Page 22 - The Book of Rumi

It is said that while chanting “I am the Truth,” Hall¯aj was beaten and
lashed and hanged and decapitated on the order of the Abbasid caliph, and
his remains were set alight on the shores of the river. Legend has it that as his
ashes were thrown into the Tigris, the river foamed, and rose, and just when

the startled onlookers thought that the city would be flooded, Hall¯aj’s servant
threw his now deceased master’s robe onto the water, whereby the rapids were
calmed, and the river was pacifi ed.
According to Louis Massignon, a French scholar of Islam who died in
1962, a monument was built on the site of Hall¯aj’s execution, but the struc-
ture was fi nally washed away in the Baghdad floods of 1921. Rumi, in his

writing, often pays homage to the memory and teachings of Hall¯aj.
Taking their leave of Baghdad, Rumi’s family continued their journey to
Mecca, and after performing the hajj, set out for Damascus then on to Ana-
tolia and the town of Malatya.
In Damascus, Jal¯al od-Din would have walked the lanes of the gated city
in the shadow of the ramparts dating back to Roman times. He would have
strolled through the souk, where next to the vendors of sheep and birds and
camel paraphernalia there would have been displays of spices, perfumes, and
pearls, and glassware, pottery, and cinnabar in small shops. The young Rumi
would have undoubtedly been taken to prayers at the Umayyad mosque and
perhaps visited the Church of Mary. And all the while, whether consciously
or by passive osmosis, he would have registered a host of plots and scenes that
would gloss and nourish the body of stories that he would compose in verse
before long.
It was during the family’s travels through Syria and his father’s meetings
with fellow theologians that plans would have been made for Rumi to com-
plete his studies by enrolling in the best madrassas and colleges of divinity,
philosophy, and law in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo.
After spending a short time in the eastern Anatolian town of Malatya
in the summer of 1217, the Valad family moved to Erzincan, and four years
later to Laranda, the present-day Turkish city of Karaman. The Valads lived
in this city until 1229. The young Jal¯al od-Din was now a twenty-two-year-
old married father of two small boys; the family had no doubt learned that

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