When we first become familiar with Rumi, it is only natural that we also become interested in Rumi's mentor, Shams of Tabriz. Yet for most of us, Shams remains an enigma. Who was he? Why do we need to know about him? Why now? Does Shams, whom many consider to be a peripheral figure, warrant a book-length study? These are legitimate questions, and we could ask more, but the simple answer to them all is a resounding yes!
For those of us who have read, studied, and come to appreciate Rumi, learning about his foremost inspiration is the next logical step. We should understand why and how Shams transformed his most famous student into a mad, whirling samâzan and mystic poet whose work is considered almost as fundamental to Persian culture and religion as the Koran itself. Without knowing Shams, we cannot truly understand how Rumi became the ultimate Mowlânâ—master teacher and the title by which he came to be known in Iran. If Shams had not taken Rumi under his wing and exposed him to his no-nonsense brand of spirituality, we would not have the immense treasury of mystic Persian poetry that has guided many of us in our own personal spiritual quests.
Let us begin to create a profile of this seemingly mad wandering darvish, or Sufi mystic, from the limited information we have, mostly sourced from Shams's own Maghâlât or, Discourses, a collection of his talks and teachings conducted in Konya, in present-day Turkey, between 1244 and 1247. Undoubtedly, Shams of Tabriz deserves a modern-day book of his own, a book that can appeal to everyone. As we will see, the Maghâlât is the only record we have to date that gives us a close insight into Shams's personality through his own words. First, however, I will provide a general biography of Shams, as well as an overview of the socio-historical dynamics of his time, thus laying the groundwork for an examination of his cutting-edge spirituality, which we will encounter in the second part of this book through a wide selection of his most important sayings, selected from the abridged version of the Maghâlât.
After much research, however, I have concluded that the dates offered by Rumi scholars for events relating to Shams vary, and none can be trusted to be completely precise. Therefore, for the sake of accuracy, I shall mention the year and the month for each event, when possible, and omit the day. As for the transliteration of the Persian words, I have preferred to use the Persian pronunciation versus Arabic or Turkish, using the Iranian Studies transliteration scheme; and where certain words are already known and accepted in English, I have used that spelling.
Mohammad, son of Ali, son of Malekdâd, known as Shams ed-Din, was born in Tabriz, the present capital of the Iranian province of Azarbaijân, in 1184 (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 107). Shams, which in Arabic means “the sun” (Shams ed-Din means “the sun of faith”), was the only son of a shopkeeper father who adored him and raised him with utmost care. From very early on, Shams showed signs of being different from other boys. He preferred his own company to that of others his age and hardly ever engaged in childhood games, preferring to spend his time with his books.
Shams's father had high hopes for his son and had him study Arabic, Islamic law, mathematics, and astronomy with the most learned teachers available. It is believed that by the age of seven, Shams had already begun to memorize the Koran, and not long after, he knew it by heart, becoming a hâfez. We know a fair amount about Shams's early life, unlike most other Sufis of his time, because here and there he mentions his family in his Maghâlât. These Discourses, which we will discuss at length later, were roughly scribed by a morīd, or devotee, who was privy to Shams's talks, and they are our most valid source of information on Shams.
Shams describes his father as a kind and emotional man whose tears were easily drawn. He imparts almost no information on his mother, though, her personality being immersed into his father's. In one instance, he speaks of how delicately and lovingly his parents raised him, yet at the same time, he criticizes them, as in the following instance in which he implies how exasperating his father's kindness to a cat that had tried to steal their food is. In those days, people were not generally well off, and meat was not a staple of their diets; in fact, it was a luxury and a real treat. It was common that when meat was being served in a meal, the local cats would quickly gather, waiting for their chance to pounce on it.
If a cat spilled and broke a bowl trying to steal the meat, my father, sitting next to me with his stick by his side, would never hit the animal and would jokingly say: “Look how she's done it again! This is good fortune! We've been spared from evil. Otherwise something bad could've happened to either you, me, or your mother!” (Movahed 2009, 173)
In his teens, Shams began to experience unusual mental states, which was a source of worry for his parents. These curious moods were invigorated when he began to attend and serve as a novice in samâ (whirling ceremonies), experimenting with Sufism and its various spiritual practices. These experiences would strongly affect his temperament as well as his physical constitution, especially his dietary habits: at times he would lose his appetite completely, unable to even swallow properly. His sleep also became minimal, yet he felt energized and stronger than ever. In his own words:
My appetite has been eradicated by “discourse”; three or four days pass without me feeling any hunger. And my father says: “My poor son, nothing passes through his lips!” But I tell him that I don't become any weaker, and my power is such that if you wish to see it I could fly to the sun like a bird. (Movahed 2009, Khomi az Sharab e Rabani, 222)
Shams's poor father ceaselessly worried for him, unaware of what was becoming of his beloved only child. He would ask Shams:
“What is happening to you?”
“Nothing has happened to me! Do I look mad? Have I torn someone's clothes off his back? Have I picked a fight with you?”
“Then what is this state I find you in? I know that you're not mad, but I don't understand what you're doing, my son!” (Movahed 2009, 223)
Ali ibn-e Malekdâd, Shams's father, was familiar with the common Sufi practices of the time, because Tabriz was known as the City of Seventy Bâbâs (fathers), a term referring to shaykhs (Arabic), morsheds, and pīrs (Persian), or Sufi mentors and masters. Shams's condition, however, was unlike that of most Sufis and baffled his father, who would worry himself sick as he watched his son wither away.
Shams says of his father: “He was a good man . . . but he wasn't a lover. A good man is one thing and a lover is another. . . . Only a lover can know about the state of another lover” (Movahed 1997, 44). For Shams to be in love was to be burning in the fire of love all the time.
The relationship between father and son gradually but steadily deteriorated, and as Shams began to realize how different he was from his kin, his father's kindness began to seem intrusive and even hostile at times. He says, “My father had no notion about me. I was a stranger in my own town, and my father was becoming a stranger to me. I was more estranged every day and began to think that even when he spoke kindly and paternally to me, in fact he preferred to beat me and throw me out of his house!” (Movahed 2009, 223).
Shams's feelings of alienation, however, did not affect his self-confidence or his belief in his own spiritual powers. He tells of an exchange with his father:
I told him, let me tell you just one thing! The way you are with me is like duck eggs that have been left under a hen. The eggs eventually hatch and the ducklings instinctively walk to the stream. They slide into the water and swim away, as their mother, a domestic hen, only walks alongside them on the bank, without the prospect of ever getting into the water herself. Father, I can now see that the sea has become my carrier, my home! This is the real state of my being. If you are from me and me from you, then come into the sea; otherwise, you can bide your time with the hens in their coop. (Movahed 2009, Shams e Tabrizi, 44)
Elsewhere in the Maghâlât, Shams reiterates his feelings about his father:
If it weren't for Mowlânâ I would never have returned to Konya. . . . Had they brought me the news that my father had risen from the grave and sent me a message to go and see him and come back to Damascus with him, I would never have even considered going! (Movahed 2009, 77)
Seeing no other choice, Ali ibn-e Malekdâd had to let his teenage son join Shaykh Abu Bakr Seleh-Bâf in his independent khâneghâh, a Sufi house, in the Charandâb quarter in Tabriz. Shams describes his pīr as a soul who was indifferent to the “Lords of Power and Gold.” Every time members of the government wished to pay their respects, the shaykh's students would exaggerate their acts of devotion to their teacher, excessively bowing and keeping their distance with their hands crossed over their hearts, intending to belittle the wealthy visitors.
Shams seems to have adopted Shaykh Abu Bakr's indifference to wealth and authority, in addition to relinquishing the popular custom of taking part in special Sufi ceremonies. In the Sufi tradition, it is common for shaykhs to initiate their morīd upon the completion of their studies by giving them a khergheh, the cloak of a darvish. Shams, however, insisted that it was not Abu Bakr's practice to bestow a khergheh, thus emphasizing the fact that he did not adhere to common Sufi rituals. Many years later, Shams was asked to reveal his own khergheh and to introduce his own shaykh, to prove that he was a genuinely initiated darvish, and he cunningly replied:
The Prophet, peace be upon him, has gifted me my khergheh in my sleep! And it's not one of those that ages after two days and ends up in tatters only fit to clean toilets with; but it's a robe of “teaching,” teachings that cannot be comprehended by everyone, teachings that do not belong to yesterday or tomorrow. What can love possibly have to do with yesterday and tomorrow anyway? (Movahed 1997, 62)
At the time when Shams was growing up in Tabriz, the two main Islamic schools that the people of Azarbaijân belonged to were the Hanafi and Shafi'i, which was a major source of contention and animosity between the inhabitants. Shams belonged to the Shafi'i school, but unlike most conservative Hanafis, who generally disparaged Shafi'i principles, Shams as a Shafi'i was himself open to Hanafi principles when he found them useful. Later on in life, he would refute fanaticism by teaching and practicing tolerance in his daily life and encouraging acceptance and camaraderie between the various factions in Islam, an outlook that he later transferred to Rumi, who belonged to the Hanafi school.
In his youth, Shams had studied Islamic jurisprudence and had learned the Koran by heart, studying under the religious authorities of his time. As a young man, however, when he first became attracted to Sufism and the practices of the darvishes, he shunned the mullahs, believing that they had no concept of mysticism. As time went by and he mingled with darvishes, he came to believe that perhaps spending time with the mullahs was more honest than wasting time with fraudulent, useless, and freeloading mystics, who were abundant and who showed no trace of spirituality in their lives. In Shams's own words:
At first I did not mingle with the religious scholars, only with darvishes, for I thought that they were not conscious of spirituality. Once I became intimately familiar with what true spirituality was and understood the state those darvishes were in, I instead preferred to keep company with the Islamic scholars, for they have truly experienced suffering. These darvishes lie when they claim to be genuine ascetics. Where is their asceticism? (Movahed 2012, 249)
It seems, in fact, that this to and fro between jurisprudence and spirituality continued throughout Shams's life and often created confusion for those who did not know him. They could not comprehend or discern how his adherence to Islamic laws, which was paramount to his existence, could be paired with his total devotion to Sufism. He recounts:
They asked a friend of mine about me: “Is he a theologian or a darvish?” He replied: “He's both.” They asked: “Then why does he always talk about jurisprudence?” He answered: “Because spirituality is not a subject that he could speak about with this group! He speaks in terms of the law because he's hiding his meaning and revealing secrets in between the lines.” (Movahed 1997, 58)
The Sufi path is a narrow one, slippery and full of fast, sharp turns. If one slips off, on one side lies the rugged terrain of zeal for asceticism, the obsession with denying oneself any pleasure and belittling one's body, and on the other side lies the cesspool of corruption, laziness, and uselessness. In the thirteenth century, the Persians were not only religious but extremely traditional, more so than the neighboring Turks, Syrians, and Mesopotamians and the more distant Egyptians, but still, corruption and the desire to climb socially was rife among many Islamic theologians and scholars.
Shams and most pure-hearted Sufis must have been painfully aware of this situation in their native Azarbaijân, and they suffered as they watched their colleagues engage in self-motivated aggrandizement. In his Maghâlât, Shams repeatedly criticizes these hypocrites and reproaches them for misleading the young who sought their guidance: “These men who speak from the pulpits and lead the prayers are the thieves of our religion!” (Movahed 2009, 212).
In the Sufi tradition of master and pupil, or shaykh/pīr/morshed and morīd, at one point after having served one's mentor for some years and having completed the necessary preliminary stages of solÛk, or Sufi training, a student was sent away on a trip. Often, these trips happened without prior planning but could occur as a result of the morīd experiencing overexcitement or excessive periods of ecstasy.
Separation from one's mentor was intended to mature the devotee and was never allowed until one's shaykh was convinced of the need for it. To be apart from one's mentor was supposed to increase the morīd's love for him, meanwhile maturing the morīd out of necessity and teaching him how to stand on his own two feet, as he would no longer enjoy the protection he had been offered previously by his shaykh. Shams perhaps recollects his own experience when he tells a morīd:
I worry for you at this hour because, unaware of the hardships of separation, you are happily sleeping in the cool shadow of your shaykh's compassion. With one wrong move you can lose this mercy and afterward can only dream of regaining it; neither will you ever be able to see your shaykh again without his will, whether in your sleep or while you're awake. Hope is valuable and wise when the possibility of achieving is real, otherwise what's the use? (Movahed 2009, 67)
The concept of travel was indeed meant to symbolize inner travel and the constant inner search for the divine and perfection. Shams admits: “When the morīd is not yet perfected, it is not wise for him to be separated from his shaykh. But when he becomes a perfect Sufi, his mentor's absence will cause him no harm” (Movahed 2012, 144–45).
The importance of being separated from one's revered morshed or shaykh becomes apparent in Shams's relationship with Rumi many years later, when Shams tells Rumi that he himself will tolerate the hardship of travel for Rumi's sake, because he can't expect Rumi, who had many social and family responsibilities, to just pick up and leave town:
Were you able to do something such that I didn't have to go away for your benefit and we could attain what is necessary without the need for travel, it would indeed be worthwhile, for I am unable to order you to go away. I shall, therefore, take it upon myself to endure the trouble of traveling, because separation matures one. While separated from each other, one begins to think about all the things that one should have said openly, and how easy it would have been to be straightforward instead of saying everything in puzzles in an effort to avoid discord. It would have been so much easier than tolerating the hardships of travel and being separated. If need be I will take fifty trips for your sake, for what does it matter to me if I go away or not! It is all for your improvement; otherwise, what difference does it make if I were in RÛm or in Damascus, in Mecca or in Istanbul? It makes no difference to me, other than certainly traveling matures the person in many ways. (Movahed 2009, 74–75)
These extensive travels during which Sufis would forsake their homes and family were frowned upon by classical Islamic leaders and deemed disagreeable by Sharia law. However, the Sufi masters considered this forsaking of one's home and life in general necessary for the education of their students, whereby, having given up on everything familiar, they would instead turn to God. Becoming acquainted with unknown horizons, alone and downtrodden, often in the dark of night, they would experience incredibly deep and meaningful visions and gain spiritual acumen. Thus travel, regarded as character building, often became an essential part of Sufi education, during which the morīd would “cook” while separated from his beloved master who had spiritually looked after him until then.
In Tabriz, the great spiritual masters in Shams's time were mostly what he calls ommi, meaning that they were not necessarily educated and had received their spiritual wisdom directly from spiritual sources rather than by studying books and attending school. They were majzoub, mad in the love of God, enchanted almost, and a few were susceptible to falling into unusual states of consciousness and behaving rather rashly. Their knowledge was innate, and even if some were illiterate, they had more inherent wisdom than most educated shaykhs. Shams must have been familiar with and perhaps even close to many of them. Nevertheless, when he was about twenty years old, he chose to leave Tabriz in search of a higher pīr or perhaps was sent away by Shaykh Seleh-Bâf after having completed his initial Sufi training (Movahed 1997, 83).
Years later, he confessed to Rumi that Seleh-Bâf had taught him many things but had not realized the gem that lay in Shams's being, which Rumi did. In fact, Shams eventually found the perfect shaykh in himself, and he was able to transfer that perfection to Rumi when they were finally united. The essential “need” of a person to find truth in life had become paraamount to Shams's existence, and although he was still so young, he was nevertheless well aware that he needed the help of a higher master to guide him through. He says:
The world is not without a perfect shaykh, and I left my hometown in search of such a man. However, I found no such shaykh, not even one who could remain indifferent to people's gossip, which is the first step on the hundred-thousand-year journey to perfection. In the end, though, I found Mowlânâ, who embodied perfection, and that's precisely why I chose to sit in conversation with him and decided to move from Aleppo to Konya. (Movahed 1997, 65)
After he left Tabriz, Shams traveled extensively, earning himself the title “Flying Shams.” A few places that he's known to have visited and stayed in are Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, Kayseri, Aksaray, Sivas, Erzerum, and Erzincan (Movahed 1997, 67). Shams refused to stay in kâneghâhs, where his room and board would have been free, preferring to stay in paying caravanserais and earning his keep by teaching young pupils. This didn't earn him much but was a respectable profession. In fact, Shams had developed a method by which he was able to teach the entire Koran to a young pupil in only three months. Teaching, however, required long stays in one place, and Shams had managed to do so in Damascus and Aleppo, but when he chose not to stay long in other cities, he had to earn his living in another fashion.
While as a young man he often did manual labor until late into the night despite his general frailty, he's known to have woven girdles for trousers in his later years. He confesses that he had gone to Erzincân to find work as a builder, but because of his weak constitution, no one would employ him. During his stays in various towns, he experienced many difficulties, as he was too honest and, as a straight talker, refused to praise those he deemed to be unworthy. He was considered too poor and weak to be respected, and often he was literally thrown out of town.
On many occasions when he found himself penniless, he would seek shelter for the night in mosques, and much to his dismay would find that the house of God was not truly the domain of the Almighty but had a human caretaker who needed to be satisfied monetarily; thus, he would be turned away even from mosques. Often, purely because of his Turkish accent when he spoke Arabic, being from Tabriz, people would belittle him and call him a crazy ass! (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 83–84).
Tolerating the injustice leveled against him by unintelligent folk and experiencing complete and utter poverty and homelessness at times, Shams nevertheless continued to revere life and refused to see anything other than beauty in the world, albeit remaining cautious about revealing his true self to people he deemed incapable of understanding him. He said, “When I am joyful, even if the whole world were seeped in sorrow it would not affect me, and if I were sad I would never allow anyone to get affected by me either!” (Movahed 2009, 143).
Shams felt an unbending brotherhood with the downtrodden and the poor, those who had been shunned by society and cast aside by the wealthy; he considered himself their forbearer. He watched the injustice, the demise of principles and morality in all echelons of society, and privately suffered from being a witness to the unnecessary misery of the masses. He openly questioned the misplacement of empathy and love, while pointing his finger at the culprits.
In Shams's world, one cried for the living not for the dead. While he was unwilling to serve as a guide for unintelligent, common people, Shams considered himself responsible for pointing out the truth to their shaykhs, while he searched for the “perfect man” from among them (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 389). Shams did not in fact use the term “perfect man” but rather used different terms such as perfect shaykh, perfect ones, perfect and imperfect ones, special ones, perfection, or God's special one—all of which refer to the ultimate maturity of man, worthy of admiration, praise, and respect (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 580–81).
Even acknowledging the rarity of the perfect man, Shams held that his personality would have to embrace fourteen essential attributes:
Hiding behind teaching young pupils and remaining mysteriously unknown to peers was a common practice among spiritual masters, and Shams was an expert at it. He also did not hesitate to do manual labor to hide his identity, and he disappeared instantly from any town if he felt that he had been recognized as a high Sufi; perhaps this is another reason why he came to be known as “Flying Shams.”
In one episode related by Fereydoun Sepahsâlâr, one of Rumi's main biographers, during his stay in Damascus, Shams would buy the minimum possible amount of mutton stew from a shop, soak only dry bread in it, and live on that for a whole week. After a while, the shop owner realized that Shams was in fact intentionally adhering to a fast and that he must be a high-standing darvish. The next time Shams went to purchase his weekly share of the stew, the owner made sure to give him an ample amount and added two fresh loaves of bread to his order. Shams realized that his cover had been blown, and the next day he left town (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 29).
Unlike Shams, there were many Sufi shaykhs who did not hide their identity and who lived gainful lives in their societies. A few of Shams's contemporaries who earned their living by having regular jobs instead of freeloading off their morīds were Shaykh Seleh-Bâf, who wove baskets; Ajbâdi, who had a silk-weaving workshop; and Attâr, who had a pharmacy. Sufis often had titles reflecting their professions, such as grocer, haberdasher, saddlebag maker, potter, gardener, fishmonger, glass-maker, ironmonger, calligrapher, teacher, etc.
Rising from among the masses, these Sufi masters attracted common people because they spoke to them in a language they understood, the everyday language of the streets. Not only were they honest and approachable, but they were also the people's own, speaking kindly to their charges without boasting of their own knowledge. They managed their Sufism by bringing prayer and faith together with music and samâ, which greatly appealed to the general masses who sought relief from the dictatorial behavior of their rulers.
If Shams had left Tabriz at about twenty years of age and had arrived in Konya to meet with Rumi at the ripe age of sixty, then he must have spent the forty interim years traveling from place to place, but we cannot be certain of the number of years he might have spent in any one specific town. It was during these travels that he met many great men of his age and spent time with them in their gatherings and classes. Shahâb Heriveh (or Heravi) in Damascus, whom Shams sometimes called “Khorâssani,” was one of them:
Shahab never accepted anyone into his private gatherings. He would say, “Gabriel is a burden for me, even I am a burden to me!” Yet despite his distaste for company he would tell me, “You can come because you bring peace to my heart.” (Movahed 1997, 85)
Other renowned Iranian contemporaries of Shams include Khajeh Abdollah Ansâri, Abol Hassan Kharaghâni, Bayazid Bastâmi, and Baba Taher Oriyân. Highly regarded by Shams, the renowned Fakhr-e Râzi, a contemporary of Shahâbeddin Yahyâ Sohrevardi, with whom he shared the same teacher, Majd-e Gilâni, was a successful philosopher who was popular with the rulers of the time. Basking in his pride, however, Fakhr-e Râzi did not respect many of his contemporaries, which brought him ample jealousy and dislike. Much to his admirers' discontent, he refuted all of his research and writings in his last will and testament shortly before his death, rendering them worthless.
Shams was a keen admirer of Sohrevardi, or Shaykh-e Eshrâgh, as well; he had penned Hekmat-ol Fshnâgh, a thesis on Eastern and specifically Iranian Sufi masters and their thinking. Sohrevardi was strangled for heresy at the age of thirty-six, having already written over fifty philosophical theses and books. Shams also venerated Shaykh Mohammad, also known as Mohiyeddin Mohammad or Shaykh Akbar but better known in the West as Ibn Arabi, who must have been twenty years his senior and was close to Shams of Khuy, whose private classes Shams attended in Damascus. Shams eventually gave up on Shams of Khuy, rather smugly stating:
I left the juror Shams al-Din because he could no longer teach me. He said to me, “I cannot be ashamed before God; He has created you perfectly, and I see a precious gem and am unable to add to its beauty.” (Movahed 2012, 221)
Ibn Arabi was one of the most respected Sufi masters of the day and was considered an exceptional character whose greatness was unrivaled by his contemporaries. Shams amiably referred to him as a most “kind sympathizer” and “excellent companion,” and above all “a mountain, a great mountain.” Ibn Arabi, who was also well acquainted with Shahâb Heravi and had dreamed about the latter's death, was quite fond of Shams and used to call him “son” or “brother” (Movahed 1997, 101).
Yet when Shams met Rumi years later, he admitted: “Shaykh Mohammad [Ibn Arabi] prayed constantly and claimed to be a follower of the Prophet. I learned a great deal from him but nothing like what I've learned from you, Mowlânâ! It's like comparing pebbles with pearls!” (Movahed 2009, 144).
Ohad al-Din Kermâni was another pīr and a contemporary of Shams, albeit much older, and he was eager to recruit Shams into his circle. But Shams suspected him of being too keen on young, handsome morīds, a tendency that he abhorred. Shams related:
This shaykh took me with him to the samâ ceremony and paid me much respect, and he invited me into his private sessions. He asked me one day: “What if you came and spent time with me for a while?” I told him: “I will if you agree to bring two cups of wine, one for me and one for you, and when the samâ begins we will take turns drinking.” He said, “I cannot!” I told him: “Then my company and conversation is not for you. You should be prepared to give up your morīds and the rest of the world for this one cup of wine!” (Movahed 1997, 95)
This was indeed an impossible task for the respectable elderly shaykh, but Shams knew what he was doing. He wanted to cut off all hope for the shaykh to engage him, and therefore he presented him with this unattainable challenge. He also wished to demonstrate his own state of being lâobâlī, or carefree, not only showing the minimum amount of respect for superficial social norms but also going to extensive lengths to exaggerate his dislike and disregard for them.
Shams refers to Ohad al-Din in his Maghâlât when he discusses the four stages of “spiritual drunkenness,” or spiritual growth, proposing that the shaykh and his morīds were stuck primarily in the realm of “drunkenness on air,” the first of the four stages. Being “drunk on air” does not necessarily mean to be drunk on the world of gold, women, and materialism in general but rather to be in an unsettled or disheveled state marked by a loss of self, a state often experienced by younger monks and yogis and those who have forsaken the material world and its physical pleasures.
Once, when Shams saw Ohad al-Din staring into a basin, he asked him what he was doing, and the shaykh responded: “I'm watching the moon's reflection in the water.” Shams retorted, “If you don't have a stiff neck, why don't you look directly at the moon instead? You need to find a physician to cure you!” (Movahed 1997, 96).
It is obvious that Shams did not consider Ohad al-Din to be among the “perfect men” he was seeking, and he named the first stage of spiritual growth the “Ohad-aneh” stage, alluding to and belittling Ohad al-Din's immature young spirituality. The four stages of “spiritual drunkenness,” according to Shams, are:
The first stage of “Air” is the domain of “Imagination,” where the potential to make mistakes is enormous. Next is the stage of “Knowledge,” which offers a certain degree of spiritual certainty followed by another state of “Imagination,” which does not offer the potential for mistakes, and finally comes the state of “Opening of Eyes.”
When Shams speaks of “Imagination,” he's referring to an inner strength and innate power that guides one's life that is not yet fully mature, much like that of a child, prone to stumbling and injury. In the “Knowledge” stage, the child still requires a caring nanny to look after him and help him stand on his own feet, teaching him to distinguish between right and wrong, until he reaches maturity or the stage of “Opening of Eyes,” alluding to the development of full insight and the attainment of perfection (Movahed 1997, 96).
The two foremost concepts that Shams advises adhering to in the mystic path are “spiritual drunkenness” and “following the prophet.” Submitting to and being a disciple of the Prophet as well as one's pīr is one of the pillars of Islam as well as Sufism. Such was Shams's devotion to the Prophet that he admitted: “I don't bow to the Koran because it is God's words but because the Prophet Mohammad has uttered them!” (Movahed 1997, 117).
Shams was acutely aware of the possibility of falling into false traps when initially becoming acquainted with Sufism, of confusing such traps with the glory of the real path, symbolized by the Prophet. He warned of the dangers of imitation, always lurking in the background, that can turn one's desire for mysticism into a cult of personality, mistaking the initial state of “drunkenness” for the ultimate spiritual state:
Every instance of dishonesty and corruption in the world has resulted from someone imitating someone else, either copying them or refuting them. Imitation causes a person to blow hot and cold, as he encounters something different every day. If on one occasion he were to come across the truth and wish to change his mind about a matter he had equivocated about earlier, he must hide it, for people will know that he has been imitating others until then. He won't reveal anything, because he risks losing people's trust as well as all self-confidence in himself. (Movahed 2009, 73)
Spiritual drunkenness is a state of selflessness in which a spiritual warrior naturally adopts fatalism. Each of the four stages of Shams's spirituality embodies some degree of drunkenness accompanied by fatalism; yet he considers fatalism a weak episode in one's journey, one that must be surmounted to attain the perfect consciousness that lies beyond it. Poets speak of the man slaying wine, while Shams speaks of wine slaying the man: “The more he drinks, the more conscious he becomes; he drinks to the limit and still becomes more conscious, provoking the entire world and the universe into complete and utter consciousness!” (Movahed 1997, 119). He insists that people drink wine to become drunk, but he belongs to the realm of “Love” and is drunk all the time!
For Shams, the perfect model of this consciousness was the Prophet Mohammad, and he believed that following the Prophet would lead one to a state of perfection or consciousness beyond drunkenness. This devotion had to be consummate for one to attain the object of one's desire, where the light that shone in the Prophet's eyes could finally be discerned. In this state there is no longer “I” or “me,” for one has dissolved into the Truth. Hope was the only consolation, and the heart that contained hope was indeed the nest of “Union.”
Shams's way differed from that of other Sufis, who easily became lost in their first esoteric experiences, either feigning selflessness or actually believing themselves to have touched it, screaming and shouting uncontrollably in their delusion. Shams considered the Prophet's coming into the faith at the age of forty a sign of his maturity, as opposed to Jesus of Nazareth's alleged wisdom and self-knowledge at a very young age. Shams followed the Prophet, and the Prophet did not perform forty-day retreats or refrain from leading a normal life. Likewise, Shams insisted that one should not avoid living among normal people but that one should conduct one's life such that one doesn't become one with the crowd but only one among them.
An ascetic who lives in a cave is a mountain man and no longer a human, for if he were, he'd be living among men who are intelligent and worthy of God's wisdom. What business do men have living in a cave? If man were made of mud then he would be attracted to rocks, but what can a man want with rocks? Do not go into khalvat or seclusion and solitude; remain an individual in the midst of a crowd, but be alone and remember that the Prophet says: “In Islam there is no monasticism.” (Movahed 2009, 214)
Although Shams proposed that one should not give up on living among people, as far as we know, he successfully hid his true self all his life, except when he was in Konya with Rumi. Although self-sufficient, in emotional terms he remained angry, unsatisfied, inward looking, and unsettled, even when he was in Rumi's company (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 162).
Shams was an impatient man who did not seek an audience; he did not look for “customers” and had no need to trick the public. His method was the opposite of the norm; he believed that the prey should seek the hunter rather than the other way around. He chose his own public and did not waste his time simplifying his speech so that it would be comprehensible to an inferior level of intelligence; his words were fit only for shaykhs and high-level Sufi ears (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 124).
He was a realistic man, though, and did not adhere to inflexible principles of right and wrong. For him, committing a sin and performing a beneficial act were relative behaviors in life and had to be viewed in their different contexts: “Each person commits a transgression only worthy of himself; for one person it's to be a rogue and commit debauchery, while for another it's to be absent before God!” (Movahed 2009, 107).
Contrary to the general concept that the world contains aspects that are either strictly good or strictly evil, Shams believed that it depended on man's own criteria, as we are ultimately responsible for determining our own values and choosing what is evil and detrimental, or beautiful and valuable. Man, therefore, is responsible not only for setting standards and values in the world but also for destroying them; thus, what could be harâm or unacceptable in one instance could be completely halâl or acceptable in another (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 149).
The mid-13th century was a time of migration and displacement, as Mongol invasions were devastating the entire region that we know today as the Middle East. Konya, the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate in the region then known as RÛm in central Anatolia, was a multiethnic, multireligious center where boundaries were often crossed. The inhabitants of Konya included Persians, Turks, Greeks, Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, and Jews, among others, from various social classes, some highly educated and some totally illiterate (Pifer 2014, 29, 32).
It was during this time that regional rulers in RÛm encouraged charismatic Sufi masters to emigrate there and cultivate their own religious and cultural heritage, but also to help integrate the heterogeneous influx of immigrants into local society in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion. The invitation of Rumi's father, Baha'eddin Valad or Sultan ol-Ulama (“Master of All Scholars”), from Khorâsân by the Seljuk leaders in the midst of this regional upheaval and the establishment of a school for him in Konya to preach and organize a following are examples of this policy (Pifer 2014, 32, 33).
In fact, Rumi's father had had a similar offer from the grandees of Damascus, but he had refused it because he deemed the atmosphere of that city to be morally and socially corrupt, and he found it impossible to tolerate the pervasive repression by the city's rulers. He had reluctantly sought to leave his hometown of Balkh, in today's Afghanistan, with his family and followers because of the cruelty of Khârazm Shah, and he wasn't about to succumb to some other merciless and vindictive ruler.
Shams's era was indeed a time of war, famine, earthquakes, cholera, and destructive power mongering between the nations of the region. At a time when money ruled, and people were poor and hungry, deluded by their rulers and terrorized by invading Mongols, it was not a surprise that they had lost their faith in their protectors and their justice system and found themselves attracted to Sufis and their promise of spirituality (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 231–36). In Sufism, they hoped to reach the golden promise of eternal love, which they trusted would clear their hearts of anger, prejudice, and hate, creating peace and security and thus illuminating the path of life here and hereafter.
When Shams first arrived in Konya in October 1244, he had been searching for a companion to share his insight and wisdom since leaving his native Tabriz forty years earlier. We notice that in the Maghâlât, he says that he had begged God to let him find and mix with wise men with whom he could engage intellectually. For Shams, Sufism was a religion of love, and he needed intelligent conversations with men who knew what spiritual love entailed: “I needed someone of my own caliber so I could make a Mecca of him and turn to him, for I had become weary of myself” (Movahed 2009, 98).
He had a dream in which he was told that he would meet with a valī, or representative of God on earth, in RÛm, but that he would have to wait, as it was still not the right time. At least fifteen or sixteen years before their final union in Konya, Shams had in fact met Rumi, probably in Damascus, and had even spoken to him: “My heart was settled on you from the very beginning, but I could tell from our conversation that you were not yet ready to hear my secrets. You were not in the right state of mind then, but now is the hour!” (Movahed 2009, 170).
He confessed to Rumi when they reunited: “The purpose of creation is for two friends to meet and sit before each other, to encounter God away from all temptations. The purpose of creation is not bread or the baker, meat or the butcher; it is all about this instance when I am in the company of Mowlânâ!” (Movahed 2009, 174). For Shams, “Love” was the reflection of God's beauty. He believed that everything that God had created stemmed from the essence of his own unrivalled beauty, and one could only begin to fathom spiritual “Love” when one caught a glimpse of that original and eternal beauty.
At the time of Shams, the streets of Konya must have been adorned with an array of various ethnic backgrounds, each garbed in their own specific style of colorful clothing and headdress. The unpaved back alleys were so narrow that two people could hardly pass without brushing against each other. The merchants' quarters, where people did their daily shopping, were also the hub of much social activity. As was his custom, when Shams arrived in Konya, he took up residence in a caravanserai in the rice merchants' quarters, according to one source (Fereydoun Sepahsâlâr), or in the sugar merchants' quarters, according to another (Ahmed Aflâki).
As there is a gap of 120 years between these two scholars, we can probably assume that the rice quarters had changed to sugar quarters during the interim. Today, nothing remains of this district, but then it was an area of small stalls and booths, where learned men and intellectuals would meet and converse.
About a month after he arrived in Konya, Shams was sitting in one of these booths when Rumi arrived, allegedly on horseback, and with his entourage took a seat across from Shams. In the past, this spot was referred to as the Marj al-Bahrayn, or the meeting place of two seas, adopted from a Koranic verse in the sura of al-Rahmân. Marj means to mix using outside effort or to remove boundaries so that two things can naturally mix together. In the Koran, this verse refers to the mixing of two seas, one salty and the other sweet, left to themselves so they can mingle yet retain their own integrity and specific characteristics, including their own color and taste (Movahed 1997, 108).
Shams says in the Maghâlât, which is the most reliable source for this meeting, that he posed a question to Rumi referring to Bâyazid Bastâmi, the Iranian Sufi master. He asked Rumi: “Why did Bâyazid say, ‘Glory to me, how great is my majesty’ and not ‘We do not know Thee as it is befitting,’ like the Prophet used to say when he prayed to God?”
Bâyazid believed that he had found God and considered himself complete, and he looked no further to improve his spiritual state. The Prophet, however, after he had already achieved spiritual perfection, continued until his last hour to look further, seeking to encounter God's grandeur with greater and greater intensity, and still he said that he did not perceive God as befitted him.
Rumi, who was a genuine perfectionist, immediately understood what Shams was referring to and where this question was leading. Shams says that at that point, Rumi became “drunk” on the meaning of those words, and their unique friendship began. They shunned the company of everyone else and sat in khalvat, or in private, for three months initially, avoiding all interruption by Rumi's students and followers (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 20).
Until the Maghâlât of Shams was discovered and collected as a whole in 1970—first by Ahmad Khowshnevis, followed by Nasseredin Sâheb-Zamâni in The Third Script in 1972, and finally by Mohammad Ali Movahed in the final edition of the Maghâlât in 1977 (Lewis 2000, 136)—it was literally impossible to make any valid assumptions about the life and character of Shams. Some thought that he hadn't even existed, that he was only a figment of Rumi's imagination.
The original copy of the Maghâlât was in Rumi's possession; he had made notes in the margins, and subsequently the scribe who copied this collection for study by morīds faithfully copied Rumi's notes, marking them with red ink. Rumi and his followers referred to Shams's Maghâlât as “Shams's Secrets,” and they must have repeatedly referred to them in the years after his disappearance (Movahed 2008, 360).
The Maghâlât is a collection of sayings by Shams while he was in Konya, including his thoughts, bits of advice, anecdotes, statements about himself and his state of mind, feelings about his relationship with Rumi, his opinions of other Sufis and scholars, and his feelings and understanding about people in general and a few people in particular. They show us that Shams spent time not only in Rumi's company but also with other Sufi masters in Konya, and we can determine from the text that Rumi was not always present during these talks.
As mentioned earlier, the Maghâlât was not written by Shams but compiled from notes taken by a follower who was present in the closed circle of these intimate conversations. These notes were never edited for publication, and they remained in the form of haphazard musings until the 20th century. Some parts, however, do read smoothly, and it's believed that they must have been dictated by Shams himself. Nevertheless, the Maghâlât comes across mainly as a body of disconnected talks, presented in plain colloquial language, often hindered by faulty grammar in which the subjects are sometimes obscure and the context elusive.
The fact that Shams frequently spoke in parables alluding to issues, and that he tended to hop from one subject to another without concluding any of them, makes comprehension difficult. It is not known for sure whether the apparent disparity of the text is due to the scribe's slow hand or to Shams's haphazard presentation; we are not even sure if the conversations were held in sequence as they appear in the Maghâlât or occurred arbitrarily or whether they took place over minutes, hours, or days.
Dr. Movahed's abridged version of the Maghâlât, called Khomi az Sharâb-e Rabani (A Cup of Divine Wine), in which he clarifies many questions simply by using punctuation (which was unknown in the old Persian writing tradition), renders the work much easier to understand and thus to admire, despite the structural difficulties of the text.
Shams uses many poems to demonstrate his points, but none of them are his own, and most are not exceptional representatives of the best Persian verse. When he chose to speak, his words were often cloaked in humor that concealed his meaning; he confessed to this tactic, stating that his audience was incapable of digesting his unadulterated speech. Other times, he was intentionally sarcastic to stress a certain point. His humor was aimed not at his audience as individuals but at the general lack of substance, the absence of principles, and the destructiveness of prejudice among men; his targets were faulty ideals and causes, not individual people.
Shams was an inward-looking man, full of secrets and comfortable with his inner life, having chosen to protect himself from the masses by “concealing himself” and “testing people,” the two principles by which he operated his life (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 134–35). His demeanor, by which he considered himself apart from and superior to people in general, together with his unrelenting self-confidence, short temper, and pride, did not warm him to many and distanced him from people's hearts. The tumultuous times he lived in undoubtedly contributed to his habit of concealing his true self, and he confesses: “Sometimes there's no other way but to keep silent and to surrender!” (Movahed 2009, 59).
Movahed believes that, from Shams's tone of voice, he must have been familiar with Rumi's father (Baha'eddin Valad) and his companions, especially Seyyed Borhânnedin Mohaghegh, who looked after Rumi throughout his initial Sufi training and after the death of his father. Shams must have met them while they were in Damascus and attended their gatherings but had not made himself known to them. Such stealth would have been easy for Shams, as he did not adopt the Sufi garb or stay in khânegâhs or madrasas, and he did menial jobs to earn his keep.
We understand from the Maghâlât that when Shams arrived in Konya at the age of sixty, he was a gaunt man with a thin beard who appeared weak but in fact was extremely quick and nimble, with great stamina and warm, penetrating speech; a man who was completely self-confident and in control of himself. He had total belief in his own ideas and principles and was absolutely intolerant of superficial customs and formalities. He came across as ambitious and lofty but extremely private, reserved, and inward looking, yet he was highly excitable, cutting, and quarrelsome. He could remain silent for hours on end, listening to others, but once he began to speak, he did not tolerate any interference or criticism. He respected the common sciences but found them useless in the search for truth.
Shams wanted nothing to do with the Sufi customs of cutting the hair, engaging in initiations, teaching the zekr (the ninety-nine names of God), or sending novices on forty-day retreats; but he strongly believed in the importance of having a pīr as a guide on the path of spiritual growth. He was tolerant and patient with strangers but expected nothing less than total submission from friends. His manner of teaching, on which he firmly insisted, was to ask for more than anyone could possibly offer; he thus harbored unrealistically high expectations of his friends and sometimes hurt their feelings.
He said: “I have nothing to do with the masses, it's not for them that I've come. I have come for the sake of those who guide people to God. I've come to put my finger on their jugular vein!” (Movahed 2009, 32).
And elsewhere he reiterates:
Until they learn to trust me unconditionally and respect me in public, I shall be harsh with friends. They ask why am I kind to strangers and unkind to them? I simply ask them, how can they not see my undying kindness toward them? I also tell them that if the great saints in all their glory were alive and could see us together, their highest wish would be to sit with us for a moment! I aim my harshness at those I love most, but it's in order for them to give up their antagonism and distrust so that I can make them privy to my secrets, for these traits should not exist in God's creations. (Movahed 2009, 58)
Despite his insistence on keeping his privacy, when Shams took residence in Konya, he nevertheless gained a reputation as a high Sufi, and many people, including the rich, wanted to meet him and learn from him. Being lâobâlī, Shams set a very expensive fee for meetings with them. Without caring what his audience thought of the fees, he duly collected them and, unbeknown to his audience, redistributed them among the needy. Shams insisted on considering everyone, including prostitutes, equal in human terms, and in fact he would visit brothels, where he would donate the money he had received from the rich.
Let's go to the whorehouse to pay a visit to those poor souls, hasn't God created them too? Never mind if they are sinful or not, let's go and see them anyway; let's go to the church as well and see the people there too. Not many can tolerate my work, what I do is not for hypocrites! (Movahed 2009, 143)
One of Shams's most serious dislikes, however, was not the wealthy but those of all classes who sought and abused young boys, which was a known and popular custom among many. As related above, Shaykh Ohad al-Din was one such Sufi whose admiration for handsome youth repulsed Shams, who quickly and cleverly disengaged himself from the shaykh's company.
He also strictly opposed the use of hashish, which was popular among many darvishes, considering it to be the seduction of the devil. When Rumi presented Shams with his son, Sultan Valad, and Shams agreed to be his shaykh, the two things that Shams absolutely prohibited were smoking hashish and indulging in homosexual activity (Saheb-Zamani 1990, 92).
After Rumi and Shams retreated from public life, Shams began to control Rumi's followers' visits. As he did with the rich who wished to meet with him, Shams began to ask Rumi's followers to pay dearly if they wanted to see their master, which offended them greatly. Being faced for the first time with having to pay to see their shaykh, they openly accused Shams of greediness and charlatanry: “Mowlana is free from the world but Shams is not. Mowlana tells us that because we don't like Shams, we accuse him of pettiness, for if we did like him we wouldn't consider it greedy and unlawful of him to ask us to give up our money!” (Movahed 2009, 41).
Shams believed that to part with one's money was the first step on the path of spirituality, and that was the reason why he would press Rumi's followers to pay up. These followers didn't understand Shams's motive, and his requests for payment just added to their dislike of the man who had already stolen their revered master. To them, Shams would say:
You have many obstacles in your way! Money for most is their Mecca, but the great masters have done away with its claws, and it no longer holds a grip on them. On the other hand, for those who are in love with the world, money is more precious than their sweet life, as if they were not even alive—because if they were, how could money be dearer? (Movahed 2009, 54)
He must have suffered silently as Rumi's students continued their verbal abuse, but he would not give up his way of doing things, as he thought that a friend was like a rose, made of both petals and thorns.
Many great men lost their affection for me because they thought I was after their money. I wasn't, I was after getting those idiots to part with their money! They were great shaykhs and dignitaries, and what could I possibly want with shaykhs and so-called great men? I want you the way you are! I want need, I want hunger, and I want thirst! Clear water seeks the thirsty because it is generous and kind. (Movahed 2009, 133)
Although Shams had paramount respect for Rumi, he knew that to convince this highly educated mufti to listen to him, he had to empty him of his learned knowledge to prepare him for further Sufi “burning” or “cooking,” a task that required time. There are many sensationalized stories about Rumi and Shams and what may have occurred between these two great men, none of which we can be certain. Yet it may be useful to mention a couple of these dramatized stories that allude to the notion that Shams could perform magical acts.
On one occasion, Shams allegedly walks into Rumi's home and finds him surrounded by his favorite valuable books. Shams asks Rumi: “What are these?” Rumi brushes him aside: “You don't understand about these things.” Before Rumi can continue, Shams sets the books on fire; Rumi screams: “What is this?” To which Shams responds: “This, you don't understand!” Subsequently, Shams returns the books to Rumi untarnished.
In another version of the story, Shams walks into Rumi's house and sees Rumi sitting by the pool with his precious books laid out before him. Shams asks: “What are these?” Rumi replies: “These are just noise and clamor to you, what business could you possibly have with them?” Shams picks up the books and throws them into the pool. “Oh darvish, what have you done? Some of these were my beloved father's books, and they can never be replaced!” exclaims Rumi. Shams picks up the books one by one and hands them back to Rumi, unscathed. Rumi asks him in amazement: “What is the secret of this?” To which Shams sniggers: “This is genius! What would you know of this?” (Forouzanfar 2006, 97–98).
Many Sufi masters insisted that new pupils throw away their books and put aside everything they had learned until then before entering the Sufi path. Likewise, Shams insisted on a similar method of teaching, whereby he demanded that Rumi give up not only his valuable religious and philosophical manuscripts but even his father's prized book, which was a source of pride and glory for him. Shams insisted on total concentration on the master teacher, complete surrender to his will, and full avoidance of “others.” He says:
The sign of the one who has found his way to me is that others' conversations will seem cold and bitter to him; not that they become uninteresting and he will still continue to talk with them, but that he will never be able to speak with them again! (Movahed 2009, 29–30)
It was indeed Shams's conversation that prompted Rumi to fall in love with him spiritually. Shams asked Rumi to speak with him so that he, in turn, could warm up and begin to speak himself. In fact, from the moment they met and subsequently went into seclusion together, we cannot really be certain of what went on between the two great men other than that from that hour on, Rumi was changed forever.
Shams told Rumi that if he desired Shams to open his heart to him, he had to offer Shams his solitude. Shams believed that not everyone could fall in love but only the heart that had been set on fire was able to rest alone in the silence of love. Shams taught Rumi how to perform the samâ for the first time and how to use it as a tool for connecting with God, as he believed that whatever one strived for in one's heart would increase manifold during samâ:
While men turn in samâ, God manifests and reveals Himself more clearly to them. They may succeed in going beyond the world they know, but God elevates them beyond other worlds yet unknown and connects them directly with the divine. (Movahed 2009, 29)
Shams criticized Rumi, though, from time to time with regard to what he had learned in books, and he belittled Rumi's relationship with his followers, some of whom were uneducated old criminals and homeless beggars. At the same time, Shams was a great believer in profound friendships and warned people against turning their backs on old and deep friends or becoming too complacent and losing them.
Shams had a jovial and lively approach to life in general, believing in the greatness of man, and he assumed the responsibility of bringing happiness and joy to people around him. He had set himself up as a social messenger, with the aim of completing the incomplete, confirming the perfect ones, supporting the poor, exposing the deceitful, and opposing the oppressors (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 82).
Shams did not like to write down his thoughts, as he didn't believe it was possible to capture their essence in written form. Yet he believed that his words would reach those they were meant for once he chose to reveal their meaning, “even after a thousand years!” He insisted that only those who had a “need” in their hearts would understand his meaning, much like Rumi, whose real “need” was for Shams, just as Shams's unflinching “need” was for Rumi:
Your true self is the one who shows his need! The one who pretended to be needless and a stranger is your enemy; that's why I was torturing him, because he was not the real you. How could I ever hurt you, when I think that if I try to lay a kiss on your feet I am constantly worried that my eyelashes might scratch and blemish your skin? (Movahed 2009, 41)
Shams was on a mission to save Rumi from the “rough companions” who surrounded him. As stated earlier, Shams had met Rumi fifteen or sixteen years before, which he mentions in the Maghâlât at least four times, but he had not approached him until he decided it was time. Rumi had to be mentally and spiritually prepared for the appearance of Shams, who had to expose himself to Rumi's senior devotees—who had been among Rumi and his family's morīds and had followed Rumi all the way from Khorasan. These men were now rather seasoned Sufis in their own right and would not look kindly upon a stranger who not only looked like riffraff but was totally unknown to them.
Shams had to be sure that if he were to reveal his wisdom to Rumi and face the wrath of the latter's morīds, at least Rumi was spiritually mature enough to fully appreciate him. Rumi was a learned religious leader who walked in his great father's shadow, but he had earned hundreds if not thousands of followers in Konya on his own merit. He was not an empty pot; he was full of knowledge and enjoyed a high social standing. Shams had to empty him of all this knowledge, which he considered only a hindrance, so that he could be prepared for what Shams was about to divulge to him.
Rumi had to give up his “pharaoh-like” pride and learn to hang his head low, because none of his acquired knowledge could help him on the true path to God. Shams thought that if God were hidden behind seven veils of light, then the key to them could only be “Love.” Rumi had to be slapped, so that his air of pompousness would be dispelled for good. All that he had already mastered were only so many veils obscuring his vision; now he had to shun everything he had learned before and understand that his path was more than simply being a pīr or a morīd. Shams believed that human beings were ultimately responsible for themselves, that they must find the “treasure” within and not outside in the cruel world, and he needed Rumi to come to believe this as well.
Shams taught Rumi how to play and enjoy music and how to express his spiritual insights in verse while doing the samâ, which Shams considered as necessary as the required five daily prayers (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 75). For the first time, Rumi learned that beyond the socially accepted forms of piety such as praying and fasting, going on pilgrimages, practicing Islamic jurisprudence, and controlling one's desires and passions, there was another form of spirituality that embodied the love and joy experienced in becoming acquainted with God.
In the recorded history of Iranian Sufism, Shams was the first to propose that music, dance, poetry, and mysticism should mingle and affect each other equally, thus perfecting one another. To this day, these activities maintain their influence and importance in the school of Rumi, called the Mowlaviyeh School in Iran, and among the Mevlevis in Turkey. According to one source, Rumi continued the samâ ceremonies until his last days and held weekly sessions even for women in Konya (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 74).
Shams had immediately declared that he had not come to Konya to become Rumi's shaykh, as the person imagining himself capable of taking that position had not yet been born; and he himself could never become anyone's morīd. Thus we can only call them companions, each as important as the other for their spiritual advancement. Shams admitted that he was searching for that specific pain that he was unwilling to exchange for a hundred cures; and he wanted to know if Rumi could be that delectable pain.
Although brief, the time that Rumi spent with Shams was the most exhilarating period of Rumi's life. For them, the only purpose for being together and learning from each other was to come closer to God, closer to the absolute Truth. Rumi idolized his friend, for he believed that he had seen the face of God in Shams, and in turn Shams confessed that he had also seen the face of God in Rumi. As Rumi versified:
Shams, Light of God, from Tabriz
in the clear mirror of your being
if I see anything but God
I must be an infidel
From looking at some of the names that Rumi calls Shams in his Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, we can grasp how highly he revered his beloved companion. Here it might be worth mentioning a few of those names to demonstrate the depth of Rumi's respect and love: Sun of Ultimate Truth, Pride of all Prophets, Divine Manifestation, King of Truth and Meaning, Sultan of the Soul of Sultans, Origin of All Souls, Soul of the Soul of All Souls, Sun of Spirit, Sun of Truth and Faith, Spring of Soul, King of Soul, King of All Religions, King of Kings, King of the King of Spirit, Origin of Faith, Chosen of the Chosen of God's Secret, Symbol of Spirit, Sun of the Times, Infinite Love, Placeless Prophet, Source of the Original Spirit, Pure Light, Gem of Joy, Manifestation of Vision, Absolute Spirit, Flowing Light, Fire of Love of Placelessness, Chinese Painter, Sum of All Being, Master of the Unseen, Sword of Truth, Vision of Truth, Protector of the World of Revelation, Sea of Mercy, Sun of Grace, Lord of the Lord of Mysteries, The Great One, Pure Light . . . and many more.
Their closeness and the fact that Shams was exceptionally strict with Rumi's followers, most of whom he regarded as unworthy of Rumi's company, soon turned most of those followers against Shams. They disliked him intensely and would slander and belittle Shams in public, as he had stolen and estranged their beloved teacher from them. About them, Shams says:
I prefer the person who curses me to the one who tells my praise, for praising should be expressed in such a manner that there's no denial afterward, which would create conflict. The one who provokes disharmony is indeed worse than the infidel. (Modaress-Sâdeghi 1994, 262)
After about a year and a half, in March 1246, Shams left Konya for Syria, as he no longer could bear the terrible treatment at the hands of Rumi's students. He might have also decided to take a trip, as he mentions in the Maghâlât, for Rumi's benefit, as he didn't feel that he could order Rumi to go away. Nevertheless, a distraught Rumi withdrew from those students, whom he blamed for Shams's mistreatment, and only kept company with morīds who had not plotted against his beloved companion.
Meanwhile, Shams spent at least seven months in Syria, where he must have supported himself by doing odd jobs. He wrote at least one letter to Rumi during his absence, which would have confirmed for Rumi that his companion was in fact in Syria. Rumi in turn wrote him many letters imploring him to come back, and Rumi's better-off and guilt-ridden morīds donated much gold and silver as travel expenses to convince Shams to return to Konya.
In the end, Rumi sent his eldest son Sultan Valad, who admired Shams and considered him his shaykh, to bring Shams back in October or November 1246 (Lewis 2000, 179). Sultan Valad was successful in his mission, but he refused to ride a horse while in Shams's company out of respect for his pīr and chose to walk alongside him during the entire journey from Damascus back to Konya, which took about a month. Being the relentless character that he was, Shams refused to admit that being separated from Rumi had affected him one bit:
In reality, no one can accompany me, for I am lâobâlī! Being separated from Mowlânâ does not bother me, nor does union with him bring me much pleasure, for my joy comes from within me, as does my pain! It's not easy to live with someone like me. (Movahed 2009, 231)
Shams's Sufism is one of action and not just words. One could experiment and fail, but one had to try and try again until gradually one's heart was opened to love, thus freeing one to soar to one's aspired perfection. Shams told Sultan Valad, on seeing him in Damascus:
Just talking knowledgeably about an issue does not make it possible. To learn about anything, one has to try hard and exert much effort. For example, even if you and your father had chattered for a hundred years hoping that I would quit my sojourn in Aleppo and Damascus, do you suppose I would have just returned? No, not until you came carrying 400 dinars [for traveling expenses], braving and tolerating the hardships and dangers of the road and risking your livelihood, would I consider coming back. (Movahed 2009, 53)
During the long journey back, Shams and Sultan Valad conversed uninterruptedly, and Shams shared many valuable spiritual insights with his young devotee. There were many days of celebration following Shams's return to Konya, and Rumi, convinced that his disciples would now begin to appreciate Shams for the first time, brought Shams into his own household: “This time you shall take advantage of Shams ed-Din's words with greater appreciation, because the sail of the ship of man's being is belief. Where there's a sail the wind carries you to grand places, but if there's no sail words replace the wind.” (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 47)
As Rumi and Shams took up their private conversations again, the disciples realized that once more Rumi had chosen Shams over them, and soon their mistreatment of Shams started anew. Surely Rumi was painfully aware of their behavior, at least to some extent, and, perhaps hoping to hook Shams to Konya for good, he suggested marriage to Kimia. The young girl was the daughter of one of his followers who had suffered an untimely death and whose wife and children Rumi had brought into his own household to look after. Encouraged by Rumi, Shams married Kimia in November or December 1247 (Lewis 2000, 184), and Rumi allocated a quarter in his household to them.
Shams indeed grew deeply fond of Kimia, and they spent a blissful six months together during which she learnt much from his wisdom. It is believed, however, that Kimia was also dear to Rumi's middle son, Allaedin. Allaedin, unlike Sultan Valad, was not too keen on Shams to begin with, and when Shams married Kimia, according to some sources, his jealousy and antagonism escalated. He frequently came and went in Rumi's household and thus had an opportunity to see Kimia often; this angered Shams, who told him off one day, implying that he was not welcome.
Unwilling to accept that he was being turned away from his own father's home by the uncouth Shams, Allaedin and his friends were reinvigorated in their animosity, and their verbal lashings of the “old man” were taken to unprecedented heights. The jealousy and slander of Shams even extended to insinuations that Shams had indulged in forbidden acts:
“Is drinking wine forbidden?”
“Depends on who's drinking! It's like pouring a container of wine into the sea, where it would not change the sea at all, it would not pollute the water, and drinking and doing ablutions with it would be fine. However, if you pour just a few drops of wine into a small pool, undoubtedly it will infest all of the water. It is similar to when you drop something into a salty sea; that object becomes completely salt ridden. Thus the straight answer to your question, whether it's all right for Mowlânâ Shams ed-Din to drink wine, is that it's completely permissible, as his nature is like that of the sea. But, for you, even barley bread is not all right!” replied Rumi. (Sâheb-Zamâni 1990, 38)
Shams was firm in his reasons for being in Konya, and, despite the unforgiving behavior of Rumi's followers, he continued with his usual manner of dealing with those who literally hated him, reminding them: “When you hurt me, you are hurting Mowlânâ in turn” (Movahed 2009, 175).
Not long after they were married, one day Kimia accompanied the other ladies of the household on an outing to one of Konya's famous gardens without asking for Shams's permission. Upon her return, Shams rebuked her sharply. Shams, of course, was a traditional Muslim male with traditional views about women. In one instance, he admits:
If Fatimah, the Prophet's daughter, or Ayshe, his wife, were to become shaykhs, I would lose faith in Mohammad, but they didn't! Even if God were to open a door for a woman, she should remain silent and hidden. A woman's place is in the corner of a room behind the spindle, where she should occupy herself with looking after the one who is her keeper. (Modaress-Sâdeghi 1994, 215)
Sadly, it happened that Kimia fell ill the very evening after returning from the outing, never to recover again. In his Maghâlât, Shams mentions that in Kimia, he had seen the face of God, and that's why he loved and appreciated her so dearly. He also mentions that he was not averse to family life and would have liked to have had a son by Kimia. His heart must have been shattered by her untimely death. The behavior of Rumi's morīds, however, did not abate even after the loss of Kimia, and Rumi's hopes that they would at last understand and begin to appreciate Shams were soon dissipated.
Shortly following Kimia's death, Shams disappeared for a second and final time from Konya and from Rumi's life, but we cannot be certain of the exact date or the manner of his disappearance. Rumi specialists have argued at length about various possible scenarios of Shams's disappearance, most of which speculate that he may have been murdered, but there is no evidence that any of these lurid tales could be true. In fact, there is no mention of murder in any of Rumi's subsequent poems or those of his son Sultan Valad. In fact, Rumi traveled to Syria at least twice in search of Shams in the years that followed his vanishing, which clearly indicates that he did not accept that Shams was dead.
A number of stories have been told about Shams's disappearance, some of which may hold a kernel of truth, while others, like most stories told about Shams and Rumi, are just embellished tales. One of the most popular accounts is that Shams was murdered by Allâedin and his friends. It has also been argued that Allâedin's dislike of Shams was triggered not out of jealousy over Kimia but because of Shams's preference for Sultan Valad, his older brother. Allâedin had high hopes of inheriting his father's mantle, but Shams, as long as he was still in the picture, was making it impossible for him to achieve this.
In this story, we are told that one evening, as Shams and Rumi are sitting together, there's a knock on the door, and Shams is called outside. Before he steps out of the room, he turns to Rumi and says that he must leave, because his tormentors are calling him to his death! As he is then stabbed by Allâedin and his friends, he lets out a heart-wrenching cry that frightens the murderous party unconscious. When they come to, they see no sign of Shams other than a few drops of blood!
In a different story, we are told that seven bloodthirsty darvishes from a different sect who had been looking for Shams for years, blaming him for the demise of their shaykh, finally find him in Konya and send him a message asking him to meet them outside town in an abandoned caravansary. Shams willingly goes to meet with them, knowing that he will be murdered. Each darvish strikes Shams once, and only with the last blow is Shams brought to his knees. It is highly unlikely that these stories hold any truth, as the murderous act would have been almost impossible to hide in a relatively small town as Konya, especially since it involved Rumi's beloved Shams.
A different version of these stories suggests that, after murdering Shams, his assailants throw his corpse down a well; afterward, the body is retrieved by Sultan Valad and a few morīds and unceremoniously buried, the facts hidden from Rumi. Why would Sultan Valad do such a thing—in the dark of the night, digging an unmarked grave, then keeping it from his father—especially seeing his father's unrelenting sorrow at the loss of his companion? The story is hardly credible. In addition, how could he then allow his father to bear the suffering of two long and fruitless trips to Syria in search of Shams, knowing that the man was already dead and buried?
These scenarios, dreamed up by various writers many years after the actual disappearance of Shams, must have been intended to dramatize the already incredible story of two men who had found spiritual love but who could not convince others of the simplicity of their revelation.
Shams's disappearance is more likely to have resulted from his realization that he had nothing more to teach Rumi; true to form, he chose to leave quietly without telling his friend, knowing that Rumi would try to convince him to stay. Some commentators have simply concluded that Shams was fed up with the verbal and occasional physical abuse he received, especially after Kimia's death, and that he just picked up and left!
Certainly, some combination of these two scenarios makes more sense than the murder theories. No evidence of Shams's remains has ever been found. It has never been proven that he was buried in Maghâm-e Shams in Konya, where a modern-day mosque has been erected around a grave thought to be his, or in Khuy in Azarbaijân Province, believed due to the finding of a minaret dated to the same era. No murder weapon was ever found. Therefore, we might like to simply accept that “Flying Shams” took his last flight out of popular sight, never to be seen again. We cannot be totally sure but can only assume that the date of his disappearance was in late 1247 or very early 1248.
The result of the mixing of these two great seas of spiritual wisdom is Rumi's extensive books of mystical poetry—the six volumes of the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi; the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi; his discourses, or Fihe ma Fih; and the Maktubât, or letters—and from Shams, a single volume, the Maghâlât. In the roughly two and a half years that Shams and Rumi spent together, many of the subjects they covered as found in the Maghâlât later appear in Rumi's verse, especially the Masnavi and Fihe ma Fih.
To name a few instances, Shams tells the story of the samâzan, in which the caliph bans the samâ; Rumi uses the last line in a different story in Masnavi 3 (v. 4707). Shams relates the poem “I shall not place you in my heart . . . ,” and Rumi fashions the same verse as a quatrain (v. 1861). Shams briefly talks about the joy of encountering an elephant, while Rumi devotes an entire story to this theme called “The Elephant in the Dark” in Masnavi 3 (v. 1259), as he does Shams's story about the mouse and the camel in Masnavi 2 (v. 3436).
Shams briefly advises that it's best to stop trying to swim and instead to let the sea carry you; Rumi tells this parable in a much longer version in Masnavi 3 (v. 2841). Shams retells the story of why the Prophet refrained from saving the masses from ignorance; Rumi himself retells it in Masnavi 3 (v. 2913). Shams briefly tells the story of the three companions sharing halva, and Rumi retells it elaborately in Masnavi 6 (v. 2376).
Shams complains how some shaykhs are not genuine and alludes to a story about cats and mice; Rumi covers the same subject in Masnavi 6 (v. 3042). Shams tells the humorous story about an older man who goes to the barber asking him to cut only his white hairs; Rumi relates the story just as briefly in Masnavi 3 (v. 1376). Shams compares himself to duck eggs under a sitting hen; Rumi recasts the analogy as a story in Masnavi 2 (v. 3764).
In many cases, Rumi adheres to Shams's way of recounting a story as far as poetic rhyme and beat allow, but Rumi's storytelling is different from Shams's. Whereas Shams tells a story in a few sentences, Rumi embellishes it and extends it to numerous pages, sometimes to the extent that the original plot is buried in detail and forgotten.
For example, the story of Nassouh comprises more than 100 verses; the story of Ayaz and Mahmood is told in 130 verses; and the story of the poor man who finds a treasure is told in more than 500 verses (Movahed 2008, 157). Although Shams tells his stories briefly, he covers the subject matter precisely and efficiently, without much embellishment; when the story is lengthy, he never indulges in introducing extra subjects and thus diluting the original storyline.
One example, however, in which Shams tells a story at great length, but Rumi finishes it in just a few verses is the story of Leily and Majnoun in Masnavi 1 (v. 407). In his stories, Shams tries to demonstrate specific human behavior; for example, how different religious groups impose their own understanding of Islam on their followers and do not reveal the original message of the Prophet. He also stresses the fact that each group believes that paradise is his or her own realm, while others who are not members of the same clan do not deserve entry. No one in fact wants to see others who are not part of their own group enjoy the fruits of their labor; this tendency regretfully lingers in the 21st century as it did in the 13th.
Four important concepts that both Rumi and Shams dwell on extensively are:
We see Shams celebrating life when he says:
I am surprised at the hadith which claims that the world is the prison of the pious, while the grave is their safe house and paradise—their eternal resting place—while, for the infidel, the world is his paradise, the grave is a torture chamber, and hell is his throne! I personally have seen nothing but joy, greatness, and abundance in this life! (Movahed 2009, 154)
Shams loved and respected life, even as he did not fear death, considering the latter to be just another phase in man's spiritual journey, a passage to God: “Warriors of God seek death as much as poets seek the verse, the sick seek health, prisoners seek freedom, and children, holidays!” (Movahed 2009, 72). Shams trusted human values and believed in the infinite possibility of human growth and the search for perfection:
One must always try to achieve more, do more praying, seek more knowledge, and become a better Sufi, a perfect mystic! Ask more of everything for whatever exists in the world also exists in man. (Movahed 2009, 99)
Both Shams and Rumi were great champions of joy and happiness, and their Sufism stemmed from these concepts: they considered human beings to be the center of God's world. To understand Shams is to understand Rumi; without one another, they would not each be such provocative and important personalities who have beautifully infiltrated our consciousness, guiding us on our own spiritual paths. To read Shams's own words is to bring his consciousness even closer to ours, allowing us to finally appreciate the man who literally sacrificed himself for the sake of his love.