Abstract
Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (“our master”), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (“my master”), and in the West simply Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian Sunni-Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, Sufi mystic and dervish.
For more than 200 years European scholars have been fascinated by mystical poetry from Islamic countries, and in the late 18th century Western scholars started translating Rumi’s poetry from Farsi (Persian), in which it was mainly written. In recent decades his poetry has gained vast popularity in the West. At times, however, the Western reader misunderstands and misinterprets his poems, one reason being the seemingly strange metaphors.
The objective of this article is to focus specifically on Rumi’s use of erotic and homoerotic imagery, to explain usage thereof in terms of the spirit of the times and culture of his era, and to illustrate these metaphors by quoting a selection of his poems.
Rumi has received high acclaim from eminent Middle Eastern specialists, for example Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Iranian philosopher; E.G. Browne (1862–1926), former professor in Arabic at Cambridge University; and R.A. Nicholson (1868–1945), known as the Rumi-expert in the English language, who called Rumi the greatest mystical poet in the world.
Rumi was born on 30 September 1207 to native Persian-speaking parents in the city of Balkh, which is now part of Afghanistan. In 1219, when Genghis Khan started expanding his empire westwards, Rumi’s father, Bahā al-Dīn Walād, fled from Balkh and eventually settled in Konya, in current Turkey. Konya was the capital of the Seljuk government, a Sunni-Muslim dynasty, who ruled the Sultanate of Rum from 1074–1308. Literature flourished during this period and during the 13th century Konya was “the site of one of the creation [sic] of the crowning glories of Persian classical literature: the Mesnevi by Jalal al-Din Rumi, known to the Turks as Mevlana (‘Our Master’) written in 1258–1273” (Branning 2023).
When Bahā al-Dīn Walād died in 1231, Rumi succeeded him as teacher at the local madrasa in Konya. Having received brilliant education from his father, a Sufi and theologian, Rumi furthered his studies in the important learning centres of Aleppo and Damascus, after which Burhān ud-Dīn, a former student of Bahā al-Dīn Walād, continued training Rumi in Sufism.
The dramatic turnabout in Rumi’s mystical life was the significant meeting in 1244 with wandering dervish, Shams-i-Tabrīzī, who travelled from village to village, stayed in local caravanserais (inns) and locked himself in private cells to practise ecstatic contemplation. A magnetic Sufi, Shams awoke a mystical love in Rumi, and a profound and passionate relationship developed between them. Rumi discovered that beyond the safe, dry forms of obedience, and self-sacrifice, there was a meta-spirituality of love entailing a joyful relationship with God and an ecstatic celebration of the mysteries of divine love.
Shams suddenly and mysteriously left Konya, which left Rumi in a state of deep sorrow. Rumi spent the remaining years of his life radiating divine love and training disciples who founded the Mevlevi Order after his death. He continued pouring out lines and lines of poetry. He also incorporated into his religious worship the samā’ – the whirling prayer dance which was practised from the earliest times.
To give the reader an insight into the doctrines and cultural background of Rumi’s poetry, a broad outline of Sufism is given. William Chittick, American philosopher and scholar of Islam, describes Sufism as “the interiorization and intensification of Islamic faith and practice” (Chittick 2008:22). Sufism emphasises the inward, esoteric aspects of what the Islamic religious law (sharī’ah) expresses outwardly and exoterically. However, Sufis acknowledge the absolute necessity of the sharī’ah, as they believe that in order to reach the immanent spirit of a doctrine, one must first have the external form.
Within the scope of this article, the focus can be on only two of the concepts of Sufi cosmology, which is particularly sophisticated and complex, namely khayāl and ’alam al-mithāl.
Khayāl, or the imaginary, is regarded as the innate ability of the soul to perceive God in all things; rather than rational investigation, it is the Sufi way of unveiling. Henry Corbin, professor of Islamic studies, believed that “active imagination” converts everything into an image symbol (khayāl) whereby the similarity between the visible and the hidden is recognised. This is psychologically related to intuition, which is associated with the right brain.
’Alam al-mithāl is the sphere of spiritual values or ideas which are realised in this world. Sufis ascribed this domain to an intermediate position between the spiritual and physical worlds. Rumi called this the domain of ideas or images. Matsumoto (2009:37, 38) explains:
All kinds of experiences in Rumi stimulate the sphere of images in his consciousness so that their accurate images are created in his mind. In other words, he re-experiences the experiences beyond images and descriptions in the sphere of images of his consciousness.
Important for this article is that Rumi was basically a man of images, and he comprehended everything in terms of images; his thinking was essentially by means of imagery.
The Sufi way is also regarded as a way of love. For Sufis it is only by love that worshipping God can be complete. Sufis are seen as lovers who strive to know and experience God as the divine reality.
The emergence of Sufism coincided with the Golden Era of Persian literature, and many of the greatest Persian poets were Sufis like Rumi.
Rumi was an extremely productive writer. He wrote more than 60 000 lines of poetry. His first massive collection is the Dīwān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī; the second is the Mathnawí. A third work, Fihi ma fihi (“In it is what is in it”), is a collection of Rumi’s sermons and conversations as recorded by his disciples.
Rumi was convinced that his poetry was God-given and received from the domain of the ’alam al-mithāl, where God manifests himself to those who love him in image forms. Being highly metaphorical, Rumi’s poetry can therefore be accessible to non-Persian speakers.
Rumi mainly makes use of three types of metaphorical language which, without insight, may potentially lead to misunderstanding. These are his use of erotic imagery which differs in some cases from that in the Western tradition, his references to wine and intoxication, and the role of dance and music. This article focuses on Rumi’s use of erotic metaphors.
Since the earliest times, erotic representations of the divine have occupied a central place in religious myths, poetry, liturgy and theology. Within the scope of this article, only certain definitions and insights, from as early as 5th century Dionysius, are discussed.
Carr (2003:145) points out that from ancient times poets made use of motifs from human love to demonstrate divine/human love, or vice versa, and he calls this phenomenon “cross-over”. This occurs in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Tibetan tantra and in Sufism as for example Rumi’s “spectacular mystical visions” (Carr 2003:145).
Female medieval mystics such as St. Teresa of Ávila, St. Clare of Assisi, St. Angela of Foligno and St. Catherine of Siena embraced embodied, erotic mysticism. They regarded their bodies, and not the institutional church, as the locus of knowledge and experience of the divine.
Similarly, Sufis applied the language of human love metaphorically, symbolising the transcendental mystical experience in which the worshipper becomes a lover of God, and God the Beloved. Rumi’s theology was that of love, which was a mystical force that he expressed as the “astrolabe of the divine mysteries” in his Mathnawí (1:110) (Lewis 2009).
Rumi used both erotic and homoerotic metaphors to express spiritual union and the intense mystical relationship between man and God. This kind of imagery is deeply rooted in other classical Persian mystical texts, and homoeroticism was an integral part of the Sufi tradition.
As contextual background to Rumi’s homoerotic language, certain sociocultural aspects of the medieval Abbasid era are highlighted.
The strict division between men and women, who were only allowed to appear in public wearing veils, resulted in strong bonds being formed between men, especially in dervish communities. Praising young adolescent young men for their beauty was regarded as praising God. Sirus Shamisâ writes about the Sufi conception and tradition of “gazing on beautiful boys” (Lewis 2014:22).
Homoerotic imagery, so prevalent in medieval Sufi poetry, was therefore a natural development in a society influenced by an implicit concept of male masculinity as the normative ideal. Erotic themes in the poetry of the Abbasid and Umayyad courts were sublimated by Sufi poets who thereby expressed a homoerotic longing for God.
Finally, a selection of Rumi’s poetry in which he expresses love, passion and longing for God by means or erotic and homoerotic metaphors is quoted and discussed.
Keywords: erotic metaphors; homoerotic metaphors; poetry; Rumi; Sufism