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Rumi and Islam: Selections from His Stories, Poems, and Discourses--Annotated & Explained
Discover the richness of Rumi's spiritual tradition―through facing-page commentary that brings his writings to life for you. "This book you are now holding is a selection of what I believe are the best of Rumi’s accounts of the compassionate actions, sayings, and qualities of the Prophet, which include Rumi’s own inspired comments and explanations. It is my hope that you will be surprised and uplifted by the profound wisdom that Jalaluddin Rumi conveys through these stories and sayings."
―from the Preface This great Sufi poet and teacher can become a companion for your own spiritual journey. The lyric and wisdom poetry of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi has been an inspiration throughout the Middle East and Asia for over seven hundred years. Recently, it has also become popular in Western countries through translations and interpretive poetic versions in English. But while popular renderings have created the appreciation of Rumi the mystic, there is little understanding today of the religious and spiritual traditions from which the great mystic came. Rumi and Islam―Selections from His Stories, Poems, and Discourses examines not the popularized Rumi of universal love but the Sufi disciple whose works express deep reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. Ibrahim Gamard focuses on Rumi’s place within the Sufi tradition of Islam, as one of the greatest Muslim followers of the Prophet Muhammed, and on the Islamic foundations of his lover-Beloved mystical poetry. By probing verse by verse Rumi’s spiritual teachings, Gamard provides insight into the mystical side of the Qur’an and Islam, a religion that holds a deep love of God at its core. Now you can experience the profound and uplifting wisdom of Rumi even if you have no previous knowledge of Sufism or Islam. This SkyLight Illuminations edition presents the most important of Rumi’s writings, mainly from the Mathnawi, with insightful yet unobtrusive commentary that conveys how his teachings about the nature of love for God and God’s love for us can increase our understanding of Islamic wisdom in the West.
―from the Preface This great Sufi poet and teacher can become a companion for your own spiritual journey. The lyric and wisdom poetry of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi has been an inspiration throughout the Middle East and Asia for over seven hundred years. Recently, it has also become popular in Western countries through translations and interpretive poetic versions in English. But while popular renderings have created the appreciation of Rumi the mystic, there is little understanding today of the religious and spiritual traditions from which the great mystic came. Rumi and Islam―Selections from His Stories, Poems, and Discourses examines not the popularized Rumi of universal love but the Sufi disciple whose works express deep reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. Ibrahim Gamard focuses on Rumi’s place within the Sufi tradition of Islam, as one of the greatest Muslim followers of the Prophet Muhammed, and on the Islamic foundations of his lover-Beloved mystical poetry. By probing verse by verse Rumi’s spiritual teachings, Gamard provides insight into the mystical side of the Qur’an and Islam, a religion that holds a deep love of God at its core. Now you can experience the profound and uplifting wisdom of Rumi even if you have no previous knowledge of Sufism or Islam. This SkyLight Illuminations edition presents the most important of Rumi’s writings, mainly from the Mathnawi, with insightful yet unobtrusive commentary that conveys how his teachings about the nature of love for God and God’s love for us can increase our understanding of Islamic wisdom in the West.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
1,171 books15.6k followersSufism inspired writings of Persian poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi; these writings express the longing of the soul for union with the divine.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī - also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master") and more popularly simply as Rumi - was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic who lived in Konya, a city of Ottoman Empire (Today's Turkey). His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages, and he has been described as the most popular poet and the best-selling poet in the United States.
His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali.
Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorāṣān, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by his father, Bahā ud-Dīn Wālad or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, his father decided to migrate westwards, eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya, where he lived most of his life, composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature, and profoundly affected the culture of the area.
When his father died, Rumi, aged 25, inherited his position as the head of an Islamic school. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa. During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.
It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.
On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus.
Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next 12 years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.
In December 1273, Rumi fell ill and died on the 17th of December in Konya.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī - also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master") and more popularly simply as Rumi - was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic who lived in Konya, a city of Ottoman Empire (Today's Turkey). His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages, and he has been described as the most popular poet and the best-selling poet in the United States.
His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali.
Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorāṣān, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by his father, Bahā ud-Dīn Wālad or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, his father decided to migrate westwards, eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya, where he lived most of his life, composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature, and profoundly affected the culture of the area.
When his father died, Rumi, aged 25, inherited his position as the head of an Islamic school. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa. During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.
It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.
On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus.
Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next 12 years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.
In December 1273, Rumi fell ill and died on the 17th of December in Konya.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 23, 2011
"Ibrahim Gamard’s Rumi and Islam is a book whose need now cannot be overestimated. Rumi has been the best-selling poet in America for decades, but his works are most often misunderstood either by the translators/poets or the readers. Whether the translators/poets do this due to ignorance of the profoundly deep context of great Islamic scholarship that Rumi arose from or as a deliberate attempt to misguide others away from this Islamic context to a saccharine new age politically correct alternative is always a question when one reads most of the translations of Rumi . Gamard has been studying Rumi and his works for 35 years, and it was his desire to create a book which represents the reality of Rumi’s Islam; a book which is desperately needed for both the Muslims and those who love Rumi. It is interesting, because even nominal Muslims (with deviant opinions) like Coleman Barks and Idries Shah have popularized poems in their texts ascribing them to Rumi, such as this poem, which most would recognize as Rumi’s:
“O Muslims, what advice do you have?—since I don’t know myself;/I’m neither Christian nor Jew; I’m neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim./I traversed the lands of the Cross and the Christians, but he wasn’t in the Cross. I traveled to the temple of idols, to the ancient temple,/but there wasn’t even a tinge evident within it…I pulled the reins of seeking toward the Ka’ba, but He wasn’t in that destination of old/and young….I looked into my own heart and I saw Him in that place;/He wasn’t in any other place.â€
However, these famous verses, found in many, many texts on Rumi, are NOT Rumi’s—it was first translated by RJ Nicholson in 1898, but it does not occur in the earliest manuscripts of the Divan and is “no longer considered authentic by scholars. Nicholson mentioned that this poem occurred in only one manuscript (dated more than 170 years after Rumi died).†(Gamard 186) Gamard goes over many of the misrepresentations of Rumi and his works, such as “the creed of love†being other than full devotion in Islam, unIslamic acceptance of other religion’s validity attributed to Rumi, and many other absurdities from a traditional Sunni Islamic perspective that Orientalists, New Agers, and others have ascribed to him.
I will just say that, if you love the Prophet Muhammad, Sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa ‘ala alihi wa SaHbihi wa salam, you will cry tears of shame and love for the descriptions Rumi provides of his reality in this collection; the teaching stories show that Rumi was serving priceless goblets of light from the ocean of the illumination that was the Habib Allah, Sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa salam, Mercy to the Worlds, the Most Kind and Compassionate of Creation, the Apex and Pinnacle of Wisdom and Mercy, the Best of Creation in its entirety, Sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa ‘ala alihi wa Sahbihi wa salam.
"
“O Muslims, what advice do you have?—since I don’t know myself;/I’m neither Christian nor Jew; I’m neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim./I traversed the lands of the Cross and the Christians, but he wasn’t in the Cross. I traveled to the temple of idols, to the ancient temple,/but there wasn’t even a tinge evident within it…I pulled the reins of seeking toward the Ka’ba, but He wasn’t in that destination of old/and young….I looked into my own heart and I saw Him in that place;/He wasn’t in any other place.â€
However, these famous verses, found in many, many texts on Rumi, are NOT Rumi’s—it was first translated by RJ Nicholson in 1898, but it does not occur in the earliest manuscripts of the Divan and is “no longer considered authentic by scholars. Nicholson mentioned that this poem occurred in only one manuscript (dated more than 170 years after Rumi died).†(Gamard 186) Gamard goes over many of the misrepresentations of Rumi and his works, such as “the creed of love†being other than full devotion in Islam, unIslamic acceptance of other religion’s validity attributed to Rumi, and many other absurdities from a traditional Sunni Islamic perspective that Orientalists, New Agers, and others have ascribed to him.
I will just say that, if you love the Prophet Muhammad, Sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa ‘ala alihi wa SaHbihi wa salam, you will cry tears of shame and love for the descriptions Rumi provides of his reality in this collection; the teaching stories show that Rumi was serving priceless goblets of light from the ocean of the illumination that was the Habib Allah, Sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa salam, Mercy to the Worlds, the Most Kind and Compassionate of Creation, the Apex and Pinnacle of Wisdom and Mercy, the Best of Creation in its entirety, Sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa ‘ala alihi wa Sahbihi wa salam.
"
May 5, 2011
There are many translations of Rumi's work. Most fail to mention that Rumi's beloved that he writes about is God/Allah. This text translates some of his poetry and stories and illustrates their religious relevance to Islam. It contains a side by side annotation of meaning in context with how the text would matter in context.
Written by an American Sufi it is designed to help english speaking audiences understand and appreciate the text. I have met the translator and the love and care that he put into this work shows in how he has written it and how talks about it today.
Written by an American Sufi it is designed to help english speaking audiences understand and appreciate the text. I have met the translator and the love and care that he put into this work shows in how he has written it and how talks about it today.
August 5, 2012
I enjoyed the stories of our beloved prophet. His way of speacking about him lets you know that he loved him dearly. I would have liked more references of where the stories came from but other than that a great refective book.
April 20, 2011
Moving me to the extent that I cant stop crying at times!!
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews