In Our Time - Rumi's Poetry

Episode Date: February 11, 2016

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th Century. His great poetic works are the Masnavi or "spiritual couplets" and the Divan, a collection of thousands of lyric poems. He is closely connected with four modern countries: Afghanistan, as he was born in Balkh, from which he gains the name Balkhi; Uzbekistan from his time in Samarkand as a child; Iran as he wrote in Persian; and Turkey for his work in Konya, where he spent most of his working life and where his followers established the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Whirling Dervishes.With Alan Williams British Academy Wolfson Research Professor at the University of ManchesterCarole Hillenbrand Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews and Professor Emerita of Edinburgh UniversityAnd Lloyd Ridgeon Reader in Islamic Studies at the University of GlasgowProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com. UK slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the Sufi writer and teacher Rumi is so important in the Islamic world that four modern countries claim him for their own. Afghanistan, as he was born in that area, in the town of Balkk in 1207. Uzbekistan, as he lived in Samakhan as a child. Turkey as he lived, work and died in the Anatolian city of Konya.

Iran, as he wrote in Persian. Rumi is treasured throughout Islam and beyond for his poetry. His Masnabi and Divan. His output was extraordinary, around four times longer than Homer's Odyssey. The Divine is a massive collection of lyrical poems. The Masnavi, a spiritual verses of enormous complexity, described controversially in the 14th century as the Persian Quran. His followers founded the Meveli Order of Sufis and

known outside Turkey for their whirling dervishes. With me to discuss the poems of Rumi are Alan Williams, British Academy Wolfson Research Professor at the University of Manchester, Karl Hillenbrand, Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews, and Professor Emerita of Edinburgh University, and Lloyd Rigen, reader in Islamic Studies

at the University of Glasgow. Carol Hillenbrand, why did Rumi and his family move around so much in his early life? Rumi and his family lived originally in what is now Afghanistan, Tajikistan. And his father was a reputed teacher and scholar, and he had a group of disciples around him. And at one point, in around 1212, they were living in Samarkand.

And Rumi's father had a dispute with the ruler and left the area. Now, whether or not that was also been, because of the rumbling rumors about terrible activities by the Mongols further east, which would have added an incentive to the move. The family, Lockstock and Barrel, moved, and they travelled first to Baghdad and then Mecca and Damascus, before finally, having come from the extreme eastern part of the Islamic world, ended up on the western periphery in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rojas.

Ruhm, hence Rumi's name, which is the Arabic word for Byzantium. So they settled in the area of the Salduk Sultanate, and finally, the father of Rumi was invited to Konya, which is where Rumi was destined to remain. So in the background, we have the thundering hooves of Genghis Khan coming in from the east, and it was either a magnificent intuition or just luck that he got out in time. his father with the family. And so that's the background of his childhood. In the foreground is this,

could we call his father a wandering scholar, or was he looking for the best place, or was he rejected one place and went, what was the sort of going on? Why did he move so much? It isn't really very clear. He doesn't sound to have been very controversial. He was a highly respected scholar.

I suspect that he had an adventurous spirit. Hence he's going to the pilgrimage in Mecca, and also to Damascus and Baghdad. But the idea of ending up in Turkey, as it now is, is really very exciting. And the idea of him making Conya into such an important place is, to his credit, before even his son began. So he helped to make Conya a centre of learning?

Certainly. Rumi's father. So we're talking about it very important matter. Yes, although, of course, it became much more famous when Rumi himself took over. And what would he teach this teacher? Islamic law and the Sufi doctrine, because Rumi's father was also interested in Sufism.

And so he would teach things that people had to, would he pupils come and pay to be taught by him? Would he go into the beginnings of what we might call the school? Yes. There were madrasas in Konya, and he would also do more Sufi exercises in the cloisters for Sufriarchs. Sufis in Konya.

Just to clarify this, if it can clarify, Sufis inside the carapace, inside the embrace of Islam. Certainly. It wasn't always because there were some people who were regarded as extreme and heterodox because they seemed to wish to dispense with the Sharia. But Al-Ghazali made sure in his famous writings that the dimension of Sufism,

the mystical dimension of Sufism in Islam must also observe the outer rind of the Sharia. Alan Wulnianne was one assumes that one of the great influences on Rumi was his father. So if you might want to develop that a little, but who else were until his mid-30s? Yes, until his mid-30s, and you say that because we know that there's somebody very important coming in his life, Shamsid Tavriz.

His father was a great influence on him, We know that because Rumi seems to have been reading his works later in his life, and the Mar-R-F of his father Baháhoudin was an important text for him, intimations of the mystic path. The other important influence on him before he met Shamsi Tabriz was the successor to his father Bahawdin as the head of the madrasa in Konya, who was called Bolivia. Borhanadin Mohaq.

He was an important influence on him, perhaps, because he was perhaps the most important, the first visionary mystic of some mystical attainment that he'd met. It's known that Bohanadin records his own mystical flights and speaks of his own experiences. But I must say there is a non-human influence on him, which is the elephant in the room, if you like, It's the Quran itself and the Hadith tradition.

This is perhaps the greatest influence on Rumi, and we'll see later that it runs through his life like a golden thread, and one must remember that before one speaks about human influences. Well, let's go to the big human influence, whom you mentioned in your introduction to your remarks then, Alan, the Sufi mystic Shams al-Tabriz, I've got it written down here, but there's several variations of that. Can you tell us who he is, how old he was,

when he came into Rumi's life and what he did? When he came into Rumi's life in, I think, around 1244, Rumi would have been 37, and Shambi Tepri's would have been 55. So an elderly man in those days, certainly in late middle age. Now, he is a very mysterious and charismatic figure. He used to be thought of as a sort of mad, wandering, Al-Andar. But recently...

What are you mind wondering? What? Sorry, yes, an antinomian wandering dervish. Or an unconventional, sometimes they were even naked, like naked faqirs. These are the wild-haired men of Islamic mysticism, Kalanderers, as they're called, or Kalanderers.

Now, we know now that Shamsi Tabriz was actually a very learned man, and we can see from his writings that he was both a man of, immense kindness, but at the same time of great severity. And this is, his name, Shams, means the sun. But he seems to have come into, sorry to the brush you a bit, but he seems to have come into Rumi's life to dramatic effect for a very short time. Can you just tell us the effect he had in him, in the two years they spent together? Yeah, it's regarded as the transformation point in Rumi's life. It said that Rumi was raw and then he became.

cooked when he met Shemte de Brise, and then when Shemte de Bris disappeared, he was burnt by the experience. And this transformation of Rumi was because they had the most intense mystical relationship. They were companions for just two years, and there was a period of separation in that short period of two years from 1244 to 46. his Rumi's own pupils were so jealous of that close liaison that he was so to speak hounded out of town or he left of his own accord. We don't know quite which. A lot of what we know about Rumi is based on hagiographical sources,

but it seems if we sift the evidence that certainly Shams left town and didn't say where he was going and Rumi pined after him and wrote to him and begged him to come back. He came back soon but after another, within a year, he disappeared forever. And there's a great controversy in the literature about whether or not he was bumped off by Rumi's disciples. Is it possible to say, I know this is ridiculous, but still here we go.

Is it possible to say, in essence, what he taught Rumi, how he, as you say, and it seems to be borne out by the work, transformed this brilliant young, able scholar picked out from the time he was a boy, into the great poet, the great preacher of Sufism, the great mystic and so on and so forth. What happened? They secret. They were together, very closely together, for this time. What happened?

Yeah, there's a difficulty in answering that question, which is that really we don't know Shamsi Tabriz well enough. The Maqaulat or the discourses of Shams are extremely difficult texts, and they're patched together from notes, so to speak, probably by one of Rumi's pupils, Husamadine. but it is really probably the case that he unlocked the poet in Rumi. Now, his father had not been interested in poetry, it seems.

He quoted some poetry in his own writings, but his father didn't teach Rumi poetry. Borhanadin seems to have introduced him to mystical experience, but it was Shams who opened the floodgates of poetry in Rumi, and in the period after, We have this massive outpouring of poetry ever after until he died in 1273. And the pupils were jealous because of the closeness of the two

and the word intimacy came to my mind and dismissed it because it was more Socratic than anything else, according to your notes. Mind you, Socratic, well, there you go. We're not used to understand, we don't understand in the modern world. We're not used to understanding this idea of very close mystical communion,

between two men and it's stigmatized and there are all sorts of stories in the modern world and ideas about their relationship. But I think one can say with clarity that this was a not a sober relationship but it was a chaste relationship of mystical, mystical companionship and communication.

Thank you very much. Lloyd Rogen, Sufism, we've used the word mysticism two or three times, in this conversation so far. Is Sufism, is it built around that? Is mysticism the kernel of Sufism? In which case, can you tell listeners what mysticism meant then and why it was so important? Then we seem to, most people listen to the programme probably, like myself, it's in the past, it's the thing that was then, but I don't think anything's ever then, isn't it? Anyway, never mind, what is it? Well, the best way to explore that is to look back at the history of Sufism.

and for some people it might be a surprise that the words Sufism and Sufis do not appear in the Quran what happened is that Sufism emerged as a social phenomenon in the 9th and 10th centuries and it was part of a pietist movement and it was representative if you like of

what we might term normative Islam but having said that there are one or two individuals What do you mean normative Islam that they're going concerns from the Quran? Absolutely in terms of performing your prayers going on pilgrimage, fasting and so on and so forth but despite this pietist movement there were some individuals who perhaps took

the emerging Sufi movement a little bit further in particular there was one Sufi called Halarj and he was executed in 922 because of his supposed statement I am the truth or I am God I'm Oud I am God yeah so what many people thought he was doing was blowing the distinctions between creator and created

between man and God that's often how he's understood it in the Sufi path anyway. But after that period, Sufism becomes a little bit more conservative and this idea of mysticism, this idea of some kind of unitive experience of man and God, becomes pushed into the background.

But nevertheless, the Sufi tradition remains incredibly popular among the masses in particular. And this might be because Sufis tended to allow lay people to join in certain parts of their rituals. One of the ritual, of course, was the Samar or the mystical concert where Perjou would be recited. And it was on those occasions where a Sufi may engage in some kind of mystical experience.

Because it was so popular... Now, can you... I'm talking to that, I'm sorry, but is it possible to tell us now what a mystical experience would have been like then? Well, in the medieval period, we have many, many mystics who portray their own understanding of what mysticism is.

For people like Rumi... Mystique with the Sufis, yeah. For people like Rumi, it is about the understanding of witnessing God, however that may be. For some people, it was the idea of feeling

some kind of unity among everything in existence. So this is in contrast to how Islam is understood by the theologians and the clerics because they wanted to preserve an utter distinction

an utter ontological distinction between the human being and God, the creator of the divine. So Suvius tended to blur these distinctions so that everything is one. Rumi wanted, and after with that great teacher that Avald just talked about, he wanted to, as it were, pull aside the veil between the aspiration and the passion of man and the idea of God. Is that right? I think that's true. I think that's fair. I mean, you can read all of these passages in the Masnavi, in the Divana Shams, another long poem by Rumi.

and the fundamental teaching is to purify yourself so that the kind of divine emanation or divine reflection can be seen within yourself and you will realise the underlying unity in the whole of existence. Can you tell us, is there, was he a specific sort of Sufi, Rumi, after this encounter, because we've got past the great encounter now, he's on his way, he's going to write more poetry than Homer if Homer wrote it all, and so on and so forth. What sort of Sufi would he have been described?

as being? Well, Sufism in this period in the 13th century was completely diverse. There were so many interpretations of what Sufism was. Alan's already mentioned the calendars, these wild dervishes who completely transformed certain types of Sufism, but they were regarded by many services as beyond the pale. On the other hand, there was the more intellectual variety provided by Sufis, such as Ibn Arabi, a very famous

Spanish mystic who ended up in Damascus, who interestingly had his very famous disciple, Sedra Deng Gornowie was a very close friend of Rumi as well. But I think Rumi occupies a kind of stable middle ground in the respect that he's not intellectual, he's not wild or unchamled, he represents a form of suffism which does emphasise that degree of mysticism whereby people can really understand what God is all about,

become near to God. So he's had this intense teaching period. He's in his late 30s now, and he's got a fact, and he's writing poetry, poetry, poetry, an enormous amount, Carol. Can you tell us about the divan? It's a very enormous work.

Some 3,500 plus poems, lyrical poems called gazelles, quatrains, and odes. And it's absolutely mind-boggling how voluminous this collection is. and most of the time it's about love. It's about passionate yearning, both for God and also for a human beloved. And the writing of many of these poems is in the first person singular.

You have no notes, Carrie. Can you give us a few lines from that, or is that asking too much? Well, there's a wonderful line in the... divan, we were once in heaven, we were friends of the angels, let us all return there, that is our city. In other words, there's this yearning to be rejoined to where we were in eternity before we were born. It's, if you like an echo of the Quran which says, we belong to God and to God we are returning. And in the meantime, the human soul is yearning to be rewritten. To be rewritten. reunited.

Alan, you want to come in here. Alan Williams. I mean, I think it's very important to say that these Gazals and these odes, Qasida, and so on, they're really quite short poems. They're like sonnets. The Qasida are sometimes longer. We're talking about 15, sometimes

20 lines. But they're an extraordinary experiment for Rumi. They seem to be composed almost improvisatorily. That is, he may have composed them very quickly. One thing he does is he experiments with meter all the time. There are some 50, 55 different meters in the collection of odes.

You have noticed in Rundavu, so you can give us another taste of Persia. I just give you one example. You can really hear the meter in this. And it's probably one of the most famous lines in the divan. Every Iranian knows this. Morde Boudam, Zendezodam, Ghairi Bodam, Khandeshodam. do let itesh o'm adomand dole te pao yandesh o dam and i've translated it into something like that meter

forgive me dead was i then i came to life weeping i then started to laugh the kingdom of love came i became kingdom of perpetual love now this this then goes on for another 20 verses that's one single verse i've just quoted more de buddams then de buddhame etc etc so these are quite long of a very English sonnet standards, but they're very discreet. Each one of them is like a jewel of many

facets to contemplate. Carl wants to come back in here. I wanted to talk about the variety of the imagery, and in fact, the Orientalist Jones in 1775 talked about half as the Persian poet as writing oriental pearls at random cast and that was criticised when talking about Rumi but it seems to me that what we've got with Rumi is a complex set of ideas but flashing through are brilliant insights

and they come like comets from outside in the darkness and shed light on us or alternatively like fireworks which spread sparks in wide directions or indeed sometimes the inspiration coming from the imagery is like an electric current sometimes on and sometimes off but all these images have an incredibly powerful effect on the listener

and the listener is the word because they're musical as well and can I turn to you now Lloyd on these masterwork the Masnaviahs but everybody who want to talk about this Can you tell us the ambition of the poem and something of the size of it? Is there one idea in it or Alan would want to talk about this? But can you give us an introduction to it? Well, the Masnavi is composed in six volumes. Whether or not Rumi actually planned that to begin with, it's unclear.

But it's certainly a volume of, there are certain scholars who see certain themes in these six volumes. But I think it's necessary to make a distinction between Rumi's two major masterpieces, the Masnavi and the Devana Shams. In the respect that the Mastanavi is didactic, is teaching the specific Sufi path, what the Dervis should do, what the Sufis should do in terms of being obedient to his Sheikh, to his master, in terms of the experiences he may find he has. Whereas the divan of sham's very different.

It's Rumi's own personal experiences. So when you read the divan, you can actually get to understand what Rumi personally is experiencing in terms of his separation from Shams, in terms of his love for Shams and so on and so forth. But in terms of the mass never, you get very, very short stories. And sometimes they're short, and then he digresses and comes back to that short story again. So it's something that really hooks the reader. It's a bit like reading maybe a Dickens novel in the respect that Dickens will finish his chapter

and go into something completely different and then comes back to the main topic. So in that way, Rumi is able to subtly transform the reader's idea into what's, really going on and then he comes back and back and back. Would it be true, or this is just a stab in the dark through, I have to say that through all your notes, so there you go, that one of the messages in the Masnavi is of forgiveness and the equality of people before God. Absolutely. I think forgiveness is perhaps not the word

that's banded around too much in Islam. It's perhaps better to talk in terms of mercy. Right. And mercy is a theme that you find amongst all, Sufis. It's one of the predominant features of Sufism. And what is really interesting for me in terms of mercy is that you find the word mercy

expressed in the very first line of the divan Ashams. If I may, I can just read this in Persian for you. It says A. Rastachizh Narkahan Voi Rahmata B. Montahar which translates as sudden resurrection,

endless mercy. And this kind of thing permeates the whole of the divan and even also the Masnavi. And this kind of idea of mercy feeds into a kind of ecumenical perspective that you can also find in

Rumi. I think the idea of Rumi engaging both men and women is very interesting and perhaps explains why it was popular or Syphism was popular both in the medieval period, but also in the modern period too. But it's not just in terms

of gender equality. We can find themes relating to the oneness that can be experienced by Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians. He converted, we are told, besides Muslims, Christians and Jews as well. Well, that's what we're told by the hierographies. Now, whether that's true or not is another question. But certainly, it's possible to read those kind of stories

into the Masnevi. I mean, there's a very famous story about Rumi and the blind men when, of course, the blind men go into the room and each touch a part of the elephants, one person, touches the tail, one person touches the elephant's ear, another leg, and they all have an aspect of the truth. Can Carol come in for a second? I wanted to... Just if you could come in briefly.

Certainly. I wanted to talk about the idea of love again because instead of talking about doctrines which divide, he says that love, love is important. Let me quote something. the 73 sects will survive until the resurrection, but love conquers all. And as Lloyd was just saying, he has a very ecumenically friendly attitude to the other faiths,

without relinquishing his own Islamic belief embedded in the Quran and the hadith of the prophet, There's also an attitude where he's spiritually above everything. That is to say all religions are valid. That is when he says, I am not a worshipper of the cross or the crescent. I am not a Zoroastrian or a Jew. In other words, he is respectful of other faiths,

and that's quite clear with what goes on in Conya. Alain Williams. I just have to comment that actually that particular gazelle is regarded as spurious. It's not in the earliest manuscript. But it certainly captures the spirit of what he's saying. Well, as Voltaire would say, if it didn't, I exist, then he ought to have done. Talking about the Masnavi, could I just say something about the title of it? It's known as the Masnavi Emat Navi, which means the spiritual mass navy,

or perhaps better, the Masnavi of meaning, the couplets of meaning, Now, a thing to understand about this text is that vast as it is, and it contains hundreds of stories, 200 and something stories, vast as it is, it devolves, it entirely devoles on the device of metaphor, which in Persian is messal, because this is a transformative figure, the metaphor. Every story he tells, and sometimes they're extremely short, I mean two lines, and they can be in the mouths of animals, birds, flies even, people, of course, heroes from scripture and so on. But all of these stories are just the husk, as Rumi calls it.

They're the husk, because what he's trying to get is to the meaning. And so the Maznavi is an ocean of meaning, and reading it is like being drowned. It's like being plunged into a vast ocean. Like a fly in honey, like the fly. Well, even ruder than that, actually. Actually, it's a flying something else. All right. But, yeah, the idea of all of the images in the Mass.

And we start with the read, don't we? I will perhaps recite in a second. If you could recite the read, then I'll ask Lloyd to develop that. Yeah, all of these images are ways to give them the imagination, food for thought, so to speak. So this is the very opening. The read is very important. the read, yes. Shall I translate it or shall I?

No, no, read it in Persian. I like to hear Persian. Sorry about that. Well, not sorry about that. It's great, isn't it? I'll read it too quickly for my listeners. No, no, don't read it. Bechnuine nay, Chun shakaiat me conned, as judea haqaid me conned.

Kazna yestan, ta maro bobride and Darnafiram, Mard and Nalida end. Sinehaham shahahaheerah as faraq, ta boiom shirh derd, ashdiah. Now the translation. Listen to this reed as a-lechish.

Listen to this reed as it is grieving. It's telling of the tale of separations. Since I was severed from the bed of reeds, in my cry men and women have lamented, I need the breast that's torn to shreds by parting to give expression to the pain of heartache. Whoever finds himself left for. far from home looks forward to the day of his reunion.

And this goes on for some 35 lines. And that is the passage that it is said began the masnavi when Rumi took a note out of his turban asked by Husamuddin to write a masnavi. He produced this nai, as it's called, of 35 lines. And of course, home can mean so many different things to so many different people, so it has applications. Lloyd, can we develop what our own.

has been talking about the use of stories in the Masnavi. Right. I think one of the most engaging thing about Rumi's poetry in the Masnavi and his storytelling is the fact that he uses very, very simple language that everyone can understand. So, for example, even today, if you go to Tehran, it's likely that people will be able to recite

these poetry back to you. It's really quite incredible. I mean, these days in the UK, we just don't have that capability anymore. We've lost it. We can't reside Chaucer back to you. Absolutely. And the other thing that's really interesting about Rumi is that it's perfectly

comprehensible. We don't need Brody's notes. People understand it. It's perfectly clear. But, I mean, Rumi's stories are funny. That's perhaps part of the people. Well, let's talk a story that isn't funny, but it's easy to understand. And Alan can come in on as well. The King and the Slave Girl. You want to talk about that. You all want to talk about that. You want to kick off? Now, Alan's going to kick off. Right.

Can we be brief about this? The story, and then, because that's full of, I mean, he doesn't hold any punches. When the doctor examines her, we get a lot of detail that a lot of people might find surprising in a delicate 13th 12th century Persian poet. One of them is that it's a story which looks like a romance when it starts, but it turns into what one scholar's called an anti-foloric tale. It actually turns very dark. In fact, the king who falls in love with the slave girl discovers that she's actually in love with someone else. She falls sick, and he discovers its love sickness for someone. else. He then holds this goldsmith from Horasan all the way back to presumably

Konya and poisons him. He poisons him slowly so he turns ugly. The girl falls out of love with her lover and she dies. And so the whole thing ends badly. But in the meantime, there has been a divine messenger who comes down from Hevna and tells, the divine doctor, tells Rumi tells the king what's really wrong with the slave girl. And the king has fallen in love with the divine messenger because he knows that his love for the slave girl was just the love of form of out of form. But the amazing thing about this doctor is when he gives her an examination,

it could be in a surgery night, it could be in a doctor's office. He says really prods away, doesn't he, and finds this out and done it. And then he analyte it gives her psychoanalysis. He gets there by psychoanalysis. And he finds out what's really upsetting, and that's the love for somebody else.

That's extraordinary. What sort of language is he using here, Lloyd? Is he using language that was available to everybody at the time? Absolutely. At the time in Kenya, there were obviously a number of languages that were used. Arabic was the scholastic language. Persian was the languages that was used by the educated and the court, but it was understood by most people.

So his poetry would have been understood, listened to, and read by all kinds of people at the time. But what's most interesting about Rumi, of course, are his images. You know, in his works, he talks about the effervescence of, for example, the chickpeepubbling away in the water,

which is obviously a metaphor for the individual and the experience of God. And it's these kind of images that make Rumi's message really get across. One of the favorite stories of mine in the Masnavi is his story about Moses and the shepherd.

And in the story, the shepherd is making a prayer to God, saying, oh God, I'll do anything for you, I'll give you some milk, I'll give you your shoes. And Moses castigates him because, of course, he believes that he shouldn't be using such inappropriate language. You know, he's a theologian, so to speak. And so the shepherd has to go away and he feels utterly disappointed and downcast. But of course, then we have God chastising Moses for using such language to a poor shepherd,

who praises God in the way that he sees best. And Rumi actually says in his commentary on this, that even though he's, Hindu in India praises God using specific terms. So again, it's another way that we can see that room is quite ecumenical in this. Currently, I want to commend on this, about him bringing in other religions. Well, I wanted really to mention again, we haven't really emphasized enough the horrendous political turmoil in which this brilliant man is operating. He goes thousands of miles from the eastern extremity in Afghanistan to,

the western extremity of the Muslim world, thinking that he is escaping from the Mongols, and he is an exile, and that, of course, is an added dimension to his read stories, that he is, of course, alone

away from his original home. But not only that, the Mongols actually come to Konya quite early on in 1243, and they take over. And yet, Rumi manages to evoke admiration in the Mongol protector,

who is called Mouin adin Parvani, he's a Persian. And apparently Rumi was very much welcomed by the Mongol agents, as it were, and even he did spiritual concerts in this man's house. So it's a really difficult time for the whole of the Muslim world. Dreadful bloodshed, demographic movements and so on. It's just the worst possible thing to have happened. And yet he produces this sublime work. Alan, I'm glad you're reminding us of that.

Thank you very much. Alan Williams, back to you. You've described the Masnavi as a polyphonic composition. Can you develop that? Yeah, musical analogies are good for Rumi. He was known to be a great musician. And what I mean by this is that the kind of poetry he writes is on an altogether different scale from the Gazal. It's very big stage stuff.

It spans the world, so to speak, from the lowest to the highest. And all of nature is taken into it. he takes on the guys of many different, he takes on the voices of many different registers in the poem. He speaks as the author, the sheikh, the sort of grandfather, the old man. He tells stories as if he's talking to a child. He interrupts himself all the time in these stories by analogies which are quite intellectual,

but they're meant to illustrate what he's saying. He goes into speeches that he, where he very cleverly segues from speeches into discourses that become quite mystical or become quite homiletic, quite preachy, moral discourses. They then turn into ecstasies and then he stops the whole proceedings and says silence. And there's a kind of behaviour, a kind of procedure that the reader becomes used to, almost as if learning the ropes of how to get, how to swim in this ocean. And it's really an experience of going through the stages of mystical elevation.

The reader himself feels, herself feels raised up inside, raised up in the imagination. And in that sense, it's a cathartic experience reading it, an uplifting experience reading it. Lloyd, can I ask you about how popular was, have we any idea, can we measure how popular Rumi was then? And let's fast forward 800 years and now. Right. It's quite difficult to assess how popular Rumi was in his own lifetime. It's quite interesting that there's a history written at the time by an individual called Ibn Bibi,

and he doesn't mention Rumi at all in history of the Seljuks and Konya. But nevertheless, something is very interesting going on, in the respect that Rumi has this big patron, as Carol has just said, Parvani, something is interesting going on. In the generation after his death, there are certainly aspects of veneration and reverence to Rumi,

because we have hagiographies, which were written about him. We have Rumi's son, Sultan Vallad, composed in poetry about the Mastnavi. And not only that, but other Sufi orders are composing their own commentaries on the book of the read. And so by the 16th century,

we have a very famous person poet called Jami, who says that although he was not a prophet, he had a book, i.e., he's comparing the Masnavi to the Quran. So that's an incredible compliment to Rumi. And, Carl, over the centuries, his work permeated, I mean, he became the leading figure in Persian poetry culture. Certainly. He's the greatest mystical poet ever. I still prefer the divan, I have to say. I find the most... Masnavi has a very meandering discourse, which is all very well, but I get drowned in that ocean that Alan mentioned.

Yes, and nowadays the popularity of Rumi is in all the countries that end in Stalin, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and of course Turkey and Iran. And in America in the 1980s he was the most popular poet in America in the 1980s. And I mean certainly in Los Angeles today, quarter of a million Iranians, who came many of them after the revolution in 1979, they would have memorized Rumi and still do. Lloyd. Yes, I was just going to say we have this incredible phenomenon

that the Rumi boom in the modern age, and we can see this. I mean, everybody wants a piece of Rumi, so that, for example, even massive pop stars like Bob Dylan released an album of Christmas carols in 2009 and he did a video to The Little Drummer Boy. And halfway through the video, you get images of whirling dervishes. Now what whirling dervishes have to do with Little Drummer boy

or Christmas time is anyone's business. We also have Madonna reciting poetry from Rumi. Philip Glass has been involved in a massive project related to Rumi and it's all part of this huge project which is perhaps spirit, spilid by people like Coleman Barks and Robert Blind. it just goes on and on and on. And as Carol said, I mean, in all countries ending in Istanbul and in Iran,

it's still a great veneration to the extent that even Persian rappers venerate Rumi and mention him in their songs. Alan Williams, do you want to talk more about the translation because you've dedicated a large part of your life to it and in your notes about it, you think that there have been emissions and errors along the way? It's been translated into prose by Nicholson, some 50, 60 years ago. And I think that's one of the reasons

that people find it inaccessible in English. You know, prose doesn't do it. The magic of his poetry is what draws one in to the topic. My passion for it is really that, although it is a very difficult text, there's a voice there, which I've not found in any other literature.

Now the Ghazals are accessible. They can be translated beautifully into rhythmic verses that we can enjoy. The Masnavi is much more demanding. For the translator, it's a bit of a nightmare because Persian has no indefinite or definite article that's separate from the word, has no pronouns that are commonly used. So you're trying to cram.

I'm trying to cram into an iambic line. what looks like the metre looks like the same length, 22 syllables but it's just a quart and a pint pot it's really difficult

to do so and also and mainly because the ideas are profound and they're not this worldly ideas well caught in a pint pot sometimes summarises

what we're trying to do on this programme and I thank congratul all for bringing room into so many people because it was terrific. Thanks to Carol Hill and Brand, Alan Williams, and Lloyd Ridgin. Next week we'll be talking about the great 17th century scientist,

Robert Hook, rather overlooked, being a contemporary Newton. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What did we miss out that was essential? Or what did I miss out that?

I think the interplay of the religions in Coneya and the, well, it seems to have been a very vibrant atmosphere between the Armenians and the Byzantine Christians and the various Muslims, Turks and Persians, and how it really must have been quite a fascinating place to be in. And there doesn't seem to have been very much persecution. It could well be, in fact, that, as we've already said, Rumi did manage to attract a lot of converts.

It's quite likely because of his charismatic personality. But I really feel that the word I would use of his poetry when it's on top form and it gets to me is volcanic. It really burns you up. When you said it was difficult and so on, I read your translations. And honestly, I didn't find it all that difficult. Well, you've been privileged, Melvin, to read them.

You haven't read Nicholson's. I mean, that's a great compliment. And it is a matter of translating it not just from Persian into English. It's a matter of translating it from a century that we're so out of touch with into our modern minds. And I think the iambic meter is lovely because it's so conversational. And it has so many registers. It can do comedy and it can do tragedy and it can do farce and it can do.

contemplation. What I wanted to say in the program, which it's probably good that it didn't go in, is I wanted to talk about the deconstructive nature of his poetry for any literary listener. This is an extraordinary feature of his poetry, which makes it exciting reading for anyone interested in poetry, is that he uses words literally to take words apart. And in fact, he talks to himself and chastises himself sometimes for being clumsy. But, you know, that probably couldn't have come across. and the other thing is that as Carol says he was an amazingly charismatic

and unitive figure in Coneyia. He brought people together and I regard the Massenvi and the rest of his poetry but particularly the Massenvi as a kind of antidote to the modern madness that we see going on with extremism in Islam. Well we never made that point did we

we should have done about how it's a version and an attitude a demonstration of Islam. Islam of a completely different kind. And at the moment, I think most people who have perhaps dropped established religion still admire spirituality as a concept. And that's why his all-embracing attitude to spirituality is so relevant to us today.

I think for me, one of the things that we perhaps didn't stress enough was how he defamiliarises old, boring, stale concepts in his new life. And also the fact that... Which old bulls are boring? say a concept. Well, for example, I mean, he uses all kinds of concepts which some people consider problematic in the respect that he talks about the Galandazes, he's completely wild dervishes. And yet he uses them as a trope to denote the highest level of spirituality. He also talks about Halash this that was executed in the most glowing terms. And for many

people, he's really, really problematic. But the stereotype that he really attacks, or right the way through, is the self itself, the concept of the NAFs in Persian, He takes that apart, and that's what he's trying to kill off. And it is literally killing it. There's these concepts, Fanah and Baccar, or passing away and enduring. We didn't talk about that. But he's really trying to deconstruct the self in all of this, so that one, in a sort of, in a way, this sort of Delersian way,

one is, one deconstructs the self. One becomes disoriented, and it's that disorientation from the self that is the kind of magic ingredient. The bad self, but not the intrinsic, true self. Because that true self was with God before and will be with God after. It's almost like a neoplatonic concept. There are many more religion and discussion programmes from Radio 4 to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio 4.