The Portable Rumi

By Jalal al-Din Rumi

At his best, Rumi expresses love for another man more profoundly and more poetically than any other writer except, perhaps, Shakespeare or Hafiz. "I see my beauty in you," Rumi says in another ghazal for Shams. For seven centuries, readers have discovered their own capacity for beauty in the words of Rumi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Watersgreen House
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005730499

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The Portable Rumi

Selections from the DĪVĀNI SHAMSI TABRĪZ

& the MASNAVI

By Jalal al-Din Rumi

Translated by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

& E.H. Whinfield

With an introduction by Keith Hale

London

Copyright © 2021 by Watersgreen House

All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Black & White on White paper

BISAC: Poetry / Middle Eastern / LGBT

Cover art: Louis Comfort Tiffany

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Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary and provocative.

Watersgreen House, Publishers.

Rumi (1207-1273)

Two noteworthy world religions have grown out of same-sex love affairs. The Roman Emperor Hadrian began a religion in the name of Antinous following the death of his young companion. However, the legacy of Antinous, based in part on the boy's physical beauty, was insufficient to rival the growing popularity of Christianity, and the religion died. By contrast, the whirling dervish order of Sufis, begun by Jalal al-Din Rumi following the disappearance of his beloved friend Shams al-Din, continues to whirl after more than seven centuries, and the love poems Rumi wrote for and about Shams are still recited and praised throughout Persia and much of the Islamic world, although modern Islam certainly downplays and frequently ignores or denies altogether the homosexual roots and aspects of the verse.

Rumi was born near Balkh (Afghanistan) in 1207 but lived most of his life in Konya (Turkey). He was a thirty-four-year-old Sufi teacher when he met the wandering dervish and mystic Shams al-Din of Tabriz in October 1244. Shams was nearly sixty. The two men immediately established a spiritual bond and would disappear together inside a house for months at a time, causing great resentment and jealousy among Rumi's followers. Twice the devotees managed to force Shams out of Konya, but both times Rumi sent a friend to Baghdad to retrieve him. When, in 1247, Shams abruptly disappeared, legends (presumably apocryphal) began that he had miraculously vanished from earth while in the hands of Rumi's followers; more likely, they murdered him. Rumi searched for Shams for many days but eventually gave up and went into seclusion. It was while in mourning for Shams that he adorned the garments now associated with the dervish order he