[In the following excerpt, redrafted by A. J. Arberry and published five years after Nicholson's death, Nicholson discusses the pantheistic themes found in Rumi's Mathnavi and praises the poem's "exhilarating sense of largeness and freedom by its disregard for logical cohesion, defiance of conventions, bold use of the language of common life, and abundance of images drawn from homely things and incidents familiar to every one."]

Rumi's literary output, as stupendous in magnitude as it is sublime in content, consists of the very large collection of mystical odes, perhaps as many as 2,500, which make up the Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi; the Mathnawi in six books of about 25,000 rhyming couplets; and the Ruba'iyat or quatrains, of which maybe about 1,600 are authentic.¹ The forms in which he clothes his religious philosophy had been fashioned before him by two great Sufi poets, Sana'i of Ghaznah and Faridu'1-Din 'Attar of Nishapur. Though he makes no secret of his debt to them both, his flight takes a wider range, his materials are richer and more varied, and his method of handling the subject is so original that it may justly be described as "a new style." It is a style of great subtlety and complexity, hard to analyse; yet its general features are simple and cannot be doubted. In the Mathnawi, where it is fully developed, it gives the reader an exhilarating sense of largeness and freedom by its disregard for logical cohesion, defiance of conventions, bold use of the language of common life, and abundance of images drawn from homely things and incidents familiar to every one. The poem resembles a trackless ocean: there are no boundaries; no lines of demarcation between the literal "husk" and the "kernel" of doctrine in which its inner sense is conveyed and copiously expounded. The effortless fusion of text and interpretation shows how completely, in aesthetics as in every other domain, the philosophy of Rumi is inspired by the monistic idea. "The Mathnawi" he says, "is the shop for Unity (wahdat); anything that you see there except the One (God) is an idol." Ranging over the battlefield of existence, he finds all its conflicts and discords playing the parts assigned to them in the universal harmony which only mystics can realize.

Sufi pantheism or monism involves the following propositions:

1. There is One Real Being, the Ultimate Ground of all existence. This Reality may be viewed either as God (the Divine Essence) or as the World (phenomena by which the hidden Essence is made manifest).
2. There is no creation in Time. Divine Self-manifestation is a perpetual process. While the forms of the universe change and pass and are simultaneously renewed without a moment's intermission, in its essence it is co-eternal with God. There never was a time when it did not exist as a whole in His Knowledge.
3. God is both Immanent, in the sense that He appears under the aspect of limitation in all phenomenal forms, and Transcendent, in the sense that He is the Absolute Reality above and beyond every appearance.
4. The Divine Essence is unknowable. God makes His Nature known to us by Names and Attributes which He has revealed in the Koran. Though essentially identical, from our point of view the Divine Attributes are diverse and opposed to each other, and this differentiation constitutes the phenomenal world, without which we could not distinguish good from evil and come to know the Absolute Good. In the sphere of Reality there is no such thing as evil.
5. According to the Holy Tradition, "I created the creatures in order than I might be known," the entire content of God's Knowledge is objectified in the universe and pre-eminently in Man. The Divine Mind, which rules and animates the cosmos as an Indwelling Rational Principle (Logos), displays itself completely in the Perfect Man. The supreme type of the Perfect Man is the pre-existent Reality or Spirit of Muhammad, whose "Light" irradiates the long series of prophets beginning with Adam and, after them, the hierarchy of Muslim saints, who are Muhammad's spiritual heirs. Whether prophet or saint, the Perfect Man has realized his Oneness with God: he is the authentic image and manifestation of God and therefore the final cause of creation, since only through him does God become fully conscious of Himself.

These are some of the themes underlying Rumi's poetry. He is not their original author; they may be regarded as having been gradually evolved by the long succession of Sufi thinkers from the ninth century onwards, then gathered together and finally formulated by the famous Andalusian mystic, Ibnu'l-'Arabi (1165-1240). Ibnu'l-'Arabi has every right to be called the father of Islamic pantheism. He devoted colossal powers of intellect and imagination to constructing a system which, though it lacks order and connexion, covers the whole ground in detail and perhaps, all things considered, is the most imposing monument of mystical speculation the world has ever seen. While it is evident that Rumi borrowed some part of his terminology and ideas from his elder contemporary, who himself travelled in Rum and lies buried in Damascus, the amount of the debt has inevitably been exaggerated by later commentators whose minds are filled with forms of though alien to the Mathnawi but familiar to readers of Ibnu'l-'Arabi's Fususu'l-hikam ("Bezels of Wisdom") and al-Futuhatu'l-Makkiyya ("Meccan Revelations"). The Andalusian always writes with a fixed philosophical purpose, which may be defined as the logical development of a single all-embracing concept, and much of his thought expresses itself in a dialectic bristling with technicalities. Rumi has no such aim. As E. H. Whinfield said, his mysticism is not "doctrinal" in the Catholic sense but "experimental." He appeals to the heart more than to the head, scorns the logic of the schools, and nowhere does he embody in philosophical language even the elements of a system. The words used by Dante in reference to the Divine Commedia would serve excellently as a description of the Mathnawi: "the poem belongs to the moral or ethical branch of philosophy, its quality is not speculative but practical, and its ultimate end is to lead into the state of felicity those now enduring the miserable life of man." The Mathnawi for the most part shows Rumi as the perfect spiritual guide engaged in making others perfect and furnishing novice and adept alike with matter suitable to their needs. Assuming the general monistic theory to be well known to his readers, he gives them a panoramic view of the Sufi gnosis (direct intuition of God) and kindles their enthusiasm by depicting the rapture of those who "break through to the Oneness" and see all mysteries revealed.²

While the Mathnawi is generally instructional in character, though it also has entertaining passages, as befits a book intended for the enlightenment of all sorts of disciples, the Diwan and, on a much smaller scale, the Ruba'iyat are personal and emotional in appeal. Lyrics and quatrains alike have everywhere the authentic ring of spiritual inspiration, while in image, style and language they often approximate very closely to the Mathnawi. In some of these poems the mystic's passion is so exuberant, his imagination so overflowing, that we catch glimpses of the very madness of Divine experience. Yet the powerful intellect of Rumi the man never quite capitulates to the enthusiasm of Rumi the mystic; at the last moment there is a sudden drawing-back, a consciousness that certain matters are too secret and too holy to be communicated in words. It is not surprising to read that these poems, chanted (as many of them were doubtless composed) in the spiritual séance of the Mevlevis, roused the hearers to an almost uncontrollable fervour.

In Rumi the Persian mystical genius found its supreme expression. Viewing the vast landscape of Sufi poetry, we see him standing out as a sublime mountain-peak; the many other poets before and after him are but foot-hills in comparison. The influence of his example, his thought and his language is powerfully felt through all the succeeding centuries; every Sufi after him capable of reading Persian has acknowledged his unchallenged leadership. To the West, now slowly realizing the magnitude of his genius, … he is fully able to prove a source of inspiration and delight not surpassed by any other poet in the world's literature.

Notes

1. [This sentence has been added to the author's draft.— A. J. A.]
2. Here Professor Nicholson's notes end.