‘We Believe in Your Prophet’: Rumi, Palamas, and the Conversion of Anatolia

Roderick Grierson 

Pamyati I. F. Meyendorfa

A few weeks before a recent symposium organized by the Rumi Institute in Cyprus to commemorate the S‚eb-i Arus of 17 December, I received a telephone call from the chairman of the institute, Gökalp Kâmil. He was rather tired, he explained, because he had been watch - ing television until the early hours of the morning. The programme had consisted of a lengthy discussion between I˙lber Ortaylı, the director of Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, and Halil I˙nalcık, who is generally recog nized as the most eminent Ottoman historian of the past cen tury, and perhaps of any century. During their conversation, Prof. I˙nalcık suggested that Gregory Palamas, the greatest of Hesychast mystics,1 owed a considerable debt to Sufism, notably to Ibn al-cArabi and Jalal al-Din Rumi. After all, Palamas had been captured in 1354 and spent a year as an Ottoman prisoner while he waited to be ransomed.

1 The term Hesychasm, from the Greek word hesychia, meaning ‘silence’, has been applied in at least four senses to Orthodox Christianity during the Byzantine period: a technique of prayer, especially involving bodily postures and the control of breathing; a type of mystical experience, especially involving a vision of divine light; a theology to explain and justify the mystical experience, especially involving a distinction between the essence and the energies of God; and a political faction reflecting the concerns of monks who saw the technique, experience, and theology described above as the essence of Orthodoxy, and who refused to abandon Orthodox tradition in order to secure military assistance from the Catholic West against Turkish incursions. The literature on Hesychasm in general, and Palamas in particular, is vast. A brief introduction that is both recent and con venient is provided by Dirk Krausmüller, ‘The Rise of Hesychasm’, in Eastern Christianity, ed. Michael Angold, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006), pp. 101–26. ‘we believe in your prophet’ 97

Especially while he was at the court of Orhan Gazi, the Ottoman Emir, he must have been influenced in some way by what he saw and heard of Turkish Sufism. This seemed a reasonable assumption, Mr Kâmil thought, but he wanted to know if it was anything more than a mere possibility. In other words, was there any convincing evidence for it? The likelihood of a close relationship between Sufis and Hesy - chasts, or between Orthodox Christian mystics and Muslim mystics in general, has often been discussed by European and North American scholars, and the debate has tended to focus on several recurring themes. The case of Palamas, however, has been of particular interest to exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, especially among followers of the Traditionalist School associated with René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon.2 Their concerns have been very different from those of the two Turkish historians, however, and for an intriguing reason. Tradi - tionalists have argued that the startling similarity between certain aspects of the teachings of Palamas and of Ibn al-cArabi in particular should be taken as evidence for the fundamental unity of mystical experience at its most elevated level, especially when placed alongside mystics from other traditions such as Shankara or Meister Eckhardt.3 If the teachings of one of these mystics were dependent on those of another, the similarity would obviously be of less value. Indeed, it might be of no value at all. Furthermore, according to this position, the similarity between Sufism and Hesychasm can be taken as an encouraging sign not only that a common ground exists between Christianity and Islam, but also that it can be rediscovered once doctrinal beliefs have been put aside. In other words, it possesses an ecumenical significance at a time when Christians and Muslims in particular have become obsessed with an imagined, or at least exaggerated, ‘Clash of Civilizations’.4

2 The movement is usually assumed to have been founded by René Guénon. Several leading experts on Sufism and on Jalal al-Din Rumi in particular are often associated with it, including William Chittick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. A useful introduction to its history and characteristics can be found in a review by Carl W. Ernst, ‘Traditionalism, the Perennial Philosophy, and Islamic Studies’, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 28 (1994), pp. 176–81. 3 Although an enormous amount has been published, a characteristic study of the relationship between Hesychasm and Sufism whose value has not diminished with the passage of several decades, is Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ‘The Prayer of the Heart in Hesychasm and Sufism’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 31, (1986), pp. 195–203. 4 The term ‘Clash of Civilizations’ is usually associated with Samuel Huntingdon’s