Rumi and Ibn al-Jawzi

Ibn al-Jawzi, a Hanbali historian and orator who died about ten years before Rumi's birth, is one of the most prolific writers of Arabic literature. His most famous mystical work, Sifat ol-Safwa, which is a biography of mystics, is considered to be a selection of Helyat al-Awliyā’ by Abu Na’im Isfahani. In this book, Ibn al-Jawzi has collected the biographies of Sufis whose deeds and words had been found in accordance with the Prophet and Companions tradition, and has narrated anecdotes that express this character and method. Although Rumi and Ibn al-Jawzi are different and sometimes contradictory in religion, thought and way of life, there are several anecdotes in Rumi's Masnawi that are quite similar to Ibn al-Jawzi's narration in Sifat ol-Safwa. This resemblance is sometimes so great that even the words of Rumi are the same as those of Ibn al-Jawzi and sometimes a word-for-word translation of Arabic words and phrases of Sifat ol-Safwa narration.In present article, the author intends to present and analyze some very similar anecdotes of Masnawi and Sifat ol-Safwa in the hope that a further step would be taken towards a comprehensive bibliography of Masnawi’s anecdotes and another aspect of Rumi's life would be clarified. Also, the findings of this article can be the subject of research by other professors and researchers of literature and literary criticism in such fields as comparative literature, intertextuality, narrative science, etc.