Fīhi Mā Fīhi

Taken Down, Not Written

First attested
the 1250sThe sessions themselves. Jawid Mojaddedi dates them to the mid- to late 1250s on the strength of the living men they name; Franklin Lewis judges the notes were gathered into a book after Rumi's death in 1273. Nothing survives from his lifetime — the complete text sits in a manuscript of 751/1350, with roughly the first two-thirds in an earlier one of 716/1317, and those two are the basis of Furūzānfar's edition of 1951. The 1250s date is an argument from internal evidence, not a dated witness.

The one book of Rumi talking is thin at seventy-one discourses, and thick with statesmen, because — Jawid Mojaddedi argues from the text itself — his own disciples could rarely reach his conversation except when distinguished guests were in the room.

Rumi's table talk: seventy-one Persian prose discourses taken down by listeners, read as him thinking aloud.

Rumi left prose, and did not write it. Seventy-one discourses were noted down by disciples at his Konya teaching circle — sessions Jawid Mojaddedi dates to the mid- to late 1250s from the living men they name — and gathered into a book, Franklin Lewis judges, after his death in 1273. Muʿīn al-Dīn Parwāna — given court office in 1256 at a Mongol commander's direction, ruler of Anatolia for them from 1261, put to death by them in 1277 for a Mamluk invasion they blamed on him — recurs throughout. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar edited the Persian in 1951, A. J. Arberry translated it in 1961, W. M. Thackston again in 1994. Lewis reads the flat title not as Rumi's shrug but as a bookman's word for a miscellany.

Light

Nothing else catches him in the act: a story, then the homily that opens it out, and a statesman's plain question answered plainly. Discourse 1 takes one of the most powerful men in Anatolia to task over his dealings with the Mongols.

Shadow

It is notes, not a transcript: students' jottings, prayers and sermons left out, and Mojaddedi finds the discourses mostly composite rather than single sittings. The free PDF under Arberry's name is not his 1961 English; its front matter carries a 1999 introduction by another hand.

Sources and verification7 sources · 7 links

Primary source

  • Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī; ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Kitāb Fīhi mā fīhi, 1951, Tehran: Majlis; reprinted by Amīr Kabīr from 1962. Cite by discourse number, which is stable across editions and translationsThe standard critical Persian text, which displaced the uncritical printings of Shiraz (1900), Tehran (1915-16) and India (1928-29), and which lies behind both complete English translations. Furūzānfar himself said it needed revision; Jaʿfar Modarres-i Ṣādiqī's Maqālāt-i Mawlānā (Fīhi mā fīhi), Tehran, 1994, is the complement.
  • A. J. Arberry, Discourses of Rumi, 1961, London: John Murray; several reprints, including Samuel Weiser, New York, 1972The first complete English translation, made from the Furūzānfar edition, and the English in which the Discourses reached general readers.
  • W. M. Thackston, Jr., Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, 1994, Putney, VT: Threshold BooksThe second complete English translation, also from Furūzānfar; Lewis judges that it corrects a few of Arberry's mistakes and adds a critical introduction and notes.

Scholarship

  • Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalāl al-Din Rumi, 2008, rev. ed.; the section 'Rumi's Writings: The Discourses', pp. 292-93 in the 2000 first edition, and the account of Muʿīn al-Dīn Parwāna at pp. 278-82That the book records seventy-one talks, some formal and some informal; that it was probably compiled from various disciples' notes and put together most likely after Rumi's death, so that he did not author it and probably did not mean it to circulate — Lewis's own comparison is with the genesis of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics; that prayers and formal sermons were left out and only what the disciples thought worth noting was kept; that the title signifies a miscellany and that older manuscripts give the work the title al-Asrār al-Jalāliyya; that Arberry's translation is London, John Murray, 1961; and that Discourse 1 (Fīh 4-5) has Rumi taking Muʿīn al-Dīn Parwāna to task over his dealings with the Mongols.
  • Jawid Mojaddedi, Beyond Dogma: Rumi's Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories, 2012, Oxford University Press; pp. 1-18, with the dating argument at pp. 12-14The sustained analysis of the teaching-circle notes that the Iranica article summarises — the study that treats Fīhi mā fīhi as the record of a teaching circle rather than as a supplement to the poetry.
  • Jawid Mojaddedi, RUMI, JALĀL-AL-DIN viii. Rumi's Teachings, Encyclopædia Iranica, 2014, online edition, published 8 September 2014That the sessions date from the mid- to late 1250s in all likelihood, judged from references to other living individuals; the manuscript basis of Furūzānfar's edition — a complete text of 751/1350 and about the first two-thirds in one of 716/1317; the count of seventy-one discourses; that the discourses mostly seem to be composite units rather than records of single sittings; the argument that this modest quantity, together with the text's own remarks on the difficulty of reaching Rumi's oral teaching except when distinguished guests were present, shows he was not a hands-on teacher of his disciples; and that each discourse typically runs story-then-homily, where it is the Masnavi that breaks off midstream.

Further reading

  • William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, 1983, Albany: SUNY Press, SUNY Series in Islamic Spirituality. Passages are keyed to their Persian sources in the back matter, Fīhi mā fīhi by the page of the Persian and of Arberry's translation.Short passages of Fīhi mā fīhi in English set beside the Mathnawi and the Dīvān, each keyed to its Persian source — the quickest way to read the prose against the poetry.

Linked entries

  • Attributed toRūmīAttested

    The words are his; the book is not. Franklin Lewis writes that Rumi did not author it and probably did not intend it to be widely distributed, and compares its genesis to that of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics — a master's lectures, published by the people who took notes.

  • Set againstThe Song of the ReedAttested

    The Masnavi's opening was composed and dictated; these are notes of speech. Dhabīḥ Allāh Ṣafā, quoted by Lewis, observes that the Discourses show the stylistics of oral delivery and lack the word-play, Arabic vocabulary and sound patterning a deliberately literary text of the period would carry.

  • Transmitted intoSultan WaladAttested

    The teaching passes through him into an order, and these notes catch him young at it: in Discourse 10 he makes his father's excuses to Muʿīn al-Dīn Parwāna — Rumi's states vary, so he would rather visit the Amir than be visited — the son who would build the Mevlevi order, already handling the old man's callers.

  • Set againstReynold A. NicholsonAttested

    The Discourses came into English through Arberry, not Nicholson. Arberry began studying with Nicholson at Cambridge in 1927, edited his teacher's posthumous Rumi: Poet and Mystic in 1950, and turned to the prose in 1961; Lewis calls him Nicholson's successor.

  • Set againstOut Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and RightdoingAttested

    A much-quoted quatrain whose English cannot easily be matched to a Persian line is the opposite case to this one: the Discourses have a critical edition of 1951 and two complete translations, so what Rumi is said to have said can actually be checked.

  • Set againstThe Dīvān-e Shams-e TabrīzīAttested

    Two books Rumi did not assemble. The Dīvān carries another man's name by his own choice; the Discourses carry nobody's, and some older manuscripts title them al-Asrār al-Jalāliyya instead.

  • Set againstSultan WaladAttested

    Rumi's Discourses are talk taken down by students; his son's Maʿārif is fifty-six sermons he composed as sermons, which is the difference between a poet overheard and a preacher at work.

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