Book Reviews 

Brad Gooch, Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love. New York: HarperCollins 2017, 377 pages.

Reviewed by Roderick Grierson

The author of Rumi’s Secret is an American poet, biographer, and novel- ist who published a life of Flannery O’Connor to much acclaim in 2009. ­Although his education and previous publications have been in subjects far removed from the life of Jalal al-Din Rumi or the history of the Mevlevi, the dedication with which he evidently set about acquiring the knowledge that he thought necessary to write a biography of Rumi is impressive. He is obviously passionate about the subject and he succeeds in conveying his passion. In doing so, he has written an enthralling but at times confusing book. His publisher, HarperCollins, describes Rumi’s Secret as ‘a break- through biography’ and as ‘the first popular biography of Rumi’. These statements are probably true if one thinks only of English. They are cer- tainly not true of Turkish or Persian, for example. Furthermore, it may be helpful to understand the type of biography that the author was trying to write and then to consider the ways in which he succeeded or indeed failed in doing so. Although a famous biography of Ibn al-ʿArabi was described by Anne­ marie Schimmel as being ‘like a novel, a novel written in captivating style and with a seeming infinite love for its hero’,1 William Chittick also re- marked that the book ‘will remain an important reference work, and for studies of Ibn al-ʿArabi and his school it is now an indispensable compan- i o n’. 2 The former remark could be applied toRumi’s Secret, but not the latter.

1 A. Schimmel, ‘Review of Quest for the Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn ‘Arabī by Claude Addas’, Journal of Islamic Studies 6 (1995), pp. 269–72. She begins her review by de- scribing her experience of reading the original French version, several years before the publication of an excellent English translation by Peter Kingsley. 2 W. Chittick, ‘Review of Ibn ‘Arabī, ou la quête du soufre rouge by Claude Addas’, Jour- nal of the American Oriental Society 111 (1991), pp. 161–62.

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Indeed, the format and design of the book, as well as the style in which it is written, seem to indicate that it was never intended to be the latter, al- though the number of references and notes creates a degree of confusion or at least tension between what appear to be two rather different goals: the popular and the academic. The author may not be the most elegant stylist, but he is undoubtedly skilled at telling a story. He has constructed a continuous narrative based in large part upon the hagiographies of Faridun Sepahsalar, who died in 1312, and Ahmad Aflaki, who died in 1360, interspersed with quotations from Rumi himself and from other poets. Much of the book is presented as if it were a series of statements by the protagonists, or even the thoughts of the protagonists. The following paragraphs, selected at random, appear on pages 292–93:

During the onset of his illness, Rumi was not entirely bedrid- den and sometimes walked about the madrase in a frail manner. Unchanging was his certainty that he was going to die, and his preparing those close to him for the eventuality, as well as setting its tenor with good humor if not outright eagerness. When he sighed from pain while hobbling in the courtyard, his favourite cat mewed and howled. ‘Do you know what this poor cat is say- ing?’ Rumi asked. ‘It says, “During these days you will be setting out towards heaven and returning to your original homeland. Poor me! What am I to do?”’ (When the cat died a week after Rumi, his daughter, Maleke, buried it near him.) Earthquakes were common enough in Anatolia, but during that fall a particularly powerful quake occurred, interpreted by Rumi’s followers as connected to his condition. In a joking way, Rumi agreed, saying the earth was hungering for a juicy morsel and would soon be satisfied by his corpse, yet no harm would come to the town. He informed his friends that most of the prophets and mystics departed from the world in autumn or the dead of winter, ‘when the earth is like iron.’ Weighed down by worry about a lingering debt of fifty dirhams, he tried to repay with gold filings. When the creditor forgave his debt, Rumi said, ‘Thank God I am delivered from this horrible obstacle!’ Soon he was confined in his room, a pan full of water set by his bed for him to dip his feet into and sprinkle his chest and fore- head, as he had begun to be racked with intense fevers. ­Hosam and Sultan Valad were usually nearby. Visions and dreams

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abounded among those gathered, at least in later retellings of the events of those days by those present. Hosam told of being seated at the top of the bed with Rumi’s head resting on his chest as they saw a handsome young man materialize in front of their eyes. When Hosam asked his name, he identified himself as Azrael, the Angel of Death. ‘What excellent, perceptive sight to be able to see a face such as that!’ Rumi weakly exclaimed.

Although the passage may give the impression of having been invented, Gooch provides the sources for it in his notes on page 364. He was evidently­ relying on Aflaki throughout. One might, of course, be tempted to ask how much Aflaki himself had invented. He had been born at least a decade after Rumi’s death in 1273 and was certainly not a witness to the events ­described here, or indeed to other events that would seem incredible to modern ­readers. The point, however, is simply that Gooch may often be closer to his sources than his style of writing seems to suggest. Curiously, he does not refer to O’Kane’s translation of Aflaki in his refer­ences on page 335,3 but only to an Iranian offprint of the Persian edition that Tahsin Yazıcı produced in two volumes for the Türk Tarih Kurumu. This seems odd, given the value of O’Kane’s translation, its notes, and its revised numbering, even for specialists who read Persian without difficulty. The bibliographical reference for Yazıcı’s edition is also incorrect. Only the first volume was published in 1959; the second volume was published in 1961. Furthermore, the title departs from the Turkish system of transcrip- tion that Yazıcı employed and therefore seems slightly peculiar when set alongside his name.4 Gooch does, in fact, mention O’Kane’s translation of Aflaki in another context, in note 205 on page 358, but even then he does not cite it as a source. This is surprising for two reasons. First, most readers who have purchased a popular biography of Rumi written in English are more likely to consult an English translation of a Persian text rather than the Persian itself. Not only has O’Kane translated the book into English, his version is also remarkably accurate and easily available from its publisher or from the usual online booksellers. An Iranian copy of Yazıcı’s edition of Aflaki is more difficult to find and far less helpful. Second, Gooch’s translation seems to have arisen, on several occasions, as a paraphrase of O’Kane’s translation. For example,

3 Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad-e Aflākī,The Feats of the Knowers of God (Manāqeb al-‘ārefīn), trans. J. O’Kane (Leiden: Brill 2002). 4 Şams al-Dīn Aḥmed al-Aflākī al-‘Ārıfī, Manāḳib al-‘ārifīn, ed. T. Yazıcı, 2 vols. ­(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi 1959; 1961).

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Gooch translates the final quotation above as‘What excellent, perceptive sight to be able to see a face such as that!’ O’Kane had earlier translated it as ‘What excellent perceptive sight which is able to see a face like that!’ Unfortunately, Gooch only provides references to quotations and not to the passages that contain the material that forms the basis of his narra­tive. On some occasions, this material is found beside a quotation. On ­other occasions, it is not. When it is found, it is not always rendered accurately. For example, the cat that Aflaki describes as simply being in the house is described by Gooch as being ‘his favourite cat’. And Rumi is described by Gooch as ‘walking in a frail manner’ whereas Aflaki describes him shouting. Gooch also describes Rumi as reclining on the chest of Husam al-Din and to have ‘weakly exlaimed’ when Azrael appears. In the Persian, Rumi is not described as weak at this point. Instead, he immediately rises when ­Azrael appears and goes to greet him. Futhermore, Azrael tells Husam al- Din that he has come at the order of God to learn what Mawlana com­ mands. It is not immediately obvious why this should have been omitted, given what it tells us of the position that Rumi was believed to hold, not only in this world but also in the next. These questions are not merely matters of pedantry. Although Rumi’s Secret is intended to be a book for general readers, one might suggest that accuracy is even more important for general readers than for specialists. The latter can easily check primary sources in their original language. As most general readers cannot, an author’s responsibility to them is therefore all the greater. It might also seem unfair to treat the book as if it were intended to make a significant contribution to the study of Seljuk history or Persian literature rather than providing a stimulating introduction for readers who may know little about Rumi or the world in which he lived and taught. At least, it would be unfair if the author had not made a point of providing his text with a form of academic apparatus and a list of primary sources in Persian. There is more than a little risk of his attempting to have his cake and eat it too. In other words, this is a popular book that seems intended to pass muster in more scholarly terms. Whatever its other virtues, it does not.

In general, the characters are vivid and have been presented in ways that may be romantic or exotic but are not, for the most part, disconcerting for modern readers. The author seems to have been careful to choose lan- guage that would be thought accessible to a modern American readership in ­particular. It is an effective strategy for a book of this sort, even if more

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­academic historians would be unlikely to adopt it. In a book that seeks to ­introduce Rumi to new readers, characters whose thoughts or actions seemed too different from our own might well seem unappealing and there- fore uninteresting. I hasten to add that the problem arises largely from the passage of time. The characters are not remote from modern readers in the United States or elsewhere because they are Muslim or live within a Mus- lim community. Indeed, a large number of those who read Rumi’s Secret might well be Muslim themselves. The characters are remote because they lived almost eight centuries ago. Catholic or Orthodox Christians from the thirteenth century would be no less exotic for almost any modern reader, even if they were themselves Catholic or Orthodox. Nevertheless, the result of such an approach is that men and women who are depicted as being very much like us often seem to think in ways that are exotic by our standards. While this represents a hermeneutical challenge that would be difficult for any author to address, Gooch has succeeded, I believe, more often than I might have expected. Furthermore, his attempt to describe characters who are attractive in modern terms does not mean that he has made no attempt to place them in a historical context. He provides a considerable amount of information about life in the Seljuk sultanate of Rumi and about circumstances in other regions through which Rumi travelled. He is to be commended, I think, for having relied upon sound scholarship in doing so. At least in this sense, Rumi is not presented as simply a voice of perennial wisdom, detached from the world in which he lived. Nevertheless, the author is obviously very keen to demonstrate that Rumi had in some way ‘gone beyond’ Islam in particular or ‘gone beyond’ traditional religion in general. This is evidently the intention of pages 309–10 in the afterword, which describe conversations with Jawid Mojaddedi and Coleman Barks.

In the Masnavi, Rumi grew bolder in making claims for a ‘reli­ gion of love’ that went beyond all organized faiths. As Jawid ­Mojaddedi, who is currently embarked on retranslating into English the entire Masnavi, said to me, ‘Rumi resonates today because people are thinking post-religion. He came to see mys- ticism as the divine origin of every religion.’ Rumi said as much, subtly in verse:

When you discover the source of sunlight . . . Whatever direction you go will be east

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When I spoke with Coleman Barks by phone from his home in Athens, Georgia, he agreed with Mojaddedi that the sensational response to his own translations in English in our time has much to do with Rumi’s emphasis on ecstasy and love over religion and creeds. ‘I do believe that Rumi found himself going beyond tradi- tional religion,’ said Barks. ‘He has no use for dividing up into the different names of Christian and Jew and Muslim. It was a wild thing to say in the thirteenth century, but he said it, and he was not killed. He must have said it with such gentleness and such authority that they couldn’t attack him. None of the fundamen- talists attack Rumi. They just don’t. They leave him alone because he is so beloved. There is a music of grace inside Rumi’s poems that people can hear, not physical music, a psychic music that make them feel ecstatic.’

This is certainly a very different figure than appears in the pages of Aflaki’s Manaqib al-ʿarifin, a book in which the conversion of Jews and Christians to Islam, and Rumi’s remarkable success in inspiring their conversion, are prominent themes.5 On the dust cover of Rumi’s Secret, Karen Armstrong congratulates the author for providing ‘much-needed insight into the true spirituality of Islam’. But this, it seems to me, is exactly what he has not done. I find it dif- ficult to believe that the ‘true spirituality of Islam’ would involve dispensing with Islam. Furthermore, I see no evidence either in this book or anywhere else that Rumi was proposing anything of the sort. Indeed, his own writings and the sources that were written in the decades after his death leave no doubt about the intensity of his devotion to the Prophet Muhammad and the message that he delivered. In ecumenical as well as hermeneutical terms, this is a matter of some subtlety as well as real urgency, and I hesitate to suggest that the author has simply failed to understand it. He is, in effect, asking a serious question and his attempt to answer it is not unreasonable, even if he seems inclined to push the evidence too far. Can those who are not themselves Muslim read the poetry of Rumi and derive spiritual nourishment from it? The answer certainly seems to be that they can. Should they then take a further step and become Muslim? Rumi, or at least Aflaki, seems to expect this of them. But if one does not believe that such a step is necessary, or if one is not prepared

5 For a valuable discussion of the question, see J. Dechant, ‘Depictions of the Islamiz­ ation of the Mongols in the Manāqib al-‘ārifīn and the Foundation of the Mawlawī Community’, Mawlana Rumi Review II (2011), pp. 135–64.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:56:37PM via free access book reviews 157 to take it oneself, it seems disingenuous to suggest that Rumi had been say- ing something other than he evidently was. At a time when increasing numbers of people live in a world that is filled with an extraordinary array of cultural influences, most of which have been detached from their original moorings, the question of ‘appropriation’ has become politically contentious and even volatile. Accusations are fre- quently made that anyone who consumes such a global culture is insulting those who created its components by exploiting them in a way that was never intended. If this were true, then reading the poetry of Rumi as if Rumi himself were something other than Muslim would undoubtedly be liable to censure. It therefore becomes all the more attractive to suggest that Rumi himself had in some way ‘gone beyond’ Islam and that he appeals to those who are not Muslim because he had done so. Among the various responses to this proposition, two may be espe­ cially helpful, I think. The first is to note that art created for a specific spiritual purpose or within a specific spiritual tradition can provide very real inspiration elsewhere. The performance of an oratorio by J. S. Bach is an obvious example, although many others could be adduced. His compo- sitions are now usually performed outside the context of Christian liturgy, and often for audiences and by musicians who are not Christian themselves and who may have lived their entire lives in societies that are not Christian. Why should we assume that comprehension is only possible if a composer, an artist, or an author held views that we think identical or at least similar to our own? The second is simply to cite an incident recorded by Aflaki. Gorji Khatun is said to have asked Alam al-Din-i Qaysar, a military command- er who was clearly devoted to Rumi, if he had been inspired by any par- ticular miracle that he had seen Rumi perform. Alam al-Din replied that prophets and shaykhs will always be loved or followed by someone. In the case of Rumi, however, everyone felt an overwhelming devotion to him. After admitting that this was the smallest miracle attributed to Rumi, he then asked if any miracle could be greater.6 Whatever one assumes about the value of Aflaki as a historical record, the statement would not seem absurd if it were made today, eight centuries later. Furthermore, Rumi would seem to be the Sufi about whom it could most easily and most plausibly be made. Nevertheless, it is essential not to assume too much about such a ­miracle or the reasons for it. On page 273, it seems to me, Gooch does

6 Aflaki,The Feats of the Knowers of God, trans. J. O’Kane, §3.505.

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­exactly that when he adduces a quotation from the Mathnawi to demon- strate ­Rumi’s belief in the unity of all religions.

Since we worship the one God, Then all religions must be one.7

However, the statement meant something very different to Rumi than it evi­dently does to Gooch. Indeed, it would mean something very differ- ent to most Muslims today than it would to readers who are looking for a timeless wisdom detached from the requirements of conventional religious faith. In other words, all religions may worship one God, but they become one within the perfect and final revelation of Islam. Even if Rumi is quite accurately described as an ecumenical poet, therefore, it should not be for- gotten that he was a Muslim ecumenical poet. At least part of the problem that so many modern readers encounter in their attempts to understand his legacy may lie in a tendency to assign greater importance either to reports of a transcendent reality uttered in a state of ecstasy or to statements about the responsibilities of life within a Muslim community.8 Rumi, it seems, did not want either to be neglected. If the latter in particular is kept in mind, the suggestion on page 85 that Rumi learned from other faiths, as well as the suggestion that he inspired other faiths, seems less than convincing.

This nearly accidental religious diversity – a matter of indiffer- ence as much as design among these governing sultans – eventu­ ally helped to create the conditions for Rumi’s being able to ­inspire, teach, and learn lessons from all of these different faith communities at once.

Rumi may have been living in the midst of a city in which Muslims were still a minority, and indeed a very small minority, but neither his poetry nor his prose suggest that he was greatly interested in other religious commun­ ities or possessed any detailed knowledge of their beliefs or customs. In any case, it may seem decidedly odd to assume the credibility of statements made in Muslim sources about how much Jews and Christians loved Rumi if there are no contemporary Jewish or Christian sources in which similar

7 Mathnawí, III: 2124. 8 C. W. Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany: State University of New York Press 1984) remains one of the best discussions of the tension between these two worlds.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:56:37PM via free access book reviews 159 statements are made. The claims may well be accurate, but silence from the other side is not encouraging. The translations that the author provides are often quite pleasing, but in some cases they are not as precise or as informed as they might be, and in some cases they appear not to be his own. The opening line of theMath ­ nawi cited on page 243 is an obvious example. The translation seems to be that of Kabir Helminski,9 although I found no acknowledgement of the fact, at least in the notes on page 361.

Listen to the reed and the tale that it tells How it sings of separation:

The opening line has occasioned a great deal of discussion, much of it devoted to the second word in the first hemistich. Should it be the pre­posi­ words that might easily be confused ,ﺍﻳﻦ or the demonstrative pronoun ﺍﺯ tion because they were often written in ways that were so similar? In other words, is Rumi telling his audience simply to ‘listen to the ney’ or more specifically to ‘listen to this ney’? If the latter, he is clearly telling his audience to listen to his own voice, as he recites in six books his story of separation. The oldest manu­ If Gooch had been relying on the text of .ﺍﺯ rather than ﺍﻳﻦ scripts support ­Nicholson in the single volume that he cites in his references, he would have read only the former, which is the version represented above. Nicholson him- self discussed the latter in his commentary on the first volume of the Persian text, and Gooch would certainly have found it in the edition of Muhammad Istiʿlami, if he had consulted it.10 Unfortunately, he seems to have relied not on a Persian edition but on the translation by Helminski. A number of assertions throughout the book might be open to debate, even if they do not constitute errors of fact. For example, the Mevlevi were never ‘a standard Sufi order’, as they are said to be on page 7, and it would be an exaggeration to describe them as ‘the estab­lishment order’, as they are on page 303. They represented a highly sophisticated and intellectual form of Sufism and theirsema was far more complicated than any other ritual practised by any other order. They were hardly typical or standard, in other words. Furthermore, although they undoubtedly attracted followers

9 Kabir Helminski, Love Is a Stranger (Boston: Shambhala 2000), p. 50. 10 The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmí, ed., trans., and comm. R. A. Nicholson, VII, ­pp. 8–9; Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Mathnawī: muqaddimah wa taḥlīl, taṣḥīḥ-i matn bar asās-i nuskhahhā-yi mu‘tabar-i Mathnawī, muqāyasah bā chāphā-yi ma‘rūf-i Mathnawī, tawḍiḥāt wa ta‘līqāt-i jāmi‘ wa fihristhā, ed. Muḥammad Isti‘lamī, 7th ed. (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zavvār 1384 A.Hsh./2005) I, pp. 280–81.

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from the political and cultural elite, so too did the Nakşibendi and Hal- veti, whose influence in Istanbul at times rivalled or even surpassed that of the Mevlevi. While the significance of the Mevlevi in Ottoman life should ­never be underestimated, it should also not be overestimated.11 Despite Gooch’s assertion on page 304 that there is no real interest in Rumi among Arabs, there certainly is. It is an odd claim to make, especially­ as he begins his book in Aleppo, and it is important to remember that the Mev­levi extended well into Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire as well as into European provinces. Mevlevihanes existed in Cairo, Jerusalem, ­Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, Tripoli, and Baghdad, to mention only a few of the more famous examples. Even in areas that remained beyond Otto- man control, such as Morocco, there is now a genuine interest in Rumi. There is a shortage of Arabic translations of Rumi, of course, but despite Gooch’s surprise on page 2 that a young man whom he met in Aleppo had been reading an English version, young Moroccans are very interested in reading the poetry of Rumi in either English or French. Furthermore, he suggests that Arabs are suspicious of Rumi because they see him as linked with Iran. At least in Morocco, Rumi is associated with Turkey, where he is buried, largely because of the influence of Turkish media in North Africa and throughout the Arab world. Even if there is a profound suspicion in Morocco of Shi‘ites in general and of the Iranian government in particular, Rumi is not seen as having anything to do with either.

Rumi’s Secret is reasonably priced, attractively designed, and well printed, as one might expect or least hope from one of the leading commercial pub- lishing houses in the United States. The dust cover is clearly inspired by Islamic geometric and floral patterns but is not a simple reproduction of Seljuk design. It is composed of three shades of blue, gold, and white. The book comprises a prologue, three untitled parts, each consisting of several chapters, and an afterword, followed by acknowledgements, a note on transliteration, a glossary of names, a glossary of terms, maps, refer­ ences, notes, and an index. The presence of references and notes in the back matter means that the pages of the narrative itself are not disrupted by any indication of the sources that might lie behind it. The acknowledgements on pages 313–17 contain an impressive list of names and an account of the author’s efforts to learn Persian and then Arabic and Turkish, undoubtedly proof of his energy and his dedication to the task. Many of his friends and

11 See R. Grierson, ‘Eight Centuries and Three Continents: The Mevlevi Order and the Ottoman Empire’, Mawlana Rumi Review IX (2018), forthcoming.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:56:37PM via free access book reviews 161 acquaintances are capable of offering sound advice, and signs of it appear throughout the book. On page 319, the note on transliteration is misleading. No mention is made of Turkish, but large numbers of words, especially place names, fol- low Turkish orthography even if the author claims to be following Persian or Arabic. Furthermore, the task of mastering or at least gaining familiarity with material of this sort takes some years. Turkish names are presented in a curious mixture of Turkish and foreign characters. It might have been better to have made no attempt at accuracy rather than half an attempt. Even the same letters are not represented consistently. Why Özyürt, for example but Omer rather than Ömer? Bakirci should be Bakırcı, Basimevi should be Basımevi, Yazici should be Yazıcı, and so on. The glossary of names on pages 321–24 is undoubtedly helpful, al- though the division between ‘Poets and Writers’ and ‘Religious Figures’ is at times rather awkward. Several names could have been placed in one as easily as in the other. The glossary of terms on pages 326–28 is also useful. It is admirably succinct, although some entries are more accurate than others. Jinn are certainly more than ‘invisible, mischievous spirits, or genies’. They are not always invisible, they are not necessarily mischievous, and they are unlike the connotations of the word ‘genie’ as it is used in English. In the suggested etymology of Sufism, ‘perhaps’ appears in the wrong place. The derivation of the word from ‘wool’ might require the qualification ‘perhaps’. If the derivation is accepted, however, the explanation that the term was used because early ascetics wore robes of wool follows naturally. The references on pages 335–38 seem to have been intended to provide a list of works cited. However, a surprising number of titles that are men- tioned in the notes seem to have escaped, among them books by J.T.P. de Bruijn, Claude Cahen, Fritz Meier, Wheeler Thackston, and many others. In fact, ‘references’ seems to be intended as little more than ‘suggested read- ing’. The selection does contain many books that are worth reading, even if the omission of entire categories of publication seems all too obvious. Aside from a single work by the impressive Ahmed Karamustafa, Turkish scholar­ ship seems to have been ignored, even when it is available in English. Even more important, however, is the absence of English translations of works by Rumi himself. Although Nicholson is mentioned, he appears only in connection with the Persian text of the Mathnawi rather than with his translation or commentary. While some readers of a book of this sort published in English will know Persian, many more will not. As the book will undoubtedly inspire readers to examine the legacy of Rumi in ­greater detail, at least some guidance might have been helpful. While it is

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no ­surprise to see that the author has mentioned Franklin Lewis’s compen- dious Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, it is curious that his doctoral thesis on Sanaʾi has also been mentioned, and yet his excellent volume of translations from Rumi, Swallowing the Sun, has been omitted. It is also odd to see Persian editions cited in some detail, but to find no mention of what is now the standard edition of the Mathnawi by Muham- mad Istiʿlami. The word ‘edition’ seems to mean no more than ‘impression’, which is occasionally confusing. The first edition of the Majalis-i Sabʿa was actually published at Ankara in 1937 by Feridun Nâfiz Uzluk and entitled Mevlânâ’nın Yedi Öğüdü, although by ‘first edition’ Gooch is probably refer- ring to the year in which the more recent and far more reliable edition by Tawfiq Subhani was first published, rather than to the first edition per se. He does not mention an editor. The index on pages 366–77 is useful, but not always complete. Gorji Khatun, for example, does not appear only on page 227, which is the only page mentioned in the index, but also on pages 192, 216, 229, and 324. Even if errors of detail are ignored, I am not sure how many readers will actually consult these pages and I wonder if the author might have been better advised to spend his time more profitably. The result seems too much for general readers but not nearly enough for specialists. I was delighted to be able to see how he had constructed his narrative, but my enjoyment of the narrative was no greater for having read the back matter, and if I wanted a reliable account of the details of the tradition, I would almost certainly consult a different book.

What of the title and subtitle, Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love? At least to me, the latter seems less than ideal. Rumi is undoubtedly a Sufi poet who wrote about love, but was he ‘the’ Sufi poet of love? Were other Sufi poets writing about something else? Or did Rumi surpass them and was he therefore the greatest Sufi poet who wrote about love? It would be no insult to Rumi to recall, among other examples, the Tarjuman al-ashwaq of Ibn al-ʿArabi or the Divan of Yunus Emre. In Arabic and Turkish, both are held in the highest regard. And how certain are we that Hafiz, who is so often proclaimed to be the greatest of Persian poets, was not himself a Sufi?12 Perhaps the definite article has simply been used less carefully or precisely than it might have been, although it is worth mentioning that the

12 An admirably concise account in English is provided by F. Lewis, ‘Hafez viii. Hafez and Rendi’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. XI, pp. 483–91. More detailed discussions of the question can be found in Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry, ed. L. Lewisohn (London: I. B. Tauris 2010).

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­author has chosen to present Ibn al-ʿArabi as highly intellectual rather than a mystic devoted to love, and that neither Yunus Emre nor Hafiz appear in the index. The question of ‘Rumi’s secret’ is far more vexed, it seems to me. Gooch is discreet about it, perhaps even coy, but he eventually begins to address it on page 307, only four pages from the end of his book. He seems to have two secrets in mind. One is the nature of Rumi’s relationship with Shams of Tabriz and the other his relationship with Islam. Although Shams and the intensity of his friendship with Rumi evi- dently aroused considerable jealousy in Konya, I am not sure exactly what would have been kept secret. In fact, I am not sure that I understand why Gooch approaches the question with such delicacy, especially as he claims on page 308 that ‘no evidence exists of an erotic component’. I confess to being surprised by the comment. Any number of poems that Rumi wrote seem to me to be intensely and undeniably erotic. However, they are ex- pressed within or at least in accordance with the conventions of Persian poetry. Beyond that, we know almost nothing and can say almost nothing. Although some dervishes were undoubtedly convinced that divine beauty could be seen in the faces of beautiful boys, and were therefore keen to do more than simply write about it, even his enemies did not attempt to de- nounce Rumi for such a practice. And in any case, Shams was by no means a boy. Much remains a mystery, in other words, although a mystery is not the same as a secret. Nevertheless, Gooch is quite right to observe on page 308 that some topics can be discussed openly in one society and not in another. Conversations in the United States about homoerotic imagery are, at least in my experience, very different from those in Turkey, especially if they are conducted in public. In both cases, however, it is often difficult to resist imposing the views of a later century on a very different world that existed some eight centuries earlier. The question may have seemed even more complicated for Gooch, and indeed for his publisher, because he is openly gay and has written sev- eral books that are widely available and address subjects of specific interest to gay men. The titles are printed at the beginning ofRumi’s Secret along with his biographies of Flannery O’Connor and Frank O’Hara. Although I have no idea if Turkish, Persian, or Arabic translations of his biography of Rumi are now being considered, a list of overtly gay titles could easily be in- flammatory if it were included in a book published in Turkish about one of the greatest cultural heroes in Turkey, a figure of real political significance to the ruling AK Party and the current president. While Gooch has been careful not to present Rumi as a gay icon, his book would undoubtedly be

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read in many circles as if he had intended to do exactly that. And depend- ing on the way in which certain passages were translated – the claims on page 138, for example, that Rumi and Shams were ‘equally drawn to the dis- turbing and the pretty’ and that Rumi was ‘visceral in his fondness’ for the bathhouses that he and Shams apparently visited ‘singly and together’ – his motives would almost immediately be regarded as more than suspicious. If Rumi’s ‘secret’ was not the intensity of his attachment to Shams, it was also not his departure from orthodoxy, even if some of his oppo- nents attempted to criticize his use of poetry, music, and ecstatic dance as un­acceptable innovations, and even if later opponents of the Mevlevi made similar charges as well. The real secret now, it seems, and one that the ­author might have explored in greater depth, is unlikely to sit well with readers who are not Muslim and who would like to find in ‘the Sufi poet of love’ a path that lies outside religious affiliation or even religious belief. Whatever Jawid Mojaddedi or Coleman Barks might have said to the ­author, the sources on which he has relied throughout his book depict Rumi as very definitely Muslim. By the standards of many of the dervishes who were active in the Sultanate of Rum when Rumi was alive, he was also decidedly orthodox. It is important, I think, to distinguish between what might have been accepted as Sunni orthodoxy in Anatolia during the thirteenth century, at a time when many lines of demarcation had not yet been drawn or were still relatively porous, and what might be understood by the term in the twenty­-first century. Rumi was undoubtedly inspired by Shams and became through his influence – although perhaps not only through his influence – an ecstatic poet rather than simply a müderris. Yet even though Shams may have been a kalender, no one appears in the silsile of Rumi who is compara- ble to the outrageous and even alarming kalender Barak Baba. Yunus Emre was a very different sort of poet than Rumi was, as well as a very different sort of dervish, and Barak Baba does indeed appear in his silsile.13 However, I am tempted to suggest that at least one intriguing piece of evidence might indicate a ‘secret’ not far removed from what Gooch is proposing. He refers to it himself when he mentions on page 227 that Aflaki provides no evidence of Gorji Khatun, the ‘Georgian Lady’, having

13 For descriptions of the career of Barak Baba, see H. Algar, ‘Barāq Bābā’, Encyclo­paedia Iranica, III, pp. 754–55; M. F. Köprülü, Influence du chamanisme turco-mongol sur les ordres mystiques musulmans, Mémoires de l’Institut de Turcologie de l’Univer­sité de Stamboul, n.s. 1 (Istanbul: Zellitch Frères1929); and R. Amitai-Preis, ‘Sufis and ­Shamans: Some Remarks on the Islamization of the Mongols in the Ilkhanate’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42 (1999), pp. 27–46.

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­converted to Islam. Why would he not? She was close to the centre of ­Rumi’s followers, she was intensely devoted to him, and her patronage ensured the building of the marvellous shrine in Konya that is still visited by millions of pilgrims and tourists every year. The fact that no one seems to have cared if she converted or not makes this a most intriguing secret. It seems, as it were, to be hiding in plain view. Despite the criticisms offered above, I remain impressed byRumi’s ­Secret. It is always important, I think, for reviewers to ask if they could have written a better book themselves. I could not have written a better book about Rumi. Now that I am writing a biography of the Georgian Lady, I am grateful to Brad Gooch for having encouraged me to think more carefully about the task by writing the book that he chose to write.  Sheila R. Canby, Deniz Beyazit, Martina Rugiadi, and A.C.S. Peacock (eds.), Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art 2016, 365 pages.

Reviewed by Roderick Grierson

Anyone who had not been fortunate enough to see the exhibition Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs while it was displayed at the Metro­politan Museum of Art in 2016 would be delighted that its legacy survives in the pages of its catalogue. I would be astonished if any reader of the Mawlana­ Rumi Review were not extremely grateful for the skill and expertize that it represents. The erudition of its contributors as well as the beauty of its design and the quality of its printing are very impressive in- deed. For those of us who are curious about the world in which Jalal al-Din Rumi lived and taught, a more attractive introduction in English would be difficult to imagine. Certainly, none has yet been published. The achievement is all the more impressive because Sheila Canby and her colleagues encountered real difficulties as they began to assemble ob- jects for their exhibition. None of this is mentioned in the catalogue, which is not only a brilliant work of scholarship but also a masterpiece of discre- tion. The problem arose because the Turkish government demanded the return of objects in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum and was less than satisfied with the response. It therefore seems to have refused requests for loans to the exhibition. It should be added, however, that this is the offi- cial Turkish view of events. The museum denies having made any requests

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