Final celebrations for the "Year of Rumi"

The year 2007 has been marked by a world wide celebration of the 800th birthday of the poet Rumi. Iran's series of celebrations will finish with the celebration entitled “500 Days with Molana” on Dec. 19 at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall.

A series of lectures by distinguished scholars is planned featuring such renound scholars as Ahmad Jalali (Iran’s former UNESCO ambassador in Paris) and Gholamreza Avani (Head of the Wisdom and Philosophy Institute). The celebration will also feature music concerts, televisions programs and a theater performance about Rumi which has recently been staged in Paris. Earlier this year the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization declared 2007 "The Year of Rumi" and celebrations have been held world wide and currently there are still events in honor of Rumi to be held in such countries as Germany, France, Australia and Russia. A movie entitled "Rumi Returning" premiered to sold out audiences at the Santa Fe Film Festival on December 13th. An international Rumi-mania has inspired rock bands, high fashion, modern dance, and opera. The 13th century Persian is currently the best-selling poet in the US, outselling such US born writers as Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Frost So who is Rumi? Born Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī in 1207 in the city of Balk Persian ruled Afghanistan Rumi came from a family of famous scholars, jurists and teachers and claimed descent from Abu Bakr. Both Rumi’s father and grandfather were renowned intellectuals and his father was so widely acclaimed that he bore the title Sultan-ul-‘Ulama “King of Scholars. Rumi was a worthy successor to this heritage and showed great promise at a very early age. The story is told that Rumi’s father, who had made a dramatic speech in the Great Mosque of Balkh attended by the king and the local people, predicted the coming of the Mongols and the destruction of the city He then packed up his family and fled to Anatolia (modern Turkey) ahead of the invading armies. On the road the family met Farid al-Din Attar, one of the most famous mystic poets in Persian history and author of the Conference of the Birds, a story that is still famous in the West. The great mystic saw Rumi’s eminent father walking in front of his teenaged son and exclaimed “Here comes a sea followed by an ocean.” One wonders if the old mystic had any idea of just how prophetic his remark was for the young man he was greeting was destined to write more than 3,500 odes, 2,000 quatrains in addition to the monumental six volume Masnavi-ye Manavi (Spiritual Couplets) regarded by Sufis as only slightly less important than the Qur’an itself in spiritual matters. Before they parted Attar gave Rumi a copy of his book Asrarnama a philosophical work which was to have a great influence on the young man’s spiritual development. While it might seem a great coincidence for such celebrated scholars to meet by accident on the road it must be remembered that the 13th century of the Common Era was a time of great turmoil in the Middle East. Not only were the Mongols a gathering storm in the East but dynastic struggles and border wars wracked the whole area, staining the map with internecine bloodshed pitting Muslim against Muslim and weakening the fabric of Islamic society in the face of the growing threat. In 1212 the fabled city of Samarkand fell to the armies of Khwarizm and there is evidence that Rumi, who was no more than five at the time, had been present at the time of the siege. In the West, the Crusaders were still active, though a waning threat to Islam but in 1204 they managed what Muslim warriors had not yet archived and sacked the Christian city of Constantinople, causing many Orthodox Christian scholars to flee to Islamic countries to avoid persecution by the Roman Catholics. Wherever one looked there was war and the rumor of war and the roads were filled with refugees, many of them scholars looking for a quite corner to pursue their studies. Bayt al-Hikma-- “The house of wisdom” Many found work in Baghdad the Bayt al-Hikma or “house of wisdom” one of the largest, most well stocked libraries in the world. Its mission was not to simply warehouse books but to translate and disseminate knowledge from a wide variety of sources. Originally charged with translating Persian manuscripts into Arabic it soon added the translation and persevering of ancient Greek and Roman works as well as offering refuge to scholars persecuted fleeing war or persecution regardless of religion or national origin. In this great bastion of learning Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, men and women worked side by side in the service of knowledge united by the honored title of scholar. Rumi and his father were both scholars in the House of Wisdom before moving once again this time to the city of Konya in the north of modern Turkey. Rumi’s father set up a madrassa or school, which immediately began to attract a large group of students but died soon after leaving the then 23 year old Rumi in charge. Although ostensibly the head of the school Rumi continued his religious training under the tutelage of one of his father’s most learned disciples for the next nine years until the death of his teacher left him in true command of the school. Rumi was well known for his love, compassion and tolerance. It was virtually impossible to provoke him and he cared little for petty differences in creed. He was even kind and considerate towards his enemies. Famed as a teacher as well as a poet he assembled about him a devoted cadre of students who gathered to hear him teach his philosophy of love and toleration. One day as Rumi sat in his madrassa in deep meditation, surrounded by his students, a drunk staggered in off the street shouting. Stumbling he fell on top of Rumi who did not seem to notice. As a body Rumi’s students rose in wrath and there is no telling what they would have done to the offending man but the master waved his hand and silence descended on the room. Smiling, and in a gentle voice he said: “I had thought that the intruder was drunk but now I see that it is my own disciples who are drunk.” So great was Rumi’s fame by this time that kings and princes vied for a place in his company and many were welcomed but he preferred to spend most of his time in the market place discussing mystical love with its denizens and his followers included merchants, butchers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, painters, goldsmiths, and prostitutes. It is said that it was the rhythmical tapping of the hammer of Rumi’s friend Salah al-Din Zerkub, a goldsmith that established the cadence of Rumi’s ecstatic dance. Rumi dancing One of the major appeals of Rumi’s philosophy was its latitudinarian approach to religion believing that God cares more about the moral state of a person’s soul than in the finer points of dogma. Rumi, and the order founded by his followers appealed directly to the religious sensitivity of common people by means of music, dance, poetry, and the use of the vernacular language of their converts. This was in strong contrast to the stuffy legalistic wrangling of the Ulema, the community of legal scholars of Islam and the Sharia and was instrumental in the wholesale conversion of many Central Asian Steppe Nomads such as the Seljuqs and, eventually, even the dreaded Mongols themselves. When Rumi’s light passed from the world, at sunset on December 17, 1273 CE and his body was placed on the litter a crowd Muslims drawn from the great and humble alike gathered and, weeping marched in procession to the cemetery. To their surprise they were joined on the way by crowds of people of every description, Christians, Jews, Greeks, Arabs, Turks in solemn convocation, each group bearing their sacred scriptures before them, singing Psalms or reciting verses from the Gospels or the Pentateuch, crying in lamentation each according to their customs. A disturbance arose and the sultan, summoning the chief religious leaders of each group before him, demanded that they explain what possible connection they could have with this funeral. They replied:" In seeing him we have comprehended the true nature of Christ, of Moses, and of all the prophets. . .such as we have read about in our books. If you Muslims say that our Master [Rumi] is the Muhammad of his period, we recognize him similarly as the Moses and Jesus of our times. Just as you are his sincere friends, we also are one thousand times over his servants and disciples.” One Greek priest spoke for all the men and women who have basked in the beauty of Rumi’s poetry and his message of love down through the centuries: "Our Master is much like unto bread which is indispensable to all the world. Has a hungry man ever been seen to flee from bread ?” Rumi's tomb in Konya Rumi’s impact on the art and philosophy of Central Asia, and most Islamic countries, is almost too great to measure. In the West, Rembrandt was inspired to draw him and Dante, Fredrick Hegel, Goethe and Gandhi have all paid tribute to his genius and his message. Pope John XXIII in a special tribute declared “In the name of the Catholic world, I bow with respect before the memory of Mevlana.” Today, many consider Rumi to be the “poet of all nations” and a search of the listings under his name on Amazon.com, will reveal more than 14 pages containing 8,915 books either by or about the great Iranian mystic. In the modern world of cultural ignorance, violence and warmongering, Rumi's life work is a call to turn one’s back on hatred and revenge. Some poems by Rumi: Love’s nationality is separate from all other religions,

The lover’s religion and nationality is the Beloved (God).

The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes

Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.

Terrible destruction dances and the world’s days darken.

If you want Supreme Reality, hide form fame.

You’re looking for the Pearl? Plunge, now to the sea’s bottom.

What is on shore is only foam.

Come, come, come again,

Whoever you may be,

Come again, even though

Yu may be a pagan or fire worshipper.

Our hearth is not the threshold of despair.

Come again, even if you may have

Violated your vows a hundred times,

Come again "The lamps are different, but the light is the same." ---------------- This article received an award from Digital Journal's Editorial Board for outstanding citizen journalism. Every Friday, Digital Journal profiles the top news stories from around the world.

For more details on this award and to find other top-rated articles, check out DigitalJournal.com's TopFinds report.