Islam. 101too after the Mongol invasions, when people clearly felt that
the world as they had known it was coming to an end, but also
that an entirely new global order was possible.
This was clearly evident in the vision of the Sufi mystic
Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-73), who was himself a victim of the
Mongols but whose teachings expressed the sense of bound-
less possibility that they had brought with them. Rumi had
been born in Khurasan; his father was an alim and a Sufi mas-
ter, and Rumi himself was learned in figh, theology and Ara-
bic and Persian literature. But to escape the approaching
Mongol hordes, the family was forced to flee. They came as
refugees to Konya, the capital of the sultanate of Rum, in
Anatolia. Rumi's spirituality is suffused by a sense of cosmic
homelessness and separation from God, the divine source.
The greatest misfortune that could befall any human being,
Rumi insisted, was not to feel the pain of severance, which
goads a man or woman to the religious quest. We must realize
our inadequacy and that our sense of selfhood is illusory. Our
ego veils the reality from us, and by divesting ourselves of
egotism and selfishness we will find that God is all that re-
mains.
Rumi was a "drunken Sufi." His spiritual and personal life
veered from one emotional extreme to another; he sought ec-
stasy in dancing, singing, poetry and music, and the members
of the order that he founded are often called the Whirling
Dervishes because of their stately, spinning dance, which in-
duces a trance state of transcendence. Despite his obvious in-
stability, Rumi was known in his lifetime as Mawlanah (our
Lord) by his disciples, and his Mawlanah Order has had great
influence in Turkey right up to the present day. The Math-
nawi, his magnum opus, is known as the Sufi scripture. Where
Ibn al-Arabi had written for the intellectual, Rumi was sum-
moning all human beings to live beyond themselves, and to
transcend the routines of daily life. The Mathnawi celebrated