Selection from Seven Sermons of Rumi

Rumi in the pulpit: seven formal sermons in Persian, built on Qur'an verses and carried by stories.

by Rumi282 passages held

Persian, the original language

Original title: مجالس سبعه
First published: 1244(aged 37)
Original language: Persian

Overview

When Rumi preached these seven sermons is disputed. Aflaki, the Mevlevi order's fourteenth-century biographer, has him giving them after Shams of Tabriz had gone, at the request of Konya's notables and above all of Salah al-Din Zarkub, the goldbeater who was his companion in the years after Shams; others place them before 1244, when Rumi was still the town's preacher and teacher of religious learning. Each sermon opens with praise of God in Arabic — in all but the seventh, an intimate prayer in Persian follows — and then works outward from a verse of the Qur'an or a saying of the Prophet. Their recurring claim is that a person is made by what they see, and that faith changes what there is to see. Stories carry the argument. In one, Hamza, the Prophet's uncle, is asked why he wore armour into battle as a young man and now fights without it; then, he answers, he was walking toward death, and now he walks toward life. Verses of Sana'i and Attar, the Persian mystical poets, stand beside lines of Rumi's own. The oldest manuscript, kept in Konya, is dated 1352; the edition Tawfiq Subhani published in 1986 is the one scholars use, and in English the sermons have appeared only in part.

Key concepts

What does repentance mean in Rumi's Seven Sermons?

It means a turning of the whole person, not only regret for a past act. The sermons treat sin and worldliness as a way of seeing, so repentance is the moment that way of seeing changes. Mercy is what makes the turn possible, and repentance is therefore less a verdict on the past than a change of direction for what follows.

Why do the sermons argue through stories instead of proofs?

Because their claim is about seeing, and a story makes a listener see before it asks them to agree. Hamza's answer about his armour does more than a definition of repentance could: it shows a man whose relation to death has turned over. Verses of Sana'i and Attar and lines of Rumi's own work the same way, as images that change what the listener notices.

How does a sermon work outward from a Qur'an verse?

It takes a verse of the Qur'an or a saying of the Prophet as its starting point and draws out what that text asks of a listener now. The verse is not decoration for an argument made elsewhere; it is the lens the sermon teaches its audience to look through, which fits the book's central claim that faith changes what there is to see.

What is worldliness in the sermons?

Worldliness is attachment to the world as if it were final: treating what can be lost as what one is. The sermons do not condemn the world itself but a way of seeing it, the one that makes death a pure threat and every possession a defence. Hamza's youthful armour fits that picture: a self that must arm itself against an end it can only fear.

What does self-annihilation mean in the Seven Sermons?

It is the dying of the ego's claim to be the centre, so that a person lives from God rather than for themselves. In the sermons it is the other face of Hamza's answer: once the self no longer needs defending, death stops being the thing walked toward. Annihilation, in this sense, is not the loss of life but the precondition for walking toward it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A Person Is Made by What They See

If what a person becomes depends on what they see, what does faith do to the seeing? The sermons answer that faith changes what there is to see.

Each sermon works outward from a verse of the Qur'an or a saying of the Prophet, and the claim that keeps returning is that a person is made by what they see. Faith, on this account, is not assent added to an unchanged picture of things; it alters the picture, and so alters the one who looks. The sermons' own shape begins there too: Arabic praise of God and, in all but the seventh, an intimate prayer in Persian, before any argument is made.

faith
knowledge
prophecy
prophethood
miracles
divine unity
worship
prayer
devotion
divine love
love
longing
mysticism

Enter a dialogue

Walking Toward Death, Walking Toward Life

Why would a man who once needed armour now go into battle without it? For the sermons the answer lies in what death has become for him.

Hamza, the Prophet's uncle, is asked why a man who wore armour into battle in his youth now fights without it. Then, he answers, he was walking toward death; now he walks toward life. The story carries the sermons' account of repentance and mortality: the death that terrifies the worldly self is a passage for someone whose sight has turned. Sin, temptation and attachment to the world are read as that earlier way of seeing, and mercy as what makes the turn possible at all.

death
mortality
afterlife
repentance
forgiveness
divine mercy
divine grace
sin
temptation
ego
self-annihilation
worldly attachment
worldliness
desire
suffering
obedience
justice

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 282
distinct concepts: 433
by passages held, corpus-wide: #265

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “forgiveness” and “repentance”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 18 pairings. 93 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
forgiveness	repentance	7
divine mercy	repentance	6
divine mercy	forgiveness	5
divine love	mysticism	4
divine mercy	prayer	4
divine love	prayer	2
forgiveness	prayer	2
desire	divine love	1
desire	divine mercy	1
desire	repentance	1
divine love	divine mercy	1
divine love	forgiveness	1
divine love	repentance	1
divine mercy	faith	1
faith	forgiveness	1
faith	mysticism	1
faith	prayer	1
prayer	repentance	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1244 Selection from Seven Sermons of Rumi (مجالس سبعه) you are here FA
1260 The Masnavi (مثنوی معنوی)
Rumi's best-known book and the work of his last dozen years: a long teaching poem in rhyming couplets, beside the lyrics he wrote in the name of Shams of Tabriz.
FA
1273 Discourses of Rumi (فیه ما فیه)
Where the Masnavi teaches in verse, these talks teach in conversation: the poem's ideas as Rumi put them in prose in Konya, to a mixed audience of disciples and officials.
FA
1273 Divani Shamsi Tabriz (دیوان شمس)
The lyric half of Rumi's work, set against the teaching verse of the Masnavi: the poems that came out of his friendship with Shams of Tabriz.
FA

— or open another of their works