by N. WAHID AZAL
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio IMAGE/N. Wahid Azal
Everybody became my friend according to their own consideration; none searched for my secrets from within me
– Rumi, Masnavi, Book 1: Prologue
Rumification
In one of the closing chapters of his masterpiece ‘Occidentosis’ (gharbzadegi), Jalal Al-e Ahmad (d. 1969) famously observed:
[Today] a film studio calls upon a person to portray some historical or legendary…[figure].. and then spends fantastic sums to market these heroes for advertising, embroider their lives, their marriages…divorces…struggles… Beginning a year or two before the film appears, the newspapers, radio, and television report this and the news reaches the ears of the media [everywhere]. Then it comes time to reap the harvest: the film hits the screens in fifteen world capitals with the participation of leading society figures in a single gala opening night. As a result, another hero has been added to the ranks of the heroes of the silver screen. That is, another historical or legendary hero has been bled dry of any dignity or credibility [1].
And so, after thirty years since the New Age pop culture of Euro-America first appropriated the medieval Persian Sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi (d. 1273) (better known to posterity as ‘Rumi’) — an appropriation, I might add, facilitated via a Rumi publishing industry spawned from the adaptations (and not proper translations) made by American beat poets Coleman Barkes and Robert Bly — we are now to anticipate a forthcoming Hollywood biopic about his life on the big screen.
The rumoured casting for the film has Leonardo DiCaprio in the main role as Jalaluddin Rumi with “Iron Man” Robert Downey Jr. being hinted at the supporting role as Rumi’s spiritual preceptor, the Shams of Tabriz (d. 1248). David Fanzoni, of “Gladiator” (2000) fame, together with Stephen Joel Brown are the screenwriters and producers for the forthcoming Hollywood extravaganza; and ever since its announcement earlier in June, the future film has already created a storm of controversy, with accusations of whitewash abounding in the corporate media, blogosphere and social media alike. An online petition has even been made directly calling on Fanzoni and Brown to reconsider their choice of casting with over 14,000 signatures collected as of this writing that correctly characterizes this choice of casting “…as both ludicrous and offensive.” The petition further highlights the fact that “…Muslim actors are readily typecasted as terrorists, but when a movie portrays a Muslim in a positive light, they are shunted off to the side to make room for another white actor [2].”
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Rumi, Shams and History
Mawlana (our master; Turkish ‘Mevlana’) Jalaluddin (the majesty of the religion) Muhammad ibn Muhammad Baha’uddin al-Walad al-Balkhi was born in Balkh (located in modern north-east Afghanistan) –- others contend his birthplace was actually in Wakhsh in modern south-eastern Tajikestan –- during the early thirteenth century to a notable religious family whose father traced his lineage back to the family of the first Sunni caliph Abu Bakr (d. 632) [4]. Rumi’s father Sultan al-Ulama Baha’uddin Walad (d. 1231) – who was arguably his first teacher on the spiritual path — was already an accomplished Sufi as well as a renowned exoteric religious scholar in his own right. Political rivalries with other scholars in the royal court of the kingdom of the Khwarizmshah — together with the Mongol onslaught that would soon engulf the whole of Central and most of South-West Asia (and beyond) in an orgy of blood and destruction — forced Sultan Baha’uddin Walad to move his family out of Balkh, eventually settling in Seljuq Anatolia in the town of Konya. Here Sultan Baha’uddin Walad quickly established himself as one of Konya’s chief religious dignitaries. After his death (only two years after arrival) this function would pass over to his son Jalaluddin, now an adult.
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During the next three to four years, Rumi and Shams were inseparable, with Rumi apparently neglecting all of his official duties in Konya in order to be with his beloved Shams. Soon the envy, jealousy and machinations of disciples and a few members of his family alike first forced Shams to briefly flee Rumi’s company and out of Konya to Damascus. Rumi was despondent and so Shams soon returned; but not too long after his return, Shams disappeared once again, this time forever, believed to have been murdered by one of Rumi’s own younger sons, Ala’uddin. Other stories relate that Shams escaped murder and eventually resettled in the east, probably somewhere in his native Azerbaijan. Shams’ purported eastward flight from Konya subsequently generated all kinds of legends about the man’s posthumous survival with a Sufi tomb in Multan, Pakistan bearing his name and persistently claimed to house his final remains by local folk belief. Other legends hold Shams of Tabriz to have been the surviving son of the last Isma’ili Shi’ite Imam who had escaped the Mongol destruction of the Nizari Isma’ili stronghold at Alamut in 1256 CE and subsequently went on to Konya to initiate Rumi into the mysteries of esoteric Shi’ism, then departing after having accomplished the task, albeit most contemporary Rumi scholars reject this entire hypothesis as completely fanciful.
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