Book & Author
Professor Reynold A. Nicholson: Rumi — Poet and Mystic
By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
Chicago, IL
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi
Jalalu’l-Din Rumi (1207-73) was the greatest of the Persian Sufi poets. In the 21st century, he has emerged as the most favorite and best-selling poet in the United States. His poetry represents a wide spectrum of profound themes --- love, truth, beauty, man, cosmos, and God --- that had gradually evolved with the long sequence and succession of Sufis since the ninth century. In Rumi – Poet and Mystic, Professor R. A. Nicholson translated an inspiring collection of mystical poems shortly before his death. It contains delicately rhythmical versions of over a hundred short passages from Rumi’s greatest works, together with brief yet illuminating explanatory notes. Professor Nicholson’s exquisite translations provide an opportunity for the global readers to appreciate the range and depth of Rumi’s intellect, imagination, and universal message.
Professor Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (August 18, 1868 – August 27, 1945), aka R. A. Nicholson was a prominent scholar of Islamic literature and Sufism. He served as the professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge (1926-33). Among Professor Nicholson's prominent students were Allama Dr Muhammed Iqbal and Professor Arthur John Arberry. Prof Nicholson is known for his translation of the poetry of Sufi masters. His magnum opus was the translation of Mevlana Rumi’s Mathnawi, published in eight volumes during the period 1925-40. He had also translated a number of other Arabic and Persian books, including the translations of Allama Iqbal’s Persian poetry book Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self), and Kashf-ul-Mahjoob, the book on Sufism, by the great Sufi master Hazarat Ali Hujwiri known as Daata Ganj Bakhsh.
In the introduction, the author, reflecting on Rumi’s early life, observes: “Jalalu’l-Din Rumi, the greatest mystical poet of Persia, was born at Balkh in the northern Persian province of Khorasan in AD 1207... In 1219, when Jalalu'l-Din was twelve years old, his father, Baha'u'l-Din Walad, suddenly departed from Balkh with his family and journeyed westward …There can be no doubt that Baha'u'l-Din, like many thousands of others, fled before the terrible Mongol hordes, which were sweeping through Khorasan and already approaching his native city. News of its devastation reached the exiles on their way to Baghdad or on the next stage of their long journey from Baghdad to Mecca, when they travelled to Damascus and finally settled in Rum (Turkey). Their first home was at Zarandah, about forty miles south-east of Konia, where Jalalu'l-Din married; in 1226 his eldest son Sultan Walad was born. Presently Baha'u'l-Din transferred himself and his family to Konia, at that time the capital of the Western Seljuk empire, and he died there in 1230. He is said to have been an eminent theologian, a great teacher and preacher, venerated by his pupils and highly esteemed by the reigning monarch, to whom he acted as a spiritual guide. About this time Burhanu'l-Din Muhaqqiq of Tirmidh, a former pupil of Baha'u'l-Din at Balkh, arrived in Konia. Under his influence, it is said, Jalalu'l-Din, now in his twenty-fifth year, became imbued with enthusiasm for the discipline and doctrine of the Sufis—men and women who sought to unite themselves with God. During the next decade he devoted himself to imitation of his Pir and passed through all the stages of the mystical life until, on the death of Burhanu'l-Din in 1240, he in turn assumed the rank of Shaykh and thus took the first, though probably unpremeditated, step towards forming a fraternity of the disciples whom his ardent personality attracted in ever increasing numbers.”
Commenting on the later part of Rumi’s life, the author states: “The remainder of his life, as described by his son, falls into three periods, each of which is marked by a mystical intimacy of the closest kind with a ‘Perfect Man,’ i.e., one of the saints in whom Divine attributes are mirrored, so that the lover, seeing himself by the light of God, realizes that he and his Beloved are not two, but One. These experiences lie at the very center of Rumi's theosophy and directly or indirectly inspire all his poetry… In 1244 a wandering dervish, known to posterity by the name of Shamsu'l-Din of Tabriz, arrived at Konia. Jalalu'l-Din found in the stranger that perfect image of the Divine Beloved which he had long been seeking. He took him away to his house, and for a year or two they remained inseparable. Sultan Walad likens his father's all-absorbing communion with this ‘hidden saint’ to the celebrated journey of Moses in company with Khadir (Koran, xviii, 64-80), the Sage whom Sufis regard as the supreme hierophant and guide of travelers on the Way to God….”.
Expounding on Rumi’s intellectual output, the author observes: “Rumi’s literary output, as stupendous in magnitude as it is sublime in content, consists of the very large collection of mystical odes, perhaps as many as 2,500, which make up the Diwan-i Shams-i Tabriz; the Mathnawi in six books of about 25,000) rhyming couplets; and the Ruba’iyat or quatrains, of which may be about 1,600 are authentic. The forms in which he clothes his religious philosophy had been fashioned before him by two great Sufi poets, Sana’i of Ghaznah and Faridu'l-Din 'Attar of Nishapur. Though he makes no secret of his debt to them both, his flight takes a wider range, his materials are richer and more varied, and his method of handling the subject is so original that it may justly be described as "a new style." It is a style of great subtlety and complexity, hard to analyze; yet its general features are simple and cannot be doubted. In the Mathnawi, where it is fully developed, it gives the reader an exhilarating sense of largeness and freedom by its disregard for logical cohesion, defiance of conventions, bold use of the language of common life, and abundance of images drawn from homely things and incidents familiar to everyone. The poem resembles a trackless ocean: there are no boundaries; no lines of demarcation between the literal "husk" and the "kernel" of doctrine in which its inner sense is conveyed and copiously expounded. The effortless fusion of text and interpretation shows how completely, in aesthetics as in every other domain, the philosophy of Rumi is inspired by the monistic idea. ‘The Mathnawi,’ he says, ‘is the shop for Unity (wahdat); anything that you see there except the One (God) is an idol.’ Ranging over the battlefield of existence, he finds all its conflicts and discords playing the parts assigned to them in the universal harmony which only mystics can realize.”
Describing the content and nature of the Mathnawi, the author writes: “The Mathnawi for the most part shows Rumi as the perfect spiritual guide engaged in making others perfect and furnishing novice and adept alike with matter suitable to their needs. Assuming the general monistic theory to be well known to his readers, he gives them a panoramic view of the Stiff gnosis (direct intuition of God) and kindles their enthusiasm by depicting the rapture of those who ‘break through to the Oneness’ and see all mysteries revealed….While the Mathnawi is generally instructional in character, though it also has entertaining passages, as befits a book intended for the enlightenment of all sorts of disciples, the Diwan and, on a much smaller scale, the Ruba’iyat are personal and emotional in appeal. Lyrics and quatrains alike have everywhere the authentic ring of spiritual inspiration, while in image, style, and language they often approximate very closely to the Mathnawi. In some of these poems the mystic's passion is so exuberant, his imagination so overflowing, that we catch glimpses of the very madness of Divine experience. Yet the powerful intellect of Rumi the man never quite capitulates to the enthusiasm of Rumi the mystic; at the last moment there is a sudden drawing-back, a consciousness that certain matters are too secret and too holy to be communicated in words. It is not surprising to read that these poems, chanted (as many of them were doubtless composed) in the spiritual séance of the Mevlevis, roused the hearers to an almost uncontrollable fervor.”
Professor Nicholson observes that Sufi pantheism or monism involves the following propositions: (a)There is One Real Being, (b)There is no creation in Time, (c) God is both Immanent and Transcendent, (d) The Divine Essence is unknowable, and (e) The entire content of God's Knowledge is objectified in the universe and pre-eminently in Man.
Commenting on the stature of Rumi among other Sufi and Persian poets, the author observes: “In Rumi, the Persian mystical genius found its supreme expression. Viewing the vast landscape of Sufi poetry, we see him standing out as a sublime mountain-peak; the many other poets before and after him are but foot-hills in comparison. The influence of his example, his thought and his language is powerfully felt through all the succeeding centuries; every Sufi after him capable of reading Persian has acknowledged his unchallenged leadership. To the West, now slowly realizing the magnitude of his genius, thanks in greatest measure to the work of that fine scholar whose last writings are contained in these pages, he is fully able to prove a source of inspiration and delight not surpassed by any other poet in the world’s literature.” Indeed, the following selected poems vouch for the magnitude of Rumi’s genius.
Prelude
DEEP in our hearts the Light of Heaven is shining
Upon a soundless Sea without a shore.
Oh, happy they who found it in resigning
The images of all that men adore.
Blind eyes, to dote on shadows of things fair
Only at last to curse their fatal lure,
Like Harut and Marut, that Angel-pair
Who deemed themselves the purest of the pure.
Our ignorance and self-will and vicious pride
Destroy the harmony of part and whole.
In vain we seek with lusts unmortified
A vision of the One Eternal Soul.
Love, Love alone can kill what seemed so dead,
The frozen snake' of passion. Love alone,
By tearful prayer and fiery longing fed,
Reveals a knowledge schools have never known…
God Beyond Praise
WHEN beams of Wisdom strike on soils and clays
Receptive to the seed, Earth keeps her trust:
In springtime all deposits she repays,
Taught by eternal Justice to be just.
O Thou whose Grace informs the witless clod,
Whose Wrath makes blind the heart and eye within,
My praise dispraises Thee, Almighty God;
For praise is being, and to be is sin.
The World of Time
EVERY instant thou art dying and returning.
"This world is but a moment," said the Prophet [SAW]
Our thought is an arrow shot by Him:
how should it stay in the air? It flies back to God.
Every instant the world is being renewed,
and we unaware of its perpetual change.
Life is ever pouring in afresh,
though in the body it has the semblance of continuity
From its swiftness it appears continuous,
like the spark thou whirlest with thy hand.
Time and duration are phenomena produced by the rapidity of Divine Action,
As a firebrand dexterously whirled presents the appearance of a long line of fire.
Love And Logic
LEARN from thy Father! He, not falsely proud,
With tears of sorrow all his sin avowed.
Wilt thou, then, still pretend to be unfree
And clamber up Predestination's tree?—
Like Iblis and his progeny abhorred,
In argument and battle with their Lord.
The blest initiates know: what need to prove?
From Satan logic, but from Adam love.
The Unseen Power
WE are the flute, our music is all Thine;
We are the mountain echoing only Thee;
Pieces of chess Thou marshallest in line
And movest to defeat or victory;
Lions emblazoned high on flags unfurled —
Thy wind invisible sweeps us through the world.
Cosmic Consciousness
WINE in ferment is a beggar suing for our ferment;
Heaven in revolution is a beggar suing for our consciousness.
Wine was intoxicated with us, not we with it;
the body came into being from us, not we from it.
We are as bees, and bodies as the honeycomb:
We have made the body, cell by cell, like wax.
The Spiritual Ascensions
IF you join the ranks of those who make the Ascension,
not-being will bear you aloft like Buraq.
'Tis not like the ascension of a mortal to the moon; nay,
The plan but like the ascension of a sugar-cane to sugar.
What he 'Tis not like the ascension of a vapor to the sky; nay, but
like the ascension of an embryo to rationality.
The True Sufi
WHAT makes the Safi? Purity of heart;
Not the patched mantle and the lust perverse
Of those vile earth-bound men who steal his name.
He in all dregs discerns the essence pure:
In hardship ease, in tribulation joy.
The phantom sentries, who with batons drawn
Guard Beauty's palace-gate and curtained bower,
Give way before him, unafraid he passes,
And showing the King's arrow, enters in.
The Spirit of the Universe
WHAT worlds mysterious roll within the vast,
The all-encircling ocean of the Mind!
Cup-like thereon our forms are floating fast,
Only to fill and sink and leave behind
No spray of bubbles from the Sea upcast.
The Spirit thou canst not view, it comes so nigh.
Drink of this Presence! Be not thou a jar
Laden with water, and its lip stone-dry;
Or as a horseman blindly borne afar,
Who never sees the horse beneath his thigh.
Fine Feathers
"NEEDS must I tear them out," the peacock cried,
"These gorgeous plumes which only tempt my pride."
Of all his talents let the fool beware:
Mad for the bait, he never sees the snare.
Harness to fear of God thy strength and skill,
Else there's no bane so deadly as free-will
The Mystic Way
PLUG thy low sensual ear, which stuffs like cotton
Thy conscience and makes deaf thine inward ear.
Be without ear, without sense, without thought,
And hearken to the call of God, "Return!"
Our speech and action is the outer journey,
Our inner journey is above the sky
The body travels on its dusty way;
The spirit walks, like Jesus, on the sea.
Rumi — Poet and Mystic by Professor Nicholson is a wonderful book. The author’s exquisite English translations of Rumi’s poems provide an opportunity for global readers to explore and discover Rumi’s message viz a viz love, beauty, man, cosmos and the truth (Haq).
(Dr Ahmed S. Khan - dr.a.s.khan@ieee.org - is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar - 2017-2022)
