The Masnavi, Book Three Read online

  Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP

  United Kingdom

  Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

  © Jawid Mojaddedi 2013

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2013

  Impression: 1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

  You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

  Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Data available

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938935

  ISBN 978–0–19–965203–7

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.

  The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy, and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers.

  Refer to the Table of Contents to navigate through the material in this Oxford World’s Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes.

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  JALAL AL-DIN RUMI

  The Masnavi

  BOOK THREE

  Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

  JAWID MOJADDEDI

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  THE MASNAVI

  RUMI, known in Iran and Central Asia as Mowlana Jalaloddin Balkhi, was born in 1207 in the province of Balkh, now the border region between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. His family emigrated when he was still a child, shortly before Genghis Khan and his Mongol army arrived in Balkh. They settled permanently in Konya, central Anatolia, which was formerly part of the Eastern Roman Empire (Rum). Rumi was probably introduced to Sufism originally through his father, Baha Valad, a popular preacher who also taught Sufipiety to a group of disciples. However, the turning-point in Rumi’s life came in 1244, when he met in Konya a mysterious wandering Suficalled Shamsoddin of Tabriz. Shams, as he is most often referred to by Rumi, taught him the profoundest levels of Sufism, transforming him from a pious religious scholar to an ecstatic mystic. Rumi expressed his new vision of reality in volumes of mystical poetry. His enormous collection of lyrical poetry is considered one of the best that has ever been produced, while his poem in rhyming couplets, the Masnavi, is so revered as the most consummate expression of Sufimysticism that it is commonly referred to as ‘the Qur’an in Persian’.

  When Rumi died, on 17 December 1273, shortly after having completed his work on the Masnavi, his passing was deeply mourned by the citizens of Konya, including the Christian and Jewish communities. His disciples formed the Mevlevi Sufi order, which was named after Rumi, whom they referred to as ‘Our Lord’ (Turkish ‘Mevlana’, Persian ‘Mowlana’). They are better known in Europe and North America as the Whirling Dervishes, because of the distinctive dance that they now perform as one of their central rituals. Rumi’s death is commemorated annually in Konya, attracting pilgrims from all corners of the globe and every religion. The popularity of his poetry has risen so much in recent decades that the Christian Science Monitor identified Rumi as the most published poet in America in 1997.

  JAWID MOJADDEDI, a native of Afghanistan, is currently Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Religion, Rutgers University. Dr Mojaddedi’s translation The Masnavi: Book One (Oxford, 2004) was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books include Beyond Dogma: Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (Oxford, 2012) and The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (Richmond, 2001).

  For Janajan

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I SHOULD like to express my gratitude to my immediate family, my friends, and all the teachers I have studied under. Time spent with Dr Alireza Nurbakhsh and Paul Weber has served as an instructive reminder of the living reality of what Rumi points to in his thirteenth-century poem. Gregory Angus’s comments about mystical knowledge at a meeting in Washington DC in 2012 helped shape the introduction to Book Three presented here. Once again, I have been very fortunate to work with an editor as supportive and cooperative as Judith Luna. I am also grateful for the comments and criticisms offered by readers of initial drafts of this translation, especially Dick Davis, and for the encouragement I have received from readers to continue this project. I alone am responsible for any flaws.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Note on the Translation

  Select Bibliography

  A Chronology of Rumi

  THE MASNAVI

  BOOK THREE

  Prose Introduction

  Exordium

  Don’t eat baby elephants!

  A lover’s mistake is better than the stranger’s correct act

  Prayer and the pure mouth

  The answer to prayers

  The townsman and the villager

  The People of Sheba and the Prophets

  Jesus’ healing of the sick

  The falcon and the ducks

  The Zarwan nation

  Majnun and Layli’s dog

  The jackal who pretended to be a peacock

  The man who greased his moustache to show off

  Bal‘am ben Ba’ur

  Exegesis of ‘You will know them through the corruption of their speech’

  Harut and Marut

  Pharaoh’s attempts to prevent Moses’ birth

  The frozen snake that came back to life

  Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians

  The elephant in the dark

  Infidelity and God’s decree

  The barber and the man with grizzled hair

  The companions of the Prophet and the Qur’an

  The error of reading a love letter when you are next to the beloved

  The man who prayed for a livelihood without having to work

  The teacher who was tricked by his pupils into believing he was sick

  Shaikh Amputee

  The far-sighted goldsmith

  Pharaoh’s threats to his magicians

  The mule’s complaint to the camel

/>   Ozayr’s ass

  The shaikh who did not grieve the death of his sons

  The man who regained sight whenever reading the Qur’an

  The patience of Loqman

  Friends of God who choose not to pray

  Bohlul and the dervish

  The visions of Daquqi

  Moses and Khezr

  Jesus’ escape from the fool

  The People of Sheba and the Prophets

  The tale about the blind, far-sighted man, the deaf, sharp-eared man, and the naked man wearing a long skirt

  The hares and the elephant

  Noah and the building of his ark

  The burglar who said he was just beating a drum

  A parable about prudence

  The vow of the dogs every winter

  The wisdom in the creation of hell

  Kings and the small gate in the city wall of Jerusalem

  The Sufi who was made ecstatic by an empty mealcloth

  Jacob and Joseph’s shirt

  The prince and the slave who stayed in the mosque to pray

  When Prophets lose hope

  Ordinary people have faith based on fear and hope

  Hidden friends of God

  Anas and the Prophet Mohammad’s napkin

  The Prophet saves a caravan in the desert

  Need draws God’s bounty

  The baby that bore witness to the Prophet Mohammad

  The eagle that lifted away the Prophet’s boot

  The man who asked Moses to teach him the languages of animals

  The woman whose children all died in infancy

  Hamza’s refusal to wear body armour

  The advantages of deliberation

  Belal’s embrace of death

  The world and the body

  Reason and revelation

  The reverence disciples should have for their masters

  The enemy of the sun

  Levels of knowledge

  The relativity of knowledge

  Self-annihilation and subsistence in God

  The love of the vakil of Bukhara for his ruler, the sadr

  The appearance of the Holy Spirit to Mary

  The haunted mosque

  The worldliness of Galen

  How Satan tricked the Qoraysh

  A drum of inappropriate size

  Chick peas boiling in a pot compared with true believers

  The Masnavi and its critics

  The outer and inner meanings of the Qur’an

  Why friends of God retreat to the mountains

  The mountains joined David in repeating the Psalms

  The foal that would not drink near commotion

  The cry of the Devil to dissuade you from the path

  The attraction of elements to their source

  The soul’s attraction to the spiritual world

  The Prophet Mohammad and his foes

  The flea complains about the wind to Solomon

  The union of the lover who was not true

  Explanatory Notes

  Glossary

  INTRODUCTION

  Book Three of the Masnavi

  RUMI’S Masnavi is probably the longest mystical poem ever written by a single author from any religious tradition. It consists of about 26,000 verses, divided into six books. The current volume is a translation of the third book of the Masnavi, and follows Book One and Book Two, also published in Oxford World’s Classics.1

  Much has been written on Rumi and his Masnavi. However, one point which has not been explored extensively is its organizational framework. Would Rumi have had an overall framework in mind when he compiled this long and complex poem? The richness of the Masnavi makes it very hard to draw any definitive conclusions. On the one hand, that Rumi divided his poem into six books of roughly equal length, each with its own distinct introduction, may suggest an overall framework of some kind. On the other, Rumi’s many digressions, as well as his emphasis on the divine origin of his poetry, can give the impression that he did not feel constrained by any particular framework, or perhaps did not want the reader to be distracted by it from the immediate focus.

  A comparison of the first three books of the Masnavi reveals first of all that they are very similar in form. The poetry is divided into numerous sections by means of section headings. These headings range from a single word to several lines, which occasionally incorporate an interpretation of the poetry that follows. Each book can also be roughly divided into about a dozen major stories.2 These major stories differ from the more numerous shorter stories because they are usually made up of many sections, which represent not only the consecutive parts of the narrative, but often also commentaries and elaborations (sometimes in the form of further shorter stories), which break up the main narrative.3 If one were to consider the dozen or so major stories of this kind in each book to be Rumi’s main building-blocks, then, by analysing their functions, one may be able to decipher the rationale behind Rumi’s division of the poem into books, and the order of the major stories in each one.

  While there is substantial overlap between the three books—at times almost identical verses are used—each book can be seen to focus on a specific aspect of Sufism. Like many previous works of the Persian mystical masnavi genre, the order of presentation of the major stories of the first book sketches the progress of the mystic on the Sufi path. Book One begins with the well-known ‘Song of the Reed’ (I, vv. 1–18), which describes the longing of a reed to return to the reed-bed from which it has been cut, and this is usually interpreted by commentators as representing the birth of the human being into this world and his longing to return to his original spiritual nature in God’s presence. The final major story in Book One depicts the Prophet Mohammad’s disciple Ali as a mystic who has reached the end of the path. He throws away his sword when an enemy soldier, whom he is about to slay, spits in his face (I, vv. 3735–4004). This action is explained as a sign that he has returned to subsistence in God after self-annihilation, since his every action is now determined by God and not by his own will.

  Although the content of each book of the Masnavi is too rich and diverse to be neatly categorized, one can none the less observe a logic to the selection and order of the major stories. For instance, those of Book One seem to be presented in the order of progression on the Sufi path as far as the climax represented by the aforementioned final story about Ali.

  As one might expect of any writing designed to instruct Sufi disciples, Book Two also describes aspects of the Sufipath, especially the struggle against the self. However, this is not its main focus. Instead, the major stories in Book Two are primarily concerned with the challenge of discerning the true nature of people behind appearances, in order to identify with whom one should associate so as to progress on the mystical path. The extensive exordium introduces these specific issues to the reader from the outset (II, vv. 19–41).

  The major preoccupation of Book Three is no mystery either, as it is pointed out at the very start of the Prose Introduction with which it begins. Rumi comments: ‘Pieces of wisdom are the armies of God by which He strengthens the spirits of seekers, and keeps their knowledge away from the tarnish of ignorance, their justice from the tarnish of tyranny, their generosity from the tarnish of self-display, and their intelligence from the tarnish of stupidity’ (p. 3). The subsequent exordium develops this theme with an emphasis on the contrast between nourishment of the body through food and spiritual nourishment received from God. Book Three as a whole presents Rumi’s epistemology by classifying different levels of knowledge, from the limited amount possessed by fools who are controlled by their lusts and the rational knowledge of the well-educated to the all-consuming mystical knowledge of the Sufi adept, or ‘Friend of God’ (wali). Moreover, consistent with his description here of knowledge as a source of strength for one’s inner being, in Book Three Rumi frequently presents his teachings in the form of stories that involve food.

  The first major stories highlight the limitations of ration
al knowledge which sees things only at immediate face value. For instance, hungry travellers ignore sage advice against satisfying their hunger by eating a baby elephant and then pay with their lives (III, vv. 69–171), while a townsman is disappointed when a bumpkin whom he has treated well fails to reciprocate or even acknowledge him after having invited him to his village with generous promises (III, vv. 236–720). With a more directly spiritual emphasis, the People of Sheba are irritated by the Prophets for disturbing their comfortable and pleasing current state of ignorance, unappreciative of their foreknowledge of impending doom (III, vv. 282–411), while Pharaoh tries in vain to prevent the birth of Moses through the logical methods of separating Jewish men from their wives at the time of conception and then eliminating all babies born at the time when his birth was foretold, overlooking in the process that his own Jewish treasurer, Emran, could father the expected Prophet (III, vv. 840–995). Rumi’s subsequent major story about Moses’ miracle of transforming his rod into a snake builds on this theme (III, vv. 1067–1259). All these major stories in the first quarter of Book Three recount the failures of a purely rational approach to knowledge, by highlighting the fact that it can be influenced by the self’s desires, and that it cannot perceive anything of the future in contrast to the all-encompassing mystical knowledge of Prophets.

  Possibly the most dramatic of twists comes in the major story about the man who prayed for a livelihood without having to work (III, vv. 1451–2571). This man is convinced that his prayer is being answered when a cow charges into his house, so he slays it. Reading this story rationally, the reader sympathizes with the owner of the cow who wants compensation, and yet, through divine communication, Prophet David discovers that the killing of the cow was perfectly correct. His prophetic communication from God informs him of the history of the present owner of the cow and the ancestors of the man who killed it, which shows that the former did not possess it legitimately and had in fact murdered the original owner. This story not only highlights the superiority of the divine communication received by Prophets over rational knowledge, but in this case there is a protagonist who appears at first to be foolish with his prayer to God for livelihood without the need to work, and yet his conviction that the cow’s arrival at his house is an answer to this prayer is finally vindicated. The implication here is that such a conviction in divine communication is superior to rationalizing, a teaching that is also expressed explicitly elsewhere in Book Three.