Today is the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi’s birth in Balkh (in present-day Afghanistan). Charles Haviland of the BBC went to Balkh to find out if Rumi’s influence is still alive there, as he tells in this story.

Baha’u'llah, Founder of the Baha’i Faith, quotes from Rumi’s Mathnavi in His mystical work Haft Vadí (The Seven Valleys):

Love setteth a world aflame at every turn, and he wasteth every land where he carrieth his banner. Being hath no existence in his kingdom; the wise wield no command within his realm. The leviathan of love swalloweth the master of reason and destroyeth the lord of knowledge. He drinketh the seven seas, but his heart’s thirst is still unquenched, and he saith, “Is there yet any more?” He shunneth himself and draweth away from all on earth.

Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too;
In him are lunacies seventy-and-two.

It is of course, the last quoted couplet that is from the Mathnavi.

You can find a nice account of Rumi’s life and spiritual milieu on the website of the Threshold Society.

In honour of this anniversary, what better than to quote Mawlana himself:

You that love Lovers,
this is your home. Welcome!

In the midst of making form, Love
made this form that melts form,
with love for the door, and
Soul, the vestibule.

Watch the dust grains moving
in the light near the window.

Their dance is our dance.

We rarely hear the inward music,
but we’re dancing to it nevertheless,

directed by Shams,
the pure joy of the sun,
our Music Master.

[Rumi, Like This, 43 odes in versions by Coleman Barks, published by Maypop, 1990]

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