Review: Me & Rumi

Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-I Tabrizi

by William Chittick

Fons Vitae Publishing, Louisville, Kentucky, 2004     530 pp.

For source material, Professor Chittick translated notes kept by students of Shams. He also translated about two-thirds of the available notes kept during discourses between Shams and Rumi.

I’m sure that many of us have wondered what it was about Shams that so startled Rumi out of his comfortable scholar/shaykh world and lifted him into such divine intoxication. We might even say . . . threw him off the cliff. Many of us have probably wondered what was it about Shams that offended and alienated students and some family members around Rumi.

Shams was the elder by a couple of decades, and had been teaching the Koran, a book to be learnt by heart and recited. Shams had in meditation or prayer asked God for a companion for his heart, “someone who can stand me.” In this we can discern that Shams himself was aware that he could be generally unbearable. When he was asked in return, “What will you give?” he is said to have replied, “My head.” And this, the scholars say, appears to be what was required of him.

He was then told that the man he was seeking was in Konya. And the rest, even subject to endless scholarly debate and investigation, became a history accessible to us through the poetry and the devotional sema or turning dance of Rumi.

Chittick dedicates this book to the memory of Annemarie Schimmel, whose Rumi scholarship is also legendary. Interviews with Professor Schimmel (she says sha – mel with emphasis on last syllable) are in our CSS library. We have several books by Prof. Schimmel and several by Prof. Chittick.

In Me & Rumi, Chittick sets forth translations of Shams speaking. The book has three sections: “My years without Mawlana,” “My Path to God,” and “My Time with Mawlana.” One of the chapters in the third section is titled “My Harshness with Friends.”

The book allows us to hear at last from Shams himself, and it is very rich. For me there were many surprises. Among them, his near brutality to young students whose attention to the Koran does not satisfy. Since the Koran is to be memorized and recited, Shams demands perfect receptivity and attention. He would refuse a student whose parents were unwilling to allow Shams “carte blanche” with regard to discipline. For Shams, severity is the other face of God. This theme resonates throughout Persian mysticism and poetry.

Another surprise is the appearance of arrogance (for lack of a better word) in Shams’ view of his place with Rumi. With regard to their first separation, it is Shams’ belief that Rumi “needed to be cooked.” Later, Shams found Rumi suitably cooked. This is another theme that resonates throughout Rumi’s poetry.

I recommend this book. A word of caution though -- these teachers insist that we embrace the severity as well as the majesty and benevolence of the divine, of life. Really, what choice have we?

-- submitted by Sylvia Hawley

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