NEH Project Description Matthew B. Lynch

Mediterranean-izing the Masnavi and ‘Mevlevi-tating’ the Study of the Medieval Mediterranean

During the summer of 2015, I participated in the NEH workshop in Barcelona, Spain entitled “Negotiating Identities: Expression and Representation in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Mediterranean.” My main goal in participating in the seminar was to advance my research and writing for my current dissertation project, which examines the medieval epic of Jalaluddin titled Masnavi-e Ma’navi. This work, which emerged in the latter half of the 13th century, stretches 6 volumes in length, with over 25000 lines of rhyming verse. Written in Persian, the predominant political and cultural language in Anatolia at the time, the Masnavi interweaves stories from the Qur’an, from Arabic, Persian, Hindu folklore, as well as Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian mythology. Its pages reflect the very diversity of identities and histories that were mingling and cross-pollinating at the time of its composition. My goal during the research institute was to put this text and its author (and its local context) into conversation with other aspects of the medieval Mediterranean. I sought to reflect on how the Masnavi might connect to other cultural artifacts of that epoch. I also sought to incorporate the approaches scholars have used in analyzing those artifacts into my own writing. Ultimately, I hoped to contribute to the ongoing discussions of the medieval Mediterranean by bringing both the connectivities and particularities of the Masnavi to bear on theories and conversations within the field. While the Masnavi is not as well known in Western literature, it stands as one of the foremost works of epic in the Persian, Sufi, and Islamic traditions. In many Muslim and especially Sufi circles, it is second only to the Qur’an for its importance to religious practice. This includes the , which was founded after the death of Rumi by his followers in in what is now . Following the lead of Sharon Kinoshita (who, along with Brian Catlos, led the NEH workshop), I sought to “Mediterraneanize” a canonical text from the Persian, Sufi, and Islamic traditions to see what that “frame of reference” could offer in terms of “new questions, insights, and perspectives”.1 Rumi’s epic does not have the same fame as Dante’s writings or even the Chanson de Roland within English-language scholarship. But among the Muslim poets of that era (including Hafez and Firdausi), his writing is among the most recognizable. It thus affords us as scholars a see the

1 Sharon Kinoshita, “Medieval Mediterranean Literature”, PMLA, 2009. p. 601. transformative powers of a Mediterranean Studies approach, which leads to questions and insights that may not be found in the existing historical, literary, or religious studies treatments of Rumi’s writings. Further, Rumi’s epic brings in traditions and themes more generally associated with the East and the Middle East than the Mediterranean. However, as Brian Catlos demonstrated during the seminar, the eastern influences of Anatolia cannot be overlooked when examining other phenomena throughout the Mediterranean. The influence of Armenians, of Seljuks, and other dynastic groups coming from the East played a key role in the development of governmental systems throughout the Mediterranean. The region was marked by exchanges and influences, by minority groups attempting to manage majorities of other religious identities, ethnic or tribal backgrounds, linguistic differences—or by majorities attempting to accommodate minorities with those and other differences. Rumi’s particular story demonstrates this as well: he was born in what’s now Afghanistan, then immigrated to Anatolia by way of both Khorasan, Mecca, and . He spoke and wrote in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and even Greek. In his early life, he fled from the Mongol hordes to the ‘safety’ of Seljuk-era rule in Anatolia, only to watch as the Seljuks became client rulers to the Mongol khans. He had a complex relationship with his patrons, alternately plaintive and dismissive—preserving spiritual authority for himself, while appealing to political authority from that position as sheikh and poet in Konya. The Seljuk capital was itself an “interdependent micro-region”2, relying on traffic from all directions for trade while developing its own unique bureaucratic and cultural infrastructure. When viewing Rumi’s writing and his group of followers through the lens of interconnectedness, we see that his work is not just a repository for Islamic or Sufi teachings, but a representation of the negotiations of religious identity ongoing in his times. Further, we in my view Rumi’s Masnavi stands as an attempt to supercede those religious negotiations in the name of a new, epic work whose provenance is no less than divinely inspired. That the Mevlevi order and Rumi’s writings proved eventually to be highly influential in the rise of the Ottoman state—as well as in Safavid circles and the Delhi sultanate—is perhaps not so surprising. The pluralistic representation of religion presented in Rumi’s writing is also balanced by claims to superiority in religious wisdom, which aligns

2 Brian Catlos, “Below the Surface: Subaltern Elites and Ethno-Religious Politics in the Crusade-Era Mediterranean”, Lecture in Barcelona, Spain, 7/28/2015. well with the Mediterranean modes of leadership: ‘accommodationist’, yet not acquiescent, competitive but not entirely exclusive. My project thus sought to answer two questions. The first was this: what would it mean to ‘Mediterranean-ize’ the Masnavi? In answering, I argue that we need to be ‘reading against the grain’ when approaching Rumi’s writing. This would require a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, to show that the extensive writing on Mongols, Egyptians, Jews, Christians, etc. within the Masnavi is not always or solely a spiritually-oriented didactic exercise, but additionally comments on the socio-political realities of its epoch. Further, such an approach would entail examining the particular spaces and interactions in Konya at the time of the texts’ composition: looking at Rumi and the nascent community around him as engaged in a competitive spiritual project, which is to say a political project articulated and constructed on religious grounds. We can then compare and contrast it with other projects around the Mediterranean, including the development of Christian religious orders (such as the Franciscans) and Jewish mystical communities and texts in Spain and elsewhere. The second question is perhaps a bit more difficult to articulate, or to answer: what would Mevlevi-tating the Mediterranean entail? In my view, this would require examining the particular role and function of (Sufi) spiritual orders as political entities, social organizations and locations of mobility. We could ask further how so-called ‘spiritual’ and/or corporate orders represent or display a form of identity negotiation within and against other forms of socio-religious authority. How do cultural artifacts, whether they be sacred texts, relics, or resplendent jewels, figure into these negotiations and claims to authority? As Cecily J. Hilsdale discussed in Barcelona, “material objects travel and mediate”.3 Though it may be odd to think of a book in these terms, a book is no less an object than the paper and golden ink that makes up its pages, or the silk in which it wrapped when it is presented to a patron. The Masnavi, which wound its way into court circles through professional reciters and illustrators, is a mediating object within the complexities of the medieval Mediterranean. While the appeal of this and other Sufi literature may not have spread West until the 19th and 20th century, the groundwork had already been laid in the East for this exchange in both elite and popular circles. To Mevlevitate the Mediterranean, then, is to identify a genealogy of the medieval that did not become visible to Western scholars until the advent of Orientalism. Revisiting this massive text (and those who have

3 Cecily J. Hilsdale, “The Art of the Gift in the Medieval Mediterranean”, lecture, Barcelona, Spain, 7/22/15. held it in high esteem) through the lens of Mediterranean studies thus offers us perspective on how the cultural production of the Mevlevis (amongst others) can contribute a uniquely disruptive referent when re-constructing the genealogies of modernity from the medieval. In my view, the Mevlevis provided an intriguing alternate polity, one able to withstand vacuums in political authority such as that brought on by the collapse of the Seljuks or other instability within the governance of the Eastern Mediterranean. The order was, in a way, a pole amidst a decentralized polity spinning around it. The Masnavi, along with Rumi’s shrine and other cultural artifacts, were animating factors in this group’s negotiation of identities, claims to authority in both higher and lower realms. They also serve as historical markers for later scholars to identify in order to trace their presence and influence through the succeeding centuries.