Rumi-/ Shams Tabrizi ---Mahnaz Badihian
Shams Tabrizi
Eight centuries ago in the middle of a Middle Eastern bazaar in Qonya, in modern day Turkey, a vagabond dervish approached an eminent scholar and asked him a philosophical question.
The scholar had just finished his daily teachings at the town’s theology school and was confidently strolling though the bazaar amidst the large entourage of his pupils. The question and the answer that pursued concerned a trivial Sufi aphorism; whether god or man deserved the supreme praise for being the Supreme Being on earth? But the outcome of that encounter was far from trivial. It led to the establishment of an ecstatic liaison between the two men and eventually transformed the life of the theologian forever. He blossomed into the greatest Sufi poet whom we now know as Jalaluddin Rumi Molavi, or simply Rumi.
The day was Saturday, November 28, 1244 A.D. (26th of Jamadi-al-Akhar 642 A.H.) and the questioning dervish was a wandering Sufi master named Shams Tabrizi. He had lived all his life in obscurity, but since that day his name has been immortalized in the eternal poetry of Rumi, like:
My guide and my purpose in life
My affliction and my salvation in life
My destiny, I can plainly see
Is with Shams, my god in life.
Rumi quit his daily teachings, took Shams to his abode and engaged in a rapturous company with him for many months to come. They would spend hours on end debating what constituted the essence and purpose of life, or whether love or reason should be the torch illuminating man’s destiny. Along the way Shams introduced Rumi’s circle to a new medium of spirituality, namely dance, music, and ecstasy. Dancers would whirl around for hours while chanting prayers until they felt they had cast off their superficial minds and were ready to receive the Supreme Being. It was during these séances that Rumi began spontaneously to chant his own prolific poetry for the first time. It was improvised on the spot at the peak of his rapture and ecstasy under Shams’s influence. Without him, we would probably never have Rumi. We are truly indebted to Shams for giving us Rumi as his gift to humanity.
What transpired in Qonya among those theologians is nothing short of magic and a good deal of it revolved around the mysterious figure of Shams Tabrizi. He appeared suddenly out of nowhere, metamorphosed a great scholar into a great poet, and then again disappeared into oblivion forever. This mysterious man and the mysterious facets of his character have long been the source of fascination for many readers of Rumi’s poetry.But who was Shams Tabrizi?
Eight centuries ago in the middle of a Middle Eastern bazaar in Qonya, in modern day Turkey, a vagabond dervish approached an eminent scholar and asked him a philosophical question.
The scholar had just finished his daily teachings at the town’s theology school and was confidently strolling though the bazaar amidst the large entourage of his pupils. The question and the answer that pursued concerned a trivial Sufi aphorism; whether god or man deserved the supreme praise for being the Supreme Being on earth? But the outcome of that encounter was far from trivial. It led to the establishment of an ecstatic liaison between the two men and eventually transformed the life of the theologian forever. He blossomed into the greatest Sufi poet whom we now know as Jalaluddin Rumi Molavi, or simply Rumi.
The day was Saturday, November 28, 1244 A.D. (26th of Jamadi-al-Akhar 642 A.H.) and the questioning dervish was a wandering Sufi master named Shams Tabrizi. He had lived all his life in obscurity, but since that day his name has been immortalized in the eternal poetry of Rumi, like:
My guide and my purpose in life
My affliction and my salvation in life
My destiny, I can plainly see
Is with Shams, my god in life.
Rumi quit his daily teachings, took Shams to his abode and engaged in a rapturous company with him for many months to come. They would spend hours on end debating what constituted the essence and purpose of life, or whether love or reason should be the torch illuminating man’s destiny. Along the way Shams introduced Rumi’s circle to a new medium of spirituality, namely dance, music, and ecstasy. Dancers would whirl around for hours while chanting prayers until they felt they had cast off their superficial minds and were ready to receive the Supreme Being. It was during these séances that Rumi began spontaneously to chant his own prolific poetry for the first time. It was improvised on the spot at the peak of his rapture and ecstasy under Shams’s influence. Without him, we would probably never have Rumi. We are truly indebted to Shams for giving us Rumi as his gift to humanity.
What transpired in Qonya among those theologians is nothing short of magic and a good deal of it revolved around the mysterious figure of Shams Tabrizi. He appeared suddenly out of nowhere, metamorphosed a great scholar into a great poet, and then again disappeared into oblivion forever. This mysterious man and the mysterious facets of his character have long been the source of fascination for many readers of Rumi’s poetry.But who was Shams Tabrizi?