Page 23 - The Book of Rumi

the Mongols had invaded and destroyed the cities of Samarkand and Balkh.
The torment of exile would have been compounded by this news of the near
destruction of their homeland. A Persian eyewitness sums up the devastation
wreaked by the Mongols on the city: “They came, they sapped, they burned,
they slew, they plundered, and they departed.”
After living in Karaman for seven years, Rumi, his elderly father, and the
rest of the family set off once again, this time to Konya, a relatively short one
hundred kilometers to the north. Konya became their fi nal destination.
After the death of his father in 1231, Rumi returned to Aleppo to
complete his studies before coming back to Konya and taking on his father’s
position as the head of the madrassa in 1237. Having excelled at academic
studies, Rumi seemed to have been destined for an uneventful life of teach-
ing his pupils, as he himself had been taught. However, his seismic encoun-
ter with Shams, the Sun of Tabriz, in November 1244 changed the course
of Rumi’s teachings and writings beyond the comprehension of most of his
contemporaries.
The meeting between the thirty-seven-year-old erudite pupil of juris-
prudence, Rumi, and the nearly sixty-year-old, often acerbic, peripatetic
Sufi master, Shams, culminated in an intellectually and emotionally intimate
friendship, which, although short lived, was a catalyst for the composition
of some of the most beautiful lyrical odes and one of the longest single-
authored narrative poems that has ever been written in any language. The
six-volume Masnavi, in addition to his forty thousand ecstatic hymns to love
collected under the title Divan of Shams, are Rumi’s major works upon which
rests his global reputation.
Rumi’s voice in all his literary output, but particularly in the Masnavi,
alternates between playful and authoritative, whether he’s telling stories of
ordinary lives or inviting the discerning reader to higher levels of introspec-
tion and attainment of transcendent values. Maryam Mafi ’s translations deli-
cately reflect the nuances of Rumi’s poetry while retaining the positive tone of

all Rumi’s writings, as well as the sense of suspense and drama that mark the
essence of the Masnavi.

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