Husam al-Din encouraged, recorded and helped revise Rumi’s Masnavi. The poem’s openings, scholarly biographies and surviving later manuscripts reveal a collaboration involving speech, writing, reading and spiritual authority.

Illuminated manuscript page with blue-and-gold floral borders around mounted hunters and animals on a pink-and-green landscape
Frontispiece, page 1 verso, of a later Masnavi manuscript dated 894 AH/1488–89 CE, attributed to Iran. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13.228.12, gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913. This is not Husam al-Din’s handwriting or a portrait of him. [6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain / CC0.

From an Urmia family to Rumi’s circle

Hasan ibn Muhammad, known as Husam al-Din Chalabi, was born in Konya around 1225 into a family originating in Urmia. His father led an akhi or futuwwa brotherhood. The title connected the family with that institution, rather than supplying a simple ethnic label. [1][2] Biographical traditions describe Husam bringing his followers into Rumi’s circle. They should be read as accounts transmitted by Rumi’s biographers, not contemporary registration records.

Dictation, revision and reading aloud

Husam’s contribution went beyond encouraging Rumi to compose a long poem. Mohammad Estelami describes him recording dictation and reviewing and correcting the resulting text with Rumi. [1] Michael Pifer’s published chapter abstract also stresses recitation: Husam read the manuscript back and taught others to read it aloud. Pifer interprets this relationship as a dialogue shaping the work and its audience. [3] The evidence supports literary collaboration; it does not make Husam the author of every teaching or story.

Where to find him in the poem

The opening of Book II acknowledges an interruption, names Husam al-Din and gives the year 662 AH, corresponding to 1263–64 CE. [4] The opening of Book IV addresses him again, credits his aspiration with drawing the poem onward and makes the Masnavi itself express gratitude. [5] These are identifiable passages readers can examine, rather than an unattributed collection of inspirational quotations. The primary poem and later biographical explanations answer related but different questions about how the work came into being.

An interruption and a succession

Estelami connects the pause after Book I, completed around 1262, with the death of Husam’s wife, and dates the renewed dictation and revision to 1263–64. After Rumi’s death in 1273, Husam became the accepted successor; Rumi’s son Sultan Walad acknowledged his authority and succeeded him when Husam died in 1284. [1] This places the making of the poem within a continuing community, with responsibilities extending beyond the production of a book.

Kurdish background and an uncertain genealogy

Pifer describes Husam as likely of Kurdish descent. [3] The TDV biography discusses the ancestor associated with a saying about being Kurdish and becoming Arab, but records competing identifications: Abu al-Wafa al-Baghdadi and Husayn ibn Ali ibn Yazdanyar of Urmia. It does not establish Abu al-Wafa as Husam’s immediate grandfather. [2] A spiritual saying, a title and a family genealogy are different kinds of evidence. They should not be combined into a precise pedigree that the cited sources do not securely provide.

What a later manuscript can show

The illustrated manuscript reproduced here contains six books and is catalogued by the Met as completed in 1488–89, with four of its 355 folios added later. Its hunting frontispiece belongs to that manuscript’s artistic setting, centuries after Husam’s lifetime. [6] TDV reports that his own written copy has not survived, although Yusuf Ağa Library manuscript 5547 preserves some material transmitted from it. [2] Later copies document the poem’s transmission and reception; this image cannot authenticate Husam’s hand or reconstruct the original writing sessions.

Sources and further reading

  1. Mohammad Estelami, “Ḥosām-al-Din Čalabi”, Encyclopaedia Iranica XII/5 (2004; updated 2017), pp. 490–491; biography, dictation, revision and succession.
  2. H. Ahmet Sevgi, “Hüsâmeddin Çelebi”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 18 (1998), p. 512; family tradition, titles and the lost written copy.
  3. Michael Pifer, “The Macrocosmic Mas̱navī”, Kindred Voices: A Literary History of Medieval Anatolia (Yale University Press, 2021), pp. 57–73, DOI 10.12987/yale/9780300250398.003.0003; published abstract consulted.
  4. Rumi, Masnavi, Book II, opening, especially couplets 1–7; Persian text on Ganjoor. Read the poem separately from user comments and automated paraphrases.
  5. Rumi, Masnavi, Book IV, opening, especially couplets 1–9; Persian text on Ganjoor.
  6. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Masnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi, 13.228.12, dated 894 AH/1488–89 CE; manuscript catalogue and public-domain image, page 1 verso.