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Rumi: A Spiritual Biography
Presents an intriguing portrait of the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic, describing his youth in Afghanistan and Turkey, beliefs, spirituality, poetry, and political influence, in a study that also examines his impact on twentieth-century mysticism and literature.
- GenresSpiritualityHistory
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 25, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 27, 2015
This “spiritual biography” of Rumi (which is anything but the spiritual biography of Rumi) is a naïve introduction to the events of Rumi's life.
I had several problems with the book which reflects my 1-star rating:
1)The author constantly interrupted the flow of the narration by interjecting her own interpretations of the events in a “rational” light. The question that lingered throughout my reading experience was, why does the author in the first place took up the task of writing about mysticism when she outrightly rejects anything that fails to make sense in her world.
For example, when Rumi’s wife informs him about the presence of Jinns: “To a modern reader this anecdote appears to be a droll yarn in which Rumi shows himself to be a clever psychologist, calming his wife’s anxieties without commenting on the absurdity of her beliefs” – p78. The Jinns are a part of Islamic theology, is the author discrediting that?
Another example illustrates the same: “At times Baha al-Din’s mystical experiences sound as if they took place beyond the edges of consciousness; his writings contain descriptions of witnessing pure forms and shapes come apart and reconfigure. There is a quasi-hallucinatory quality to these musings, some of which may have followed fasting and withdrawal from society.” P 41
2)Her apparent aim to establish that Baha al-Din (Rumi’s father) had no standing of his own. She continued insisting that he was glorified by Rumi’s hagiographers. For example, “Rumi’s principal hagiographers Aflaki and Sepahsalar later went to imaginative lengths to portray Baha al-Din as a distinguished lawyer-Divine with scores of disciples, and as a man whose legal opinions held great influence. But these distortions were undertaken largely to polish Rumi’s legend. In truth, Baha al-Din had little prominence in his lifetime and is remembered today only because he was the father of the poet.” p36
3)From the very beginning, Leslie Wines established that some of Rumi’s biographers were portraying Rumi in a good light and implied that they not be believed: Sultan Valad (Rumi’s son) is one of them according to her. “Of course, Sultan Valad also often sought to aggrandize Rumi, so this description, too, may be exaggerated or false.” P 37.
Shams Al-Din Aflaki bears her brunt the most. She mentions his work just to denounce it. Examples:“The ever-imaginative Aflaki provides an all-too-rich description of the...”p54,
“The hagiographer Aflaki provides the most detailed information, but his version is riddled with the sort of fantastical episodes that place all of his facts in doubt” p49,
“Although Aflaki’s story is beyond far-fetched..” p62,
“Aflaki also relates a very dubious but highly entertaining tale about…” p63 and she continues doing this right till the end. It was quite obvious that her bias was towards the “excellent modern” historians, including Golpinarli (who is hardly mentioned), Afzal Iqbal, Franklin Lewis and Annemarie Schimmel.
4)Repetition. Everything is repeated a few times in any given chapter.
5)On women: “There are also passages – quite obnoxious by contemporary Western standards – in which Rumi suggests that women, by virtue of their supposed combination of wretched ….” What are the Western standards here? I cannot make up my mind whether this is a feminist speaking or just a Western ethnocentric smokescreen. Furthermore, she continues: “For a modern Western reader, it is ironic that it is easier to learn something about Gowhar Khatun’s mother as an individual than it is about the first wife of Rumi or his own mother. Yet there was a good reason Rumi’s first mother-in-law was mentioned more often than his closer female relatives: Gowhar Khatun’s mother was a distinguished disciple of Baha al-Din and it was in the realm of spiritual inquiry that medieval Islamic women distinguished themselves and achieved respect. Of course, it is possible that Rumi in fact saw women in general, and wives in particular, as menacing moral inferiors. For all we know he may have regarded Gowhar Khan as a torment; but then again he may have considered her an angel.” p69 Too much irony here!
Writing about historical figures distant in time and space is a tedious task but Leslie Wines has done nothing of that sort. She is not a scholar, therefore this is not a biography. A commentary? Maybe! But definitely not a biography.
If I did not regard books with the utmost respect, I would have thrown this book in the garbage.
I had several problems with the book which reflects my 1-star rating:
1)The author constantly interrupted the flow of the narration by interjecting her own interpretations of the events in a “rational” light. The question that lingered throughout my reading experience was, why does the author in the first place took up the task of writing about mysticism when she outrightly rejects anything that fails to make sense in her world.
For example, when Rumi’s wife informs him about the presence of Jinns: “To a modern reader this anecdote appears to be a droll yarn in which Rumi shows himself to be a clever psychologist, calming his wife’s anxieties without commenting on the absurdity of her beliefs” – p78. The Jinns are a part of Islamic theology, is the author discrediting that?
Another example illustrates the same: “At times Baha al-Din’s mystical experiences sound as if they took place beyond the edges of consciousness; his writings contain descriptions of witnessing pure forms and shapes come apart and reconfigure. There is a quasi-hallucinatory quality to these musings, some of which may have followed fasting and withdrawal from society.” P 41
2)Her apparent aim to establish that Baha al-Din (Rumi’s father) had no standing of his own. She continued insisting that he was glorified by Rumi’s hagiographers. For example, “Rumi’s principal hagiographers Aflaki and Sepahsalar later went to imaginative lengths to portray Baha al-Din as a distinguished lawyer-Divine with scores of disciples, and as a man whose legal opinions held great influence. But these distortions were undertaken largely to polish Rumi’s legend. In truth, Baha al-Din had little prominence in his lifetime and is remembered today only because he was the father of the poet.” p36
3)From the very beginning, Leslie Wines established that some of Rumi’s biographers were portraying Rumi in a good light and implied that they not be believed: Sultan Valad (Rumi’s son) is one of them according to her. “Of course, Sultan Valad also often sought to aggrandize Rumi, so this description, too, may be exaggerated or false.” P 37.
Shams Al-Din Aflaki bears her brunt the most. She mentions his work just to denounce it. Examples:“The ever-imaginative Aflaki provides an all-too-rich description of the...”p54,
“The hagiographer Aflaki provides the most detailed information, but his version is riddled with the sort of fantastical episodes that place all of his facts in doubt” p49,
“Although Aflaki’s story is beyond far-fetched..” p62,
“Aflaki also relates a very dubious but highly entertaining tale about…” p63 and she continues doing this right till the end. It was quite obvious that her bias was towards the “excellent modern” historians, including Golpinarli (who is hardly mentioned), Afzal Iqbal, Franklin Lewis and Annemarie Schimmel.
4)Repetition. Everything is repeated a few times in any given chapter.
5)On women: “There are also passages – quite obnoxious by contemporary Western standards – in which Rumi suggests that women, by virtue of their supposed combination of wretched ….” What are the Western standards here? I cannot make up my mind whether this is a feminist speaking or just a Western ethnocentric smokescreen. Furthermore, she continues: “For a modern Western reader, it is ironic that it is easier to learn something about Gowhar Khatun’s mother as an individual than it is about the first wife of Rumi or his own mother. Yet there was a good reason Rumi’s first mother-in-law was mentioned more often than his closer female relatives: Gowhar Khatun’s mother was a distinguished disciple of Baha al-Din and it was in the realm of spiritual inquiry that medieval Islamic women distinguished themselves and achieved respect. Of course, it is possible that Rumi in fact saw women in general, and wives in particular, as menacing moral inferiors. For all we know he may have regarded Gowhar Khan as a torment; but then again he may have considered her an angel.” p69 Too much irony here!
Writing about historical figures distant in time and space is a tedious task but Leslie Wines has done nothing of that sort. She is not a scholar, therefore this is not a biography. A commentary? Maybe! But definitely not a biography.
If I did not regard books with the utmost respect, I would have thrown this book in the garbage.
February 18, 2022
Nice succinct biography of Rumi. Part of the Lives and Legacies series.
March 4, 2019
Rumi’s mystical poetry has been read all over the world for seven centuries after his death. He has been called the best-selling poet in the United States, and that’s saying something.
I think it’s a good idea to know at least something about a man whose work has been read and praised nonstop for seven centuries. Hey, that beats Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Walt Whitman, Maya Angelou, you can add your own favorites…I have deliberately delayed a first attempt to read his poetry—the Masnavi (Mathnawi), a six-volume opus—until I could learn a bit about the poet.
Leslie Wines makes it perfectly clear that it’s not too easy to learn more than a bit about the poet. She’s read all the other biographies, so she has a pretty broad view of how much biography stuff relating to Rumi is out there. It’s not a lot. The book is full of “Rumi may have,” “Rumi might have,” “some biographers say that Rumi,” “on the other hand, Rumi could have,” “it’s almost certainly not true that Rumi…” You get the picture.
The man wrote a lot of poetry, but he didn’t write much of anything at all about his own life. Contemporaneous accounts are uniformly and fantastically inflated with praise and adoration for Rumi’s life and works, so what’s believable is buried in the all too obvious exaggeration.
Rumi was a spiritual man, a master, and a mentor. Leslie Wines says “…Rumi tells us over and over that he is attempting to put into language the nature and significance of the invisible universe…”
Rumi: A Spiritual Biography seems to be a biography, no doubt about it, but it doesn’t offer much insight into Rumi’s spirituality.
On to his poetry…
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
I think it’s a good idea to know at least something about a man whose work has been read and praised nonstop for seven centuries. Hey, that beats Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Walt Whitman, Maya Angelou, you can add your own favorites…I have deliberately delayed a first attempt to read his poetry—the Masnavi (Mathnawi), a six-volume opus—until I could learn a bit about the poet.
Leslie Wines makes it perfectly clear that it’s not too easy to learn more than a bit about the poet. She’s read all the other biographies, so she has a pretty broad view of how much biography stuff relating to Rumi is out there. It’s not a lot. The book is full of “Rumi may have,” “Rumi might have,” “some biographers say that Rumi,” “on the other hand, Rumi could have,” “it’s almost certainly not true that Rumi…” You get the picture.
The man wrote a lot of poetry, but he didn’t write much of anything at all about his own life. Contemporaneous accounts are uniformly and fantastically inflated with praise and adoration for Rumi’s life and works, so what’s believable is buried in the all too obvious exaggeration.
Rumi was a spiritual man, a master, and a mentor. Leslie Wines says “…Rumi tells us over and over that he is attempting to put into language the nature and significance of the invisible universe…”
Rumi: A Spiritual Biography seems to be a biography, no doubt about it, but it doesn’t offer much insight into Rumi’s spirituality.
On to his poetry…
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
July 8, 2017
A very interesting book.
June 28, 2008
A wonderful book. Leslie Wines tackels a difficult subject & often elusive. She has Rumi emerging as a comprehensive human being and testament to the capacity, resilence and transendance of teh human spirit.
July 30, 2010
A good overview of the life of Rumi discussing where he came from and the world he lived in. I found it helpful in improving my understanding of his poetry.
Read
January 17, 2016Rumi in an nutshell, a short concise biography of this pre-eminent Sufi Saint.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews