The fact that Rumi, with his profound and powerful message, has achieved such extraordinary fame and popularity in our time is certainly a cause for celebration.
Unfortunately, however, this popularity has also brought with it a serious problem: the widespread circulation of countless fabricated or irrelevant quotations and verses attributed to Rumi, things that, at times, Rumi himself would probably be astonished to hear!
This is particularly troubling because Rumi’s works are preserved in well-known and reliable sources, making it entirely possible to investigate whether a particular verse or statement actually belongs to him. Yet on social media, virtually anyone can invent a sentence or a line of poetry, post it, and simply write “Rumi” underneath.
And this somehow becomes “drawing on Rumi’s message”!
Even more surprising is that we, the audience, rarely bother to ask a few very simple questions:
How do we know that Rumi actually said this?
What is the reliable source for this quotation?
In which of his works does it appear?
The beauty or profundity of a statement, or even its superficial resemblance to mystical thought, is no evidence that it came from Rumi.
As you can see, I recently asked a blogger friend for the source of a statement they had attributed to Rumi. To my surprise, not only was no specific reference provided, but the response did not really address my question about the source or textual evidence at all.
This has an important consequence. Through the constant repetition of such attributions, we have gradually created an imaginary Rumi, a Rumi assembled from our own tastes, beliefs, preferences, and invented sayings, who may bear little resemblance to the historical Rumi and his actual thought.
This is precisely the kind of danger Rumi himself warned against:Â that it is for chasing an imaginary treasure that you are deprived of the real one:
You lose the true treasure
Due to illusory treasures
(Masnavi, B. 1, V. 2483)
Reason demands that whenever a statement is attributed to a historical figure, we ask:
What is its source?
In which work does it appear?
What reliable evidence supports the attribution?
That is, of course, if we genuinely wish to encounter the historical and authentic Rumi, rather than the “fake Rumi” of social media.
Sasan Habibvand: Rumi Scholar and philosophor
Read more in the Tightrope Walker
