| Shams
of Tabriz
Shams-i-Tabrizi, or Shams of Tabriz was a
qalandar who visited Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
in Konya, most probably in 1247, and then disappeared. Little
else can be verified about him with any degree of historical
authenticity. At least two cities claim to be his burial
places: Khoy (Iran) and Multan (Pakistan), but how he may
have arrived in either of these remains unclear, as are
the circumstances of his death. Some classical biographers
have also transposed events from the life of Shamsuddin
Muhammad, the 28th Imam of Ismaili Shias, who died in 1310.
The layers of ambiguity surrounding the historical
personality of Shams are well-matched by the treatment accorded
to him by his famous disciple. Rumi not only named a collection
of his own ghazals after his mentor, calling it Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz,
but also referred to him with great admiration in the Masnavi.
The well-known anecdote about Shams Tabriz
throwing the books of Rumi in water and then retrieving
them, as well as the alternate version used by Iqbal in
Secrets and Mysteries (see Chapter 18), may have been floated
by the inner circle of Rumi’s disciples as a similitude
for the true nature of the epiphany experienced by Rumi
upon meeting his mentor: Rumi became aware of a source of
knowledge higher than books.
The anecdote, if treated as a parable, offers
yet another possible interpretation. Only eleven years after
the meeting between Rumi and Shams, the sum total of the
five hundred years of Muslim civilization got burnt down
in the form of the libraries of Baghdad, and the ashes went
down the River Tigris, just as the books catch fire and
are thrown into water, respectively, in the two different
versions of the parable.
In the two stories, Shams retrieves the books
from the ashes, and from water, respectively. Likewise,
the poetry of Rumi, inspired by Shams, retrieves the essence
of the fallen Muslim civilization, and takes it to a higher
plane.
|
Special
thanks to Iqbal Academy Pakistan
