Abstract
The aim of this article is to focus on the role of music and dance in the life, religious practice and work of the popular 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, Sufi mystic, Islamic scholar and dervish (Sufi prayer dancer), Rumi.
Rumi has received wide 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.
Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī was born on 30 September 1207 to native Persian-speaking parents in the city of Balkh, the cradle of Sufism, and an important centre of Persian culture, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. In 1219 when Genghis Khan started expanding his empire westwards, Rumi’s father, Bahā al-Dīn Walād, fled from Balkh and the family eventually settled in Konya, the capital of the Seljuk empire (1074–1308). When Bahā al-Dīn Walād who taught at the local madrasa died in 1231, Rumi succeeded him. Having received brilliant education from his father, 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.
A significant meeting in 1244 with a wandering Sufi dervish, Shams-i-Tabrīzī, completely transformed Rumi’s life, resulting in an intense and passionate spiritual friendship, and awakened a profound mystical love in Rumi. Beyond the safe, dry forms of obedience and self-sacrifice, Rumi discovered that there was a meta-spirituality of love entailing a joyful relationship with God and an ecstatic celebration of the mysteries of divine love.
In the words of Schimmel (1993:24):
His whole being was transformed into poetry and music. Music became the expression of his feelings; music echoed in the enthusiastic words, in the rhythms of his lyrics.
Rumi’s son, Sultān Walad, wrote: “Never for a moment did he cease from listening to music and dancing [...]” (Chittick 2005:3). Rumi passionately believed that the use of music, poetry and dance was the way to reach God.
After Shams mysteriously left Konya, Rumi went into deep despair, but continued to spend his life radiating divine love, training his disciples and writing thousands of ecstatic love poems for God. Besides poetry and music, he incorporated the whirling prayer dance, which was practised from the earliest times, into the ceremony. After his death in 1273 his son and followers founded the Mevlevi Order which is the only Sufi Order in which dance was institutionalised as part of the samā’.
Rumi’s works comprising 60 000 lines of verse, the Dīwān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī, Mathnawí and Fihi ma fihi are subsequently described, followed by a discussion of certain English translations of his poetry.
To give the reader an insight into the doctrines and cultural background of Rumi’s poetry, a brief outline of Sufism is given. Mysticism is a universal phenomenon which is found in many religious traditions of the world. In Islam this tradition is referred to as Sufism or taṣawwuf. As early as Muhammad’s time, there were signs of ascetism arising from certain commands in the Quran and the life of the Prophet. This was the precursor of Sufism as a separate movement with a set of doctrines and practices.
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 (sharīah) expresses outwardly and exoterically. However, Sufis do acknowledge the absolute necessity of the sharīah, as they believe that in order to reach the immanent spirit of a doctrine, one must first have the external form.
As part of their cosmology the Sufis distinguish the domain of the imaginal, the ’alam al-mithāl, which takes an intermediary position between the spiritual and physical worlds. This world requires its own faculty of perception, namely, imaginative power, a faculty with a cognitive function, a noetic value which is as real as that of sense perception or intellectual intuition.
The following section deals with the role of music in the Sufi context. Persia was influenced by many different musical traditions; in pre-Islamic Persia music, poetry and even dance according to Antolak (s.a.) accompanied Zoroastrian rituals. Since the earliest times there was a connection between poetry, music and dance, and poetry was the basis of most world religions with common roots that can be traced far back in history.
The relationship between Islam and music in the Muslim context has been a controversial and complex matter for longer than a millennium. Although not explicitly prohibited by the Quran, music was met with disapproval by conservative early jurists and it remains a “grey” area. According to Gribetz (1991:52) the bias against music was a reflection of debates and differences from the earliest times between certain Islamic jurists and Sufis.
Although the Islamic mosque has no music as that of the Christian church, sonic sounds of some kind have always played a crucial role in the Muslim world, as in the reading of the Quran, the chanting of the adhān (call to prayer five times a day by the muezzin from the minaret of the mosque) and in the music of the Sufis who were the main patrons of Islamic music during times of puritanism.
The Sufi liturgy is subsequently discussed. Dhikr Allah, or “remembrance of God”, is strongly emphasised in the Quran. It is the spiritual method whereby prayers and phrases are repeatedly recited for the purpose of remembering God. Sufis soon discovered that ecstasy could be attained not only by dhikr and meditation, but also by music, song and dance, and incorporated this into the ritual called the samā’. This ceremony can be traced back to the 9th century mystic, al-Junayd (c 830–910), who lived in Baghdad where samā’-khānas, houses dedicated to the performance of music concerts, existed since the second half of the 9th century.
The music of the samā’ inspired Rumi’s thousands of poems which he often dictated during mystical ecstasy. For Rumi beauty in this world was an imprint and proof of the Divine; he regarded poetry, music and sacred dance as a way in which the beauty of form could attain the Formless. During samā’ ceremonies Sufi poetry is recited accompanied by music and dance.
Samā’ literally means “audition”, or listening to music, and in the Sufi-tradition samā’ has the connotation of listening to mystical poetry and music with the ear of the heart and becoming increasingly cognisant of the divine object being described. Remembrance of God during samā’ functions as a kind of mystical music therapy to glorify God. Sufis regard music as an instrument to get closer to God, to purify hearts and souls and to attain mystical ecstasy. Music is the essence of the samā’ ceremony which entails music, dance, singing and poetry, and is an important aspect of the contemplative Sufi life.
Based on early Islamic sources, it appears that the concepts of hearing / listening played a key role ever since the first revelation to the Prophet by the angel Gabriel who commanded him to recite verses which would be included in the Quran eventually. This revelation was therefore a fundamental auditive phenomenon. Regarding this, the following two Sufi myths are significant and discussed in some detail. The first is that when Adam’s soul refused to enter the clay body God created, God commanded the angels to make samā’, and in the ecstasy of this music Adam’s soul was led to his body. The second myth is about the primordial music heard by the soul; remembrance of the Covenant of Alast when God created Adam.
The ecstatic Sufi whirling dance which is practised by certain Sufi orders as part of the samā’-ceremony is an instrument to connect to the Divine and experience transcendence and can be traced back to ancient rituals and practices. The dance is a continuous whirling movement, leading to the name “Whirling Dervishes”, accompanied by incantation and ney music which represents the divine voice. For Rumi the whirling dance reflects the eternal revolution of the cosmos around the force of gravitation of God’s love.
Erzen (2007:71) points out that the movements of the dance are not only circular, which means they revolve and repeat, but rather spiral. The spiral is a profound mystical symbol in Sufi art and a visual representation of the soul’s unending journey to God. The dervish dance can be seen as slow spiral whirling in the mystical state of annihilation, dying to the self, which paradoxically does not mean extermination, but true existence. To conclude this section, the samā’ ceremony is described in detail.
Finally English translations of selected poems in which Rumi employs music and dance metaphors are quoted, accompanied by analytical notes.
Keywords: dance; metaphors; music; mysticism; Neoplatonism; poetry; Rumi; Sufi ritual; Sufism; “Whirling Dervishes”
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