Rumi: A Life in Pictures

• Includes 70 colour images, showing all of the paintings from the three manuscripts, accompanied by a summary of the text illustrated in each picture
• Focuses on the specific relationships between literary narrative and its visual representation in late medieval Islamic art
• Provides Anatolian and Ottoman historical background as context for the life story of Rumi and the Mawlawi Sufi order

Picturing the life story of Jalal ad-Din Rumi, a premier Muslim mystic and the original Whirling Dervish, the images in three extant manuscripts of Aflaki’s Wondrous Feats of the Knowers of God provide a unique way to interpret the text.

Part One: History and Context provides the medieval Anatolian historical setting; the broad contours of literary and artistic works of Islamic Hagiography; and the specific details of the three manuscripts to be explored. Part Two: Text and Image proposes a method for interpreting a hybrid literary–visual document as a grand narrative of the Family Rumi at the inspirational and ethical core of a virtuous community – flourishing within a complex Muslim society under divine providence.

The images in the three manuscripts were produced by studios of painters under the patronage of major late 16th-century Ottoman sultans. The result of their efforts is a kind of ‘visualised hagiography’ uniquely capable of suggesting distinctive and often surprising twists on the narratives, enhancing the text with images of striking beauty and rich detail.