RENDING THE VEIL

by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi, Shahram Shiva

A rare gift for Rumi lovers, combining exquisitely rendered Persian calligraphy, groundbreaking transliteration, 'word-by-word' literal translations, and faithful poetic translations of 252 quatrains (most previously untranslated). Finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award.

Genres: Poetry, Spirituality

100 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 1995

About the author

Sufism inspired writings of Persian poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi; these writings express the longing of the soul for union with the divine.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī - also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master") and more popularly simply as Rumi - was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic who lived in Konya, a city of Ottoman Empire (Today's Turkey). His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages, and he has been described as the most popular poet and the best-selling poet in the United States.

His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali.

Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorāṣān, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by his father, Bahā ud-Dīn Wālad or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, his father decided to migrate westwards, eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya, where he lived most of his life, composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature, and profoundly affected the culture of the area.

When his father died, Rumi, aged 25, inherited his position as the head of an Islamic school. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa. During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.

It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.

On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus.

Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next 12 years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.

In December 1273, Rumi fell ill and died on the 17th of December in Konya.

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 2016, I got it into my head to acquire works of two monumental writers who the so-called "West" has been doing its best to cannibalize since at least 1859: Omar Khayyám, and Rumi. Close enough to make the bestseller's lists of various US newspapers, far enough away to not trigger the fearmongering ultranationalist instinct of said "journalisms," if you really want to know where we stand in terms of civilization, try talking about the two authors in terms of Farsi, Iran, and Islam, rather than whatever bled out filth is currently peddled by Occidental fanfiction writers and other breeds of marauding thieves. You're not going to get far at all if you don't grapple with Rumi's methodologies of metaphors, masculinity, faith, and monotheism, and yet I continue to see the frivolous term "universal" continue to be passed around during an age where its intellectuals have supposedly overcome the need for religion. So, take my rating as one that considers the effort that this edition undertakes to be far more important than any opinion I could personally conjure up on the backs of "liked/disliked." Indeed, the edition makes it possible to take your own stab at translating much that, before this piece was put together, had never before appeared in English, and what greater display of love and hope is there than that?

I don't tend to put images in my reviews because honestly, how many who do on this site bother to credit appropriately? However, something even the most tenacious of Farsi to English translators isn't going to be able to get around is the fact that Rumi's works will always look better in the original Persian script than they ever will in the Latin alphabet, period. So, I've gone ahead and included the full breadth of the selections that I found to be the most instinctively "pleasurable" to a Rumi novice such as myself, both in the view of accuracy and the fact that it'll give any tentative readers an idea of what they'd be committing to by acquiring this particular edition. First the script, then the phonetics, then the literal word to word equivalence between the original language and English, and finally the reconstituted poetical instance as put together by Shahram Shiva, an Iranian artist scholar who has been translating Rumi for the past third of a century. This is in addition to a generous and not at all apolitical series of preface, translator's note, key to the transliterations, glossary of terms, Persian mystical terminology, and bibliography, so for the reader who views each reading as an investment, rather than another series subscription on the television wheel, this is a rare pleasure. It's not going to get you any points with the Ted Talks crowd, but sometimes one must turn away from the exigencies of the modernity if one wishes to pay true heartfelt tribute to the masters who came before, and what better way than through an edition that welcomes your commitment so long as you're willing to put in the effort.



I've never been much one for religion, Catholic upbringing notwithstanding. However, my decades of experience with my brain telling me to kill myself has given me an appreciation for holistic ethical systems and sociocultural bonds infused with a sense of compassion and fellow worth, and believe it or not, but every single religion that's managed to survive the purge of the last half millennium of white supremacism and quite of a few of the ones that didn't have that, else folks wouldn't have bothered with them for as long and as fervently as I have. So, if you want to guiltlessly enjoy your precious Rumi on one side and decry "dangerous radicals" who manage to never be of the WASP grown variety on the other, you're not going to find any enablement in my corner. What I'm invested in is a man who came of fruitful age in the wake of Genghis Khan, acquired mastery in the realms of theology and jurisprudence, loved, lost, did his best to love again in a manner that aligned with his conception of the universe and his faith in his fellow humanity, and one way or another came down to us mortals a good seven centuries or so after his passing. Rumi certainly deserves to be as popular as he is, but not in the milky toothlessness that certain hegemonies still hold sway over. Chances are good that putting together editions such as this that push against that will make the typical reader on this site lay claim to their "right to not read" a lot more frequently, but hey. Do you want monumental figure of history and their lasting artistic work? Or do you want a side of fries with that.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than 5 stars. Truly a great book. One of many translations of Rumi’s poetry. “Over a period of 25 years, Rumí recited approximately 70,000 verses of divine love poetry,” says translator Shahram T. Shiva. We can’t hear this great poet recite but we are treated to the written quatrains in Persian, then in transliteration, then in translation of the Persian in phrases, finally in a readable poetic form. One can look at all four versions to get a better idea of the poems. I think it’s a wonderful way to present this great poet’s work.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated volume. Great in print.