ABSTRACT
Not long after the death of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, it was said that general things became particular to him. The term, “rhyming couplets” which formerly meant any book of verses, came to refer to the Mathnawi of Mawlana. The Turkic peoples who invaded the Persian Plateau beginning in the eleventh century and established the Great Seljuq Empire had no refined or literary culture of their own. So the ruling and elite classes wisely adopted Persian language and culture. A central spiritual practice in Sufism is the remembering, recollecting, mentioning, and praising of God—throughout the waking hours as much as possible. Whirling in Sufism was undoubtedly inspired (as was much of early Sufism) by mystical interpretation of verses in the Qur'an. Sufi teachers and poets sometimes surprise or shock listeners by statements that appear on the surface to be irreligious, heretical, or blasphemous—but which are expressions of profound wisdom when understood on a deeper level.
