 |
| The tomb of Shams Tabrizi in Khoy, Azerbaijan |
The Land of Sunrise: Shams of Tabriz and Rumi
I tried hard not to write anything for Rumi’s 800th anniversary, because as a small human being, I was afraid of carrying the weight of such a vast world on my shoulders. Trying to do justice to both Shams of Tabriz and the jurist of Rum in a short article felt absurd to me; I just wanted to carry my deep love for them in my heart. But it didn’t work — I couldn’t escape the obsession of writing. This little piece was writing itself through me. The quotations in quotation marks are generally taken from Shams’s Maqalat and Rumi’s grand divan under the title “Shams.”
The well-known philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm says:
“Rumi was not just a poet and a mystic who founded a particular religious order. He had a deep insight into human nature... Rumi, one of the great lovers of life, spoke of the superconscious, the subconscious, the issue of freedom, peace of the soul, and human potential.”
According to Fromm, the thoughts of Rumi — who is considered a great humanist — can enrich modern cultural life. If that is the case, then we must return to an old issue: since Azerbaijani culture has forgotten Rumi and Shams of Tabriz — who set his soul dancing — it has lost many things. Nizami is a great poet, but if even one percent of the research dedicated to Nizami were devoted to Shams, our contemporary culture would be experiencing a different tone, a different flavor.
Of all poets, Nasimi could have captured the pulse of Rumi the most — but Soviet communism’s machinery of distortion reduced him completely to a corner of Hurufism. Stripped of his wild spirit, Nasimi was lowered to the level of comrade Baghirov’s foot soldiers.
□
Known by the name Rumi, Jalaladdin Qunawi (1207–1273) was a reed cut from the reed bed — a bamboo that cried out with longing and sorrow for the soul’s eternal homeland:
“Listen to this reed that burns and laments.”
According to Reynold Nicholson, “without a doubt, this reed symbolizes the perfected human being who weeps because he has been separated from the realm of the soul, and who awakens in others the longing to return to the eternal homeland.” The poet, overflowing with the divine spirit, cries out the fire within him through the reed. And it was Shams who gave voice to this reed. Rumi, addressing him, says:
“Since you came, we have left ourselves behind.
Come in, my soul — your arrival is beautiful.
When you heard the silent ache of my heart,
you entered my body like a soul.”
When the words blaze with fire, it's impossible to tell whether the flame bursts from Rumi’s heart or from Shams’. As Rumi himself says, the words swirling within him, the tuning of the yearning for spiritual truth — that was not done by him alone, but by Shams. But does it really matter? The origin of the flame is not important — what matters is this:
In every culture that hasn’t tasted this burning, there is a great emptiness.
And what is the cure for that emptiness?
It is the fire itself.
Rumi, as he ignites the dried-out reeds that no longer cry like the ney, says:
“The cure for numbness is fire.”
And so,
“Every reed burns like a candle over its own grave.”
If Nasimi had not existed, I would have mourned for our culture all my life. As the last herald of the Land of Sunrise (the Illuminationist school) who spoke in our language, Nasimi brought this experience to life for us with all its details and human qualities. I know that by claiming the Sufi discourse culminated in Nasimi, I open myself up to sharp criticism. They will say, “But what about Fuzuli?” In my view, compared to Nasimi, Fuzuli holds a very different status. In terms of the burning I’m referring to — if Fuzuli represents the pinnacle of our ascent in language, he also marks the beginning of our descent in spirituality. The same applies to Khatai. This descent reaches maturity in Molla Panah Vagif, even before Seyid Azim Shirvani. What came after is either not poetry but imitation, or not part of that tradition at all — it belongs to another world:
-
Either the world of loud political slogans — this is Bakhtiyar.
-
Or the world where the self is dead — the disoriented, fragmented, grieving self in a de-centered world — this is Shahriyar.
Let us return to Shams.
□
In the 13th century, Shams of Tabriz mysteriously vanished — and now, his tomb is said to have been found in the city of Khoy. Though this news has not been officially confirmed, initial tests suggest that the discovered remains likely belong to Shams. The goldsmiths of Tabriz — those with inner worlds shaken by the tall, imposing presence of Shams — used to say to him:
“Hey, tall one! If you go, we are doomed!”
And Shams would reply:
“If I were to shout out all the truths I know, the people would chase me out of the city!”
The discovery of Shams’ bones is a joyful moment. One can almost sense the fragrance of that divine essence — the essence of humanity kneaded by the hands of angels before God on the first day of creation — from these bones. These are the remains of one of the world’s most mysterious, wild, mad, and powerful spirits. By following this trace, we may reach the gates of that forgotten mystical land the modern world unjustly ignored — we may arrive at the crossroads of the soul.
To me, no other figure in the history of Sufism matches the greatness of Shams. To name anyone else beside him — other than Ibn Arabi and Nasimi — feels unjust. After all, it was Shams who brought the great, law-bound scholar Rumi to dance at the very source of divine ecstasy.
—
In Maqalat, the work attributed to Shams, one finds a mixture of clarity and obscurity, of burning passion and absolute certainty — enough to cause an earthquake in the listener’s inner world. This is a full-fledged tremor, rich with sharp emotion and expansive serenity. No modern humanist thought comes as close to the essence and uniqueness of the human being as this does. This is “love for humanity,” forged in the fire of the East — a love so searing that you will not find its like in Augustine, nor in the fevered God-yearning of John Donne.
Whenever the West turns away from reason and steps toward intuition, it either ends up in romanticism or descends into the deep spiritual desolation of Kafka. The East, by contrast — though it may not always know how to navigate logic — rediscovers its essence every time it returns to Illuminationist (Ishraqi) philosophy. It begins to see the unseen.
This is intuition — shuhud.
To tear away the black veil of being and see the hidden, to seep into hearts — this is a kind of insight that belongs to the Land of Sunrise (the East). That is why, if the East had not given us divine madmen like Hallaj, Suhrawardi, Shams, and Nasimi, what would be left for us?
Only belief in fate.
The totality of necessity thinking.
If the butterfly of Nasimi had not risen and flown from the cocoon of fate-bound silence, all that would remain is death — the ridiculous death of a thirsty traveler who forgot there was water in his own jug.
Nabokov says:
“Kafka forgot he had wings to fly.”
Shams did not forget.
Not to sound like one of those “bros,” but Rumi is entirely postmodern.
(Though, let’s be honest — those guys call every little thing “postmodern” with their mouths full of nonsense.)
If “modern” means “right now,” then Rumi comes after — he is post. And Shams? He comes even after that!
One reason for this lies in Rumi’s hermeneutic way of looking at events. He says:
“I fell for your face like a soul, became your captive;
I was no demon, yet I vanished from sight;
I was snow — I melted — the earth drank me in;
I caught fire, became the smoke of the heart, and rose to the skies;
I wasn’t of the spirits, I was one who feared souls;
But how can the soul fear the soul, once it becomes soul itself?
Soul and world slipped from my hands because of your love —
So what am I still doing in this world, when I have already left it?”
Another reason Rumi can be called postmodern lies in his belief that truth is fragmented. He says:
“The whole mirror of truth slipped from human hands and shattered on the very first day.
The day the angels hated humankind, God hesitated to mold man.
And then revelation came to that two-legged creature standing shamefully before God on the plains of existence:
‘You must develop yourself. Exist!
Fling yourself beyond yourself!’”
This idea, in which existentialism places its faith, is no new notion — it is as ancient as the dawn of human creation.
But the price of this freedom was that sharp, absolute truths were taken out of human hands. This is the unknowability of death.
The mirror of truth fell and shattered, and humanity’s search for its fragments gave rise to cultures and civilizations.
Now, each of those shards lies in someone’s hand.
So there is no complete human being — we are whole only together.
Now we, the people, bring together our large and small shards to recreate a general image of truth — a broken reflection that bends and distorts the light.
What more could postmodern thought possibly ask for?
□
At a time when Saadi defended Machiavellianism under the guise of convenient lies, Shams tore away all the veils. In an era where no one dared to say anything, he wanted to speak the unspeakable:
“Right now, we lack the ability to speak —
if only we had the ability to listen.
The whole must be spoken, and the whole must be heard.
Hearts are shut; ears are closed.”
In a society full of hypocrisy and peddled piety, Shams trades a lifetime of prayer for a single sigh:
“He asked: Did they perform the prayer?
The reply: Yes.
He said: Ah.
He said: Give me that ‘Ah,’ and I will give you all the prayers I’ve ever performed in return.”
If Saadi reflects the general spirit of the 13th century, then Shams stands in complete opposition to his age.
He is exiled — and in this exile, there is a wise madness, a wild inspiration.
A kind of frenzy that seeps even into the bones of the prestigious jurist Jalaladdin Rumi:
the sema dance, losing oneself, removing the scholar’s turban.
Isn’t this the harmonic dance of the very cells of a human being?
“The sheikh said: The Caliph has banned the sema dance!
The dervish’s heart knotted; he became despondent.
They brought an experienced doctor.
The doctor examined his veins, but could not find any illness he knew or cause he recognized.
The dervish passed away.
The doctor had his grave opened and his chest cut open.
He removed the knot — it had turned into a carnelian stone.
In a time of need, he sold it.
It passed from hand to hand, until it reached the Caliph.
The Caliph had it set into his ring as a gem.
He was still wearing it when one day he watched a sema dance.
He touched the ring — and the gem had melted and disappeared.
He summoned the carnelian sellers one by one, and eventually the doctor came forward and told him the whole story.”
Though it's easy to say, the terrible consequences of such defiance were first experienced by Suhrawardi — and later, even more starkly, by Nasimi, who was flayed from head to toe. Shams’ fate was no more comforting than theirs.
Before he disappeared into obscurity, they said to him:
“Lift your head and look at the works of God!”
He replied:
“Those works are only traces — the real flowers and tulips are inside me.”
Because of the jealousy of those close to Rumi, Shams vanished — and once again, Rumi was set ablaze with sorrow:
“O torch that lights the dark paths of the heartless,
O prophet of the passionate,
O Shams of Tabriz — please, don’t take your hand from mine!”
Shams — buried nowhere, unknown, disappeared — who knows in which ambush he fell prey to the wrath of the foolish believers who followed Rumi?
To stand against the blind faith of the crowd usually leads — at best — to a death without a trace.
The power of foolishness is inexhaustible.
Link to the original text in Turkish (Azerbaijan): Mövlana tam anlamıyla postmoderndir!