The Unz Review:ㅤFrom Balkh to Konya: Discovering Rumi’s Spiritual Geopolitics, by Pepe Escobar


30-07-22 04:10:00,

KONYA â€“ Mystic poet, Sufi, theosophist, and thinker, Jalal al-Din Rumi remains one of the most beloved historical personalities in history, east and west. A wanderer in search of the light, he famously characterized himself thus: â€œI am nothing more than a humble lover of God.â€

The era of Rumiâ€™s father â€“ Sultan Bahaeddin Veled (1152-1231) and son (1207-1273) â€“ was an extraordinary socio-political rollercoaster. Itâ€™s absolutely impossible for us today to understand the ideas, allusions and parables that trespass Rumiâ€™s magnum opus, the six-volume Masnevi , in 25,620 couplets, without delving into some serious time travel.

In the Masnevi , written in Persian â€“ the prime literary language in West and Central Asia in those times â€“ Rumi used poetry essentially as a tool for teaching divine secrets, explaining them via parables. The Rumi Project is to show Man the path to Divine Love, leading him from a low stage to the highest. Squeezed and subdued by the techno-feudalism juggernaut, we may now need to heed these lessons more than ever in history.

The Masnevi became hugely popular across Eurasia immediately after Rumiâ€™s death in 1273 â€“ from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to Central Asia, Iran and Turkey. Then, slowly but surely, the man and the opus ended up reaching even the collective west (Goethe was mesmerized) and inspiring a wealth of learned commentaries, in Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu and English.

â€œThe master from Anatoliaâ€

Letâ€™s start our time travel in the 11th century,

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