00:00:00
everybody is at a kind of AA or um uh
00:00:03
constellation
00:00:05
awake uh and it's time for the M prayer
00:00:08
and all the people say oh it has to be
00:00:09
Malana
00:00:11
jalad and uh roomi uh declines and it's
00:00:15
very interesting to see what he
00:00:19
says
00:00:22
um according to AF he says
00:00:32
we are
00:00:35
the uh wherever we are we sit or We
00:00:39
rise one of his characteristic enigmatic
00:00:42
statements but he's saying he doesn't
00:00:44
want to lead the prayer uh so he
00:00:46
indicates instead
00:00:49
that should lead the in prayer at this
00:00:52
uh event and he
00:00:58
says he is one of the people of Tas and
00:01:02
Tam and the Dignity of leading the
00:01:06
prayer at such an event should be with
00:01:08
such a
00:01:09
person uh and quite often in fact we
00:01:12
find this this bation in the memory of
00:01:15
the people of con at the time that roomi
00:01:16
is not a Sufi he's one of the
00:01:20
abdal if you're going to understand him
00:01:22
and understand his poetry and the impact
00:01:24
that he has on the later Islamic world
00:01:26
and indeed on people who are reading him
00:01:29
now including uh thousands of new age
00:01:32
followers in the west you have to
00:01:33
understand what it means for roomi not
00:01:36
to be a
00:01:37
Sufi uh what these people are saying is
00:01:40
that Sufi is somebody who is engaged in
00:01:45
uh
00:01:47
complex uh systematic
00:01:50
metaphysics that's what the of Kan would
00:01:53
understand to be SOI absolutely that he
00:01:57
takes the often virtually
00:01:59
incomprehensible enormous weight of Ian
00:02:02
Arab's teachings and he kind of makes it
00:02:05
comprehensible makes it into a system
00:02:08
and probably about the work that he did
00:02:10
here not many people in the later um
00:02:12
would have heard of I Arabi because it's
00:02:14
really hard to understand and you turn a
00:02:15
page and you get the exact opposite of
00:02:17
the thing that he said on the page
00:02:18
before and sometimes that's deliberate
00:02:20
it's very hard hard heavy goinging Ki
00:02:23
turns it into his system particularly
00:02:25
the tradition of the forour which as
00:02:27
I've said becomes axiomatic in it's it's
00:02:31
like the intellectual spine of the
00:02:34
Ottoman system and also in the the Mogul
00:02:37
Empire and further east koni is the one
00:02:40
who's who's doing that so he's a Sufi
00:02:42
but Rumi is in this world and RI
00:02:45
describes himself as
00:02:50
abdd what in 13th 14th century would the
00:02:53
abdal have been well it's obviously
00:02:56
derived ultimately from those hadiths
00:02:57
which are sound hadiths which indicate
00:02:59
that there will be a class of aah who
00:03:01
are abdal that is the substitutionary
00:03:04
Saints often regarded as being 40 and
00:03:08
there's always a constant number if one
00:03:09
of them dies another is as it were
00:03:12
appointed to the vacancy and most of
00:03:14
them are hidden and it's through their
00:03:15
doart that creation is sustained and
00:03:18
this is a um a standard feature of
00:03:21
traditional Sufi he geology but that
00:03:24
doesn't seem to be what mevlana is
00:03:25
implying here abdal in that world of C
00:03:30
Anatolia seems to have meant something a
00:03:32
bit
00:03:33
different uh there were a lot of people
00:03:35
wandering around usually
00:03:37
mendicants calling themselves
00:03:40
abdal um and even Europeans who travel
00:03:44
in this region at the time mostly
00:03:46
Italians remark on rather the strange
00:03:48
individuals with odd behavior revered by
00:03:52
the masses and the peasantry in
00:03:54
particular being known as the
00:03:57
abdal uh what it seems to me
00:04:01
is somebody whose access to the Divine
00:04:05
is not
00:04:07
mediated by years of very elaborate
00:04:12
study of
00:04:15
metaphysics uh and whose articulation of
00:04:18
his system is ecstatic and
00:04:21
impressionistic rather than
00:04:24
rigorous certainly if you look at guo's
00:04:26
work and rum's work and you put them
00:04:28
side by side it's like they're from from
00:04:29
different universes G is extremely
00:04:33
precise difficult
00:04:35
demanding uh in his tap in particular
00:04:38
everything is rigorously worked out from
00:04:40
first principles and he arm wrestles you
00:04:42
into the conclusion roomy does none of
00:04:44
that he's not really interested in these
00:04:48
akat these intellectual Sciences he's
00:04:52
interested in uh the path of Love
00:04:57
ra he's not linear he is as it were
00:05:00
circular and the circle is the symbol of
00:05:02
love in our civilization it's it's the
00:05:05
the moving beyond the stripping away of
00:05:08
any Earthly thing like uh
00:05:11
intellectuality even once you're in the
00:05:14
Hajj or the there's circles the Spheres
00:05:18
aflak it represents uh the path of of
00:05:21
Love of ecstasy and the turning that the
00:05:23
dervishes do usually for the Taurus is a
00:05:26
kind of reflection of that even though
00:05:27
in the M tradition particularly at the
00:05:29
beginning of it's a very impromptu um
00:05:31
thing rather than the ceremonial uh
00:05:34
thing that it became later on so if
00:05:37
we're going to understand roomi in that
00:05:39
world and obviously the really rever and
00:05:42
love him because they're all saying
00:05:44
you're the one who should lead the
00:05:45
prayer at this official function he's
00:05:47
declining because he doesn't really feel
00:05:49
that he is from that world he is not
00:05:51
from the world of institutional religion
00:05:54
either of high futin Sufi
00:05:56
metaphysics to get into that seeks to
00:05:59
get in it arabis tradition into the very
00:06:01
heart of the Quran rather than the
00:06:03
surface of the Quran Nei re see from the
00:06:06
world of
00:06:08
swi where everything is worked out by
00:06:12
logical principles that are ultimately
00:06:14
Aristotelian and are there originally to
00:06:17
refute Mesa and others uh instead he's
00:06:21
from a different kind of universe which
00:06:23
is this universe of love and when we
00:06:26
talk about some of the other people that
00:06:28
he encountered um we'll see how
00:06:31
significant that is but still
00:06:35
s just because he's engaged in these
00:06:39
extremely
00:06:40
intricate Reflections on Allah's book
00:06:44
and writing these meticulously crafted
00:06:47
commentaries on Ian Arab's most
00:06:50
difficult cruxes of metaphysics doesn't
00:06:54
shouldn't allow us to be distracted from
00:06:56
the fact that all of these people were
00:06:57
exoteric Scholars
00:07:01
uh and in fact sad we call him sad but
00:07:04
it seems the most common title for him
00:07:06
at the time was
00:07:10
Malik so if you look at Ali who's mainly
00:07:13
interested in rumiz Tradition the arine
00:07:17
basically the the Mev uh tradition
00:07:20
you'll
00:07:21
see that
00:07:23
uh what he's really doing his daytime
00:07:26
job as it were is his his uh Hadith
00:07:29
classes he is the greatest Hadith
00:07:31
scholar of of the day and that is how
00:07:35
he's generally
00:07:37
known
00:07:42
um the so you have these three different
00:07:45
human
00:07:46
types you have
00:07:52
the uh who
00:07:54
is the man of Islam to be defended has
00:07:57
to be defended through the absolute
00:07:59
strongest interpretation that the reason
00:08:02
that reason can
00:08:03
supply and then you have
00:08:06
S who says actually the source and the
00:08:10
Wellspring of knowledge in Islam is the
00:08:13
Quran which is IB Arab's insight and
00:08:15
that everything should come from opening
00:08:17
one's heart to the ISAT the inner
00:08:19
meanings of of the Quran using quite
00:08:22
literal zah method that IB Arabi
00:08:25
appropriates but still rigorously put
00:08:28
together system itic theosophy if you
00:08:32
like and then roomi his type of religion
00:08:34
is really different as
00:08:36
well but what's bringing them together
00:08:39
is the fact that they're all part of the
00:08:40
Orthodox class of because RI has been
00:08:43
giving theas at
00:08:44
the mosque the main mosque in and he has
00:08:48
the white turban of the The Scholar he's
00:08:50
also an expert in Hadith M really
00:08:54
learned in the intellectual disciplines
00:08:57
of of his time they're all from the
00:08:59
class of so any idea that we have that
00:09:01
these are kind of Dusty weird guys with
00:09:04
funny head gear sort of disrupting uh
00:09:07
what the take to be um the the reality
00:09:12
of Islam it's not like that these are
00:09:14
people for whom the inward life and the
00:09:15
outward life are complimentary but it's
00:09:18
not always the same kind of
00:09:21
complimentarity s oro's mainly a person
00:09:24
of zah but is a great lover and
00:09:26
respector of the sufis as we see from
00:09:27
the um the
00:09:34
and the funny thing about them even
00:09:37
though they're almost exact
00:09:38
contemporaries they both born in the
00:09:40
same year 1207 roomy dies in
00:09:44
1273 and K dies in 1274 so that's a
00:09:47
pretty close fit and they're in the same
00:09:49
city but neither of them in any of their
00:09:52
books as far as I know refer to each
00:09:55
other strange so there they were on
00:09:58
different vult es they had respect no
00:10:02
doubt and aflaki braks that out aflaki
00:10:05
of course is trying
00:10:07
to uh magnify the greatness of Manana
00:10:11
he's writing he geography a century
00:10:12
later and he often brings them together
00:10:14
in these various setpiece encounters but
00:10:17
still it is interesting that in this
00:10:20
town where people are coming together
00:10:22
sometimes you don't have much Choice
00:10:23
they've all been invited to a banquet at
00:10:25
the palace they they all know each other
00:10:26
they're part of this group of
00:10:29
that Ki and Rumi never seem to talk
00:10:32
about each other in their books and that
00:10:34
again has to be left as a kind of
00:10:36
mystery but perhaps not quite
00:10:39
a mystery because they do have different
00:10:44
different paths so when roomy as he
00:10:47
often does in
00:10:49
his poetry
00:10:52
says uh put down the text of Theology
00:10:55
and pick up the flagen of love the kind
00:10:58
of Troop that he he uses
00:11:00
frequently um or by the time intellect
00:11:03
has saddled its camel for the Hajj love
00:11:07
has already circled the Kaa he says the
00:11:10
real way to Allah subhana wa tala is
00:11:11
through the heart through love through
00:11:13
affectivity that that's for him the
00:11:15
prophetic way that's the way
00:11:18
ofah not logic or all of this other
00:11:21
stuff or profound meditations on
00:11:24
different layers in Allah's book it's
00:11:25
love spontaneity for roomi that's what
00:11:28
uh religion is about and perhaps that's
00:11:30
one reason why in our generation
00:11:32
certainly in the west rumia is the one
00:11:34
who's been tweezed out of this
00:11:35
extraordinary constellation of Brilliant
00:11:37
Minds in and he's the one who the new
00:11:40
age people like because everybody thinks
00:11:41
to likes to think that they know about
00:11:43
love and everybody likes to use love as
00:11:46
an excuse not to perform certain duties
00:11:49
or as an excuse not to read too many
00:11:53
complex books of theology it's an
00:11:55
attractive excuse but this is not really
00:11:58
what's what's going on on with these
00:12:00
people uh
00:12:01
roomi is not saying that the path of the
00:12:04
mind that's aoi's path or the path of
00:12:08
systematic Sufi metaphysics which is the
00:12:11
way of the sufis like s are
00:12:14
wrong instead he's saying that's not my
00:12:17
way and I am something
00:12:20
else now what was this something
00:12:24
else uh how how does he become his C
00:12:29
within the class of he's not a
00:12:32
controversial figure even though he says
00:12:35
things that sometimes seem outrageous
00:12:37
nowadays if you said half of the things
00:12:39
that he says in his dwan you'd be
00:12:41
chucked out of your average Masjid but
00:12:43
that doesn't happen with the and the
00:12:46
great Scholars of of the day because
00:12:48
they they hear him but what makes roomy
00:12:53
roomy is an encounter with a remarkable
00:12:56
man who is the fourth of the well the
00:12:59
many people one could talk about in fact
00:13:01
I haven't mentioned
00:13:02
faki who is um living in the same house
00:13:06
as um
00:13:07
s along with a number of other quite
00:13:11
Extraordinary People jandi huge names
00:13:14
particularly the evolution of of Persian
00:13:18
literature through his and other texts
00:13:23
uh conveys the essence as he takes it of
00:13:27
iban Arab's system mediated in large
00:13:30
measure through the lens of Ki to the
00:13:34
Persian speaking world and from the
00:13:36
Persian speaking World it spreads very
00:13:37
quickly to the Indian world and becomes
00:13:40
famous controversies at the time of
00:13:42
Akbar and Aang all of that comes from
00:13:45
what's happening in the house that Ki
00:13:47
and and and and jandi and fani um are
00:13:51
sharing um in in a suburb of of K but
00:13:57
uh none of these people have that effect
00:14:00
on roomi so roomi has left his own town
00:14:03
Bal at the age of
00:14:06
12 and they end up here which they hoped
00:14:10
was a safe distance from the uh
00:14:13
marauding uh Buddhist terrorist of the
00:14:16
Mongols and uh the seljuks were kind of
00:14:19
tough Warriors Turks soldiers spent much
00:14:23
of their time on Horseback pulling
00:14:25
impossibly stiff bows they were tough
00:14:28
guys the Cel after all these are the
00:14:29
people who've defeated the byzantines so
00:14:31
if you're a peretic scholar you kind of
00:14:34
figure out that a place like K is pretty
00:14:36
safe because um this guy the paravan
00:14:41
sulan these are people who are not
00:14:44
Pussycats they're going to put up a
00:14:46
fight uh roomi is here and is an
00:14:50
exoteric scholar and teaches Hadith and
00:14:52
teaches Calamity knows that and he is
00:14:54
really again and is respected on that
00:14:57
level by these great people here in B
00:14:59
and has many students of his own and as
00:15:01
we'll see later on it's because of what
00:15:04
happens between roomi and shamps that
00:15:06
the students why does he have students
00:15:08
already and why do they love him so much
00:15:10
because of what he was before and before
00:15:12
shamps turns up he is in the hand
00:15:15
spiritually of another strange
00:15:18
mysterious people person
00:15:22
called now tyi his name suggests he's
00:15:25
also from what's now was bistan he's
00:15:26
from the East but he's a more enigmatic
00:15:30
Sufi type A
00:15:32
Wanderer uh but the key moment in Rumi's
00:15:35
career is when he moves from Ty's
00:15:39
tutelage into this very strange uh
00:15:42
relationship that he has with shemy t
00:15:46
now again the tourist guides here will
00:15:48
tell you Ministry of Tourism will
00:15:50
sometimes tell you any new age Guff
00:15:53
about the religion of love will tell you
00:15:56
that what shems is is an antinomian
00:15:59
figure that's the kind of standard
00:16:00
narrative and even some of the
00:16:02
orientalists like Nicholson have adopted
00:16:04
this view that roomi is this Orthodox
00:16:07
doctor of the law doing incredibly
00:16:09
boring things with the Divine attributes
00:16:11
and then shamps comes along as a kind of
00:16:14
hippie with a flower straight from
00:16:15
Woodstock and immediately they will
00:16:17
start rocking and rolling and that's why
00:16:20
we westerners like
00:16:22
roomy hold on here because we actually
00:16:24
know what shs was about because we have
00:16:27
his book m
00:16:29
which has been studied by a number of
00:16:31
Western Scholars uh recently and which
00:16:33
is an amazing Powerhouse Visionary text
00:16:36
which says actually this guy wasn't uh a
00:16:39
hippie
00:16:41
antinomian kind of Sher a light dervish
00:16:44
but in fact was a good deal more serious
00:16:47
than that it's very unlikely that
00:16:48
somebody is orthodox and straight As
00:16:51
roomy in this Orthodox straight Sunni
00:16:53
City like could have been immediately
00:16:55
sort of way layed into a new age cult
00:16:58
and um that that really doesn't happen
00:17:01
these people are disciplined and trained
00:17:03
to recognize truth from
00:17:05
error so who was shami and incidentally
00:17:08
the adab if you're in is to visit first
00:17:10
of all the M of sham tab we probably not
00:17:13
really buried there but his there's a
00:17:16
tomb for him in h which is over the
00:17:17
Border in Iran on the road to tabar we
00:17:20
don't really know where he is and then
00:17:22
you go to visit
00:17:24
Melana
00:17:27
uh sh is bringing in not the style ofan
00:17:32
but the style of
00:17:34
tab in the G to understand how Islam is
00:17:37
moving at that time you have to think
00:17:39
about that part of the world that
00:17:40
nowadays we don't think much about which
00:17:43
is basically Adan and the area down to
00:17:47
lakeia he is also from there shamps is
00:17:50
the other great figure from that area
00:17:52
who's turning up and that area is very
00:17:55
important uh in terms of
00:17:59
uh Tas so tab is the city where IM
00:18:03
gazali's brother Ahmed gazali fetched up
00:18:06
much more poetic ecstatic type of of
00:18:09
person it's the city
00:18:13
of one of the authors of the great texts
00:18:16
of of of Tas it's the city for a while
00:18:20
of um HZ uh n kubra his inab it said
00:18:26
that at the time of sh's Youth there
00:18:28
were
00:18:32
manifest Saints in the city of tab so
00:18:34
it's an incredible place and behind it
00:18:37
you have the mountains of the
00:18:39
Caucasus where all kinds of
00:18:41
extraordinary people are there studying
00:18:43
going into Retreat thetis basically are
00:18:46
coming from Caucasus ibraim gulen a
00:18:48
little bit later who kind of sets Cairo
00:18:51
on fire in the early 16th century very
00:18:53
controversial figure with his amazing
00:18:55
Dewan is from what's now nagoro kabak
00:18:58
which is in those mountainous areas just
00:19:00
north of tabes it's really uh a lively
00:19:04
living place and it's very ancient in
00:19:06
Islam um just a month ago in Cambridge
00:19:08
we had a des delegation of from
00:19:12
aaran they have a madasa there and they
00:19:15
say whenever people visit us they say
00:19:17
how long have you been Muslims and they
00:19:19
say actually it was Omar who converted
00:19:22
us to Islam so we've been Muslim for a
00:19:25
long time and it's still a very deep
00:19:28
place and these Traditions alhamdulillah
00:19:29
surfacing after the sort of dead years
00:19:32
of communist
00:19:33
Suffocation and but
