The Rumi You've Been Quoting Isn't Rumi

The most quoted mystic on Instagram was a Muslim scholar who called himself the servant of the Qur'an. Here is what he actually wrote, word by word.

The most-quoted mystic you've never read

Rumi is often called the best-selling poet in America. His lines are on mugs, wedding invitations and a thousand sunset photos. Most of them share one thing: you will not find a word about God, prayer or Islam in them.

That is not because Rumi didn't write about those things. He wrote about almost nothing else.

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–1273) was a Muslim scholar who taught Islamic law and preached in the mosque before he ever became a poet. His great work, the Masnavi, is so full of the Qur'an that later readers called it "the Qur'an in Persian". Much of the famous English "Rumi" comes from free versions written by poets who don't read Persian, working from older scholarly translations. Some of it can be traced back to a real poem. Some of it can't be traced to anything Rumi wrote at all.

The New Yorker called it "the erasure of Islam from the poetry of Rumi". This article is a small step the other way. Four passages, in the original Persian, translated exactly.

Take the Qur'an out of Rumi and you keep the movie but throw away the projector.

About these texts

• Author: Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, known as Rumi or Mawlana ("our master"). Born in 1207 in the eastern Persian world; died in Konya, in today's Turkey, in 1273.
• Language: Persian, written in the Perso-Arabic script, right to left.
• The works: the Masnavi, six books of teaching stories in rhyming couplets, and the Divan-e Shams, his collection of lyric poems and quatrains, named after his teacher Shams of Tabriz.
• The text used here: checked word by word against the edition on Ganjoor, the standard online library of Persian poetry. Quatrain numbers are given for Gamard and Farhadi's scholarly translation and for Ganjoor.

How to read the passages

Each passage has the Persian, a transliteration, and a simple guide to how it sounds in modern Persian (capitals show the stressed syllable). Open Word by word for the meaning of each word. The translation follows the Persian closely and adds nothing.

1. The Song of the Reed

The Masnavi doesn't begin with God, or with Rumi. It begins with a sound: the ney, the reed flute whose sound is at the heart of the Mevlevi ceremony of the "whirling dervishes".

The reed was cut from the reed bed. Its music is the sound of that separation, and everyone who hears it weeps because they recognise the feeling. Muslim readers have always heard the Qur'an behind it: إنا لله وإنا إليه راجعون, "To God we belong, and to Him we return" (Qur'an 2:156). The longing is not a problem to fix. It is a memory of where we came from.

2. "I am the servant of the Qur'an"

If you only read one Rumi poem in the original, make it this one. It is the quatrain the Instagram Rumi never shows you.

Read the last line again. Rumi warns that anyone who quotes him for anything other than this, he disowns.

3. The field beyond "rightdoing and wrongdoing"

You've probably seen this one: "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." It is lovely. Here is what the Persian says.

So the original is more daring than the English, not less. Rumi names Islam itself, and points to a place of union where even the words "believer" and "unbeliever" fall away. But look at what the knower does there: he lays his head on the ground. Sujud, prostration, is the most intimate posture of Muslim prayer. The field is not beyond devotion. It is where devotion becomes total.

4. "Come, come, whoever you are"

This may be the most famous "Rumi" line of all, and it is printed at the entrance of countless retreats. The English usually runs: "Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving." The Persian is different, and it isn't Rumi's.

The key word is tawba: repentance, literally "turning back". The original is not a door that asks nothing of you. It is a door that is never closed to the one who turns back, however many times they have failed. That is a deeply Qur'anic idea: لا تقنطوا من رحمة الله, "Do not despair of the mercy of God" (Qur'an 39:53).

Popular version or original?

My reflection: the reed and the lightbox

This section is my own reading, not part of Rumi's text or of Islamic teaching.

When I read the Song of the Reed, I hear the Projector Theory in another language. The reed bed is the lightbox, the Source. The cut is the moment of separation that makes an individual life possible. The music is everything we feel because of it: the longing, the restlessness, the sense that something is missing even when life is full.

Most people try to silence that music. Rumi says listen to it. The ache is not proof that something is wrong with you. It is proof of where you came from.

That is also why the edited Rumi feels thin after a while. It keeps the feeling and throws away its source. It is a movie with the projector taken out. Respecting where a teaching comes from is not a restriction on it. It is what keeps the light in it.

How it can help

What the texts say

Rumi's reed says longing is the sign of a lost origin, and that the one who has been separated recognises others who have been separated too. The quatrain of return says no failure closes the door: "even if you have broken your repentance a hundred times, come back." In the words of the texts, the way home is always open.

How the tradition uses them

• Listening. In the Mevlevi order founded after Rumi, the sema ceremony opens with a hymn in praise of the Prophet followed by the ney, and the Masnavi is recited and taught as a spiritual commentary on the Qur'an.
• Remembrance. Sufis practise dhikr, the remembrance of God, as the cure for ghaflah, forgetfulness. The reed's lament is that remembrance in poetic form.
• Returning. Tawba is not one dramatic moment. In Sufi teaching it is a daily turning back, as often as needed.

What the practice does

Slow listening, to music or to a line of poetry read aloud, gathers scattered attention and lengthens the breath, which many people find calming. The idea of returning without self-punishment may also help with the inner criticism that so often follows a "failed" practice. You wandered, you notice, you come back.

Reading and reflection are spiritual practices. They may support calm and self-understanding, but they are not medical or psychological treatment. If you are struggling, please also reach out to a qualified professional.

A practice: listening like the reed

This is my own practice, inspired by the texts above. It is not a Sufi ritual.

1. Sit quietly and play a recording of the ney for three minutes, or read the first couplet of the Masnavi aloud, slowly, three times.
2. Notice where in your body the longing lives: chest, throat, belly.
3. Don't fix it. Just listen to it, the way you would listen to music.
4. Each time your mind wanders, come back, without scolding yourself. Return is the practice.

Try it for 21 days and write one line each evening about what the longing seemed to point towards.

Sources and a note on accuracy

The Persian of all four passages was checked word by word against Ganjoor. Translations are my own, following the scholarly translations listed below; where manuscripts differ, the notes say so. The two Qur'an references are given in Arabic without vowel marks and translated for their meaning, as Muslim scholars describe any translation of the Qur'an. If you read Persian or Arabic and see something to correct, please write to me.

• Ibrahim Gamard and Ravan Farhadi, The Quatrains of Rumi (Sufi Dari Books, 2008), quatrains 395 and 1173; notes at Dar al-Masnavi
• R. A. Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, 1925–1940)
• Persian texts: Ganjoor, Rumi quatrain 1330, quatrain 157, Abu Sa'id, quatrain 1
• Rozina Ali, "The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi", The New Yorker, January 2017 (reprint)
• Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oneworld, 2000)
• Qur'an 2:156 and 39:53

Listen to the reed

The ache you feel is not proof that something is wrong. It is proof of where you came from.

Timeless Teachings shares sacred texts for study and reflection, with respect for the traditions they come from. Arvin Walters is not a teacher of Islam; for religious guidance, please consult a qualified scholar of the tradition.