International reading guide

Rumi and Sufism

Love, knowledge and spiritual maturation.

A visual reading

Reading Sufi culture through an image

Reading Sufi culture through an image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public Domain / CC0 · Source · License
Images were resized and converted to WebP; not cropped.

The Met attributes this early seventeenth-century Portrait of a Sufi to the Deccan in India. It is not a portrait of Rumi. The image introduces a particular artistic context; it cannot stand for every Sufi tradition or replace close reading of a text.

This page is the international reading edition. You can also read the detailed Turkish original. Turkish original

SourcesThe Met — Portrait of a Sufi ↗The Met — Art of the Sufis ↗

This page is the international reading edition. You can also read the detailed Turkish original. Turkish original

Love and divine unity

Rumi’s understanding of love belongs within Islamic Sufism. Images of the beloved and the journey in his poetry relate to the human turn toward God and the disciplining of the self. Reading every image only in its everyday sense can obscure the text’s layers.

Form, meaning and reading

The relationship between form and meaning invites readers to look beyond a story’s outward plot. Criticism of reason does not amount to rejecting all learning. Reading the surrounding verses and comparing annotated editions can deepen understanding.

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Sources

International reading guide

Sources and further reading

Sources