After Rumi

While the body of writing in English concerned with the Persian spiritual master and poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī grows ever more voluminous, there is relatively little available when it comes to the religious and cultural heritage and influence of the enduring and influential brotherhood associated with his name. This new study represents an important contribution. The author, Prof. Elias, is an expert on Islamic mysticism whose previous publications include The Throne Carrier of God, a pioneering study of ʿAlāʾ al-Dawlah Simnānī, a major Iranian master of the Kubrawiyyah Sufi Order, and Death before Dying, selections and translations from the Abyāt (Couplets) of the great Punjabi Sufi folk poet Sulṭān Bāhū.

The closest comparable work to After Rumi is a classic 576-page monograph first published in 1953: Mevlânâ’dan sonra Mevlevilik (‘The Mawlawiyya after Mawlānā’) by Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı, the most famous authority of the 20th century on Turkish Sufi literature, himself a prominent Mevlevi initiate. He described his book as being not only the ‘biography’ of a Sufi Order but also a compilation of historical documents, with photographs two of which show Abdülbâki Bey in dervish garb, as a boy of seven and in old age.