[Sca-cooks] Rumi, was FW: Turkish Recipe
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Mon May 16 09:15:57 PDT 2005
Rumi's dates are given as 1207-1273, that's thirteenth century,
despite a reviewer's confusion.
He was actually Persian and wrote his poetry in Persian, primarily,
and Arabic, secondarily, not in Turkish, as far as i can tell. It's
hard to find his personal name, it may have been Muhammed. Jalal
al-Din, sometimes written Jalaladin or Jalaluddin, was his Sufi
title, and the name by which he was usually known.
His family lived in Balkh when he was young. That's now in
Afghanistan, but it was a major cultural center in the eastern
Persian Empire throughout SCA period. His father, Muhammad ibn
Hussain Khatibi, whose Sufi title was Baha' al-Din Walad, was a well
regarded Sufi at the time. The family moved westward in Persia to
Nishapour when Rumi was around 12, possibly due to pressure from
invaders, and eventually moved to Baghdad, where the primary spoken
and literary language was Arabic. The family went on the hajj
(pilgrimage to Mecca), then moved to the city of Konya in
south-central Anatolia, at the request of the ruler who wanted Rumi's
father as a teacher.
"Rumi" was Arabic for "Roman". Byzantium was called "Rum", meaning
"Rome", which the Byzantines considered themselves to be the
continuation of. Konya is in an area that had been part of the
Byzantine Empire. Konya had earlier been part of Byzantium, then had
been incorporated into the Seljuk Turkish Empire. By the time of
Rumi's life, it was an independent "kingdom", after the Seljuk Empire
came apart at the end of the 12th century, known as Rum. "Rumi" means
"of Rum" or "from Rum" and was added to his name
He became popularly known as Rumi in the 19th century.
As for being best-selling poet in America, this is the case in the
past decade or so. Here in NoCal, there are frequent nights of Rumi,
either readings or readings with music, and lectures by various
translators and re-workers of his writings, such as Coleman Barks or
Shahram Shiva, are packed to the rafters.
I haven't been able to find any information about a dietary manual,
although i have found a site that lists the foods he mentions in his
poems. I don't know if this is accurate, as far as Rumi's poetry
goes, but the food list is pretty accurate for the 9th-15th century
Arabic language recipes i have, some of which are of Persian origin.
http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook/essay_rumi_food.html
--
Urtatim, formerly Anahita
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list