable for introducing Rumi’s works to the west through his selective translations – edited by Badiozzaman Forouzanfar, his interpretation of Muhammad Iqbal’s writings is similarly distinguished. Among his published works are The Rubaiyat of Jalal al-Din Rumi (Translations from the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi), London: E. Walker, 1949; Tales from the Masnavi, Surrey: Curzon Press Ltd, 1961; More Tales from the Masnavi, Surrey, Curzon Press Ltd, 1962; (ed) Persian Poems: An Anhtology of Verse Translations. New York: Dutton, 1964; Mystical Poems of Rumi 1: First Selection, Poems 1-200. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; Discourses of Rumi (Fihi ma Fihi). London: J. Murray, 1975; Immortal Rose: An Anthology of Persian Lyrics. London: Luzac, 1983; In Praise of Rumi. Prescott, Ariz.: Hohm Press, 1989, and Mystical Poems of Rumi 2: Second Selection, Poems 201-400. Chicago: Unversity of Chicago Press, 1991.
French and Italian scholars and studies on Rumi Maurice Barres (1862–1923), French novelist and politician. Became a member of the Académie française in 1906.
Harry, Myriam (1869-1958) Particularly worthy of mention is her Djelaleddine Roumi, Poète et Danseur mystique, Paris: Flammarion, 1947.
Eva de Vitray de Meyerovitch (d. 2003). Author of more than forty books, and the leading French scholar and translator of Rumi’s works.19 See in particular her studies on Rumi: Rumi and Sufism, Sausalito, Calif, Post-Apollo Press, 1987; The Whirling Dervishes: A Commemoration. London: International Rumi Committee, 1974; Djalâl al-Dîn Rûmi Edité par: Eva Vitray-Meyerovitch, Mohammad Mokri, 2003; L’Islam: L’Autre Visage (Editions Albin Michel, Paris 1995, published in English by Fons Vitae as: Towards the Heart of Islam: A Woman’s Approach, trans. Cathryn Goddard).
Anna Masala, professor of Turkish language and literature at La Sapienza University in Rome.
American scholars and studies on Rumi William C. Chittick (see his web site:
http://www.sunysb.edu/complit/new/chittick.html )
A renowned scholar of Sufi thought and literature and Islamic philosophy, as is his wife Sachiko Murata. Both are professors in the Department of comparative Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His published books include The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-`Arabi’s Cosmology (State University of New York Press, 1998); The Sufi Path of Lnowledge : Ibn al-`Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination, William C. Chittick. Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, 1989; `Iraqi, Fakhr al-Din Ibrahim, d. 1289? Lama`at. English, Divine Flashes by Fakhruddin `Iraqi; translated and with an introduction by William C. Chittick and Peter Lamborn Wilson, foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. New York : Paulist Press, 1982; Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana, 1207-1273. Selections. 1983; The Sufi Path of Love : the Spiritual Teachings of Rumi [trans] William C. Chittick. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983; Vision of Islam with Sachiko Murata, New York: Paragon House, 1994; A Shi`ite anthology, selection and foreword by `Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i; translated and with additional notes by William C. Chittick, headed by and with an introduction by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Albany: State University of New York Press; London: Muhammadi Trust of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, 1981; The Psalms of Islam (1988); The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-`Arabî’s Cosmology (1998); Sufism: A Short Introduction (2000); The Heart of Islamic Philosophy: The Quest for Self-Knowledge in the Teachings of Afdal al-Dîn Kâshânî (2001); Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi (Fons Vitae, 2004), The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi (2005), and Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul: The Pertinence of Islamic Cosmology in the Modern World, Oxford: Oneworld, 2007.
Profesor Chittick is one of the world’s leading translators and interpreters of the mystic poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi and that of Ibn ‘Arabi. He has written more than twenty five books and several hundred articles on Islamic thought, Sufism and mysticism.
Kabir and Camille Helminski, founders and directors of the Threshold Society, have been working within the Mevlevi tradition of Sufism for about twenty years. Kabir is the author/translator of several books of Sufi poetry. Kabir began his Mevlevi training as a student of the late Shaikh Suleyman Loras. Kabir and Camille are closely associated with Sufi teachers from other tariqats in Turkey and Syria, all of whom are committed to integrating the classical methods with modern needs. They live and work in Santa Cruz. Among their published works are Rumi: Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance. Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1990; Love is a Stranger: Selected Lyric Poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi. Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1993; The Rumi Collection: An Anthology of Translations of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi. Shambala Classics, Boston & London, 2000.
Coleman Barks (1937- ) was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and educated at the University of North Carolina and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught literature at the University of Georgia for three decades. He is the author and translator of numerous studies on Rumi and other Persian mystics, and has been involved with Sufism since 1977. He received an honorary doctorate from Tehran University in 2006. His works include: Quatrains from Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, Putney, Vt. Threshold Books, 1986; We are Three. Athens, Ga.: Maypop, 1987; These Branching Moments. Providence. R.I.: Copper Beach Press, 1988; This Longing. Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1988; Delicious Laughter, Athens, Ga.: Maypop, 1990; Like this. Athens, Ga.: Maypop, 1990; Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion. Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1991; One-Handed Basket Weaving, Athens, Ga.: Maypop, 1991; The Hand of Poetry, Five Mystic Poets of Persia, 1993, The Essential Rumi, 1995; The Book of Love, 2003.
Concluding remarksIn conclusion, let us once again recall that Rumi wrote his verses more than seven centuries ago, in extremely turbulent times when the Mongols were laying waste almost the entire Muslim world. But despite these horrors, Rumi was not a pessimist. As his Mathnawi and Divan reveal, he speaks of love and hope, thus creating the best of perspectives even for our present-day cross-cultural aspirations and the rush to cross-cultural studies at the start of the twenty-first century. In his day, the world was sinking into the harsh age of Mongol terror; now, we too are living in a new climate of terrorism and violence that threatens to destroy the cultural and civilizational achievements of the entire human race.
The Bosnian spiritual banquet spread before the readership by this brief paper is intended to draw attention to the immensity of Rumi’s ocean of Love, to bring us at least a hint of his fragrant rose-garden of Love, in the hope that we shall see that Mawlana’s feast of riches is now open to all comers, even though they may have breached their covenant a thousand times and more.
The fact that UNESCO has dedicated this year to Rumi, following W. A. Mozart, another sublime musical genius, is a praiseworthy act, the expression of our quest for what we hold in common, for a vision that could lead us through this millennium by building a better future for humankind, in line with Rumi’s philosophy of Love. I sincerely hope that our ethnic folly, the cult of the nation that has swept over Bosnia and Herzegovina, will not be an obstacle to our efforts and commitment.
Over and over again, Rumi reminds us of that message of love, embracing diversity and transcending the self, which is of the essence not only of Islamic spirituality, but of all true spirituality.
Come so we may speak to each other from spirit to spirit, talk to each other in a way hidden from eyes and ears.
Let us laugh without lips and teeth just as the rose garden.
Let us discourse without lips and mouth just as the thought.
Let us tell the secret of the world completely with our mouth closed at the level of ‘Aql al-Awwal (the First Intellect) and in the awareness of God’s existence.
Nobody talks to himself with a loud voice. Since we are all one, let us call out to each other from our hearts without mouths or lips.
How can you say to your hand “Hold!” Is that hand yours?
Since our hands are one, let us talk about this issue.
Hands and feet are aware of the state of the heart. Let us give up conversation made with our tongues and vibrate our hearts.20
________________________________________
1 G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, trans. William Wallace, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, p. 308.
2 This is also indicated in a number of earlier papers now compiled as a bilingual edition entitled Rumijeva filozofija Ljubavi/Rumi’s philosophy of Love.
3 Mesnevija I (Ljiljan 2000) and Mesnevija II (Ljiljan, 2002), translated by the late Fejzulah Hadžibajrić direct from the Persian in the 1980s.
4 The translation of vols. III, IV and V of the Mathnawi were published by Buybook in 2004, 2005, 2005, in the tranlsation by Velid Imamović from the English translation by Reynolds A. Nicholson, published by the Trustees of the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust.
5 Chittick, William C.: Sufijski put ljubavi – Rumijeva duhovna učenja (trans. by Rešid Hafizović of The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, New York, 1983), Ibn Sina Institute, Sarajevo, 2005.
6 Rumi, Mevlana Dželaluddin: Divan-i Šems (translated from the Persian by Muamer Kodrić), Lingua Patria, Sarajevo, 2005.
7 M. Fethullah Gülen, Foreword in: Şefik Can, Fundamentals of Rumi’s Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective, ed. & transl. by Zeki Saritoprak, The Light, New Jersey, 2005, p. xiii (Turkish original: Mevlana: Hayati-Şahsiyeti-Fikirleri, Őtűken, 1999).
8 Ibid, p. xviv and xvii.
9 Şefik Can, op. cit, str. 149.
10 Divan-i Kabir, vol. IV, no. 3020
11 Şefik Can, op. cit, p. 150. I should like here to express my profound thanks to my colleague Dr. Ibrahim Kalin for sending me a copy of this book. Finally, Dr Kalin, himself a man of many talents, is a magnificent heir to the Sufi tradition itself.
12 Mesnevi, vol. I, no. 112-15
13 Published as “Rumi is the Answer to All Our Problems”, Payvand Online, 2 March 2007)
14 Şefik Can, op. cit, p. 286.
15 One of her most important works has at last been translated into our language: Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam, as: Annemarie Schimmel, Odgonetanje Božijih znakova, fenomenološki pristup islamu, transl. from English by Fikret Pašanović, El-Kalem, Sarajevo, 2001.
16 The Mesnevi of Mevlānā Jelālu’d-dīn er-Rūmī. Book first, together with some account of the life and acts of the Author, of his ancestors, and of his descendants, illustrated by a selection of characteristic anedocts, as collected by their historian, Mevlānā Shemsu’d-dīn Ahmed el-Eflākī el-’Arifī, translated and the poetry versified by James W. Redhouse, London: 1881. Consists of a translation of the first book only.
17 Winfield, E.H. Masnavi i Masnavi, the Spiritual Couplets of Maulana Jalalu-ddin Muhamad Rumi, Londn: Trubner & Co, 1887.
18 Tales of Mystic Meaning, Being a Selection from the Mathnawi of Jalalud-Din Rumi (London: Chapman and Hill 1931) and Rumi: Poet and Mystic, 1207-1273 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956).
19 In this region is translated her book: Antologija sufijskih tekstova, translated from French by Mirjana Dobrović, Zagreb: Naprijed, 1988.
20 Divani-i Kabir, vol. III, no. 3020