Habib Khan, Quetta: When I was a child I used to hear my Dad sing a Persian poem:
چہ تدبیر اے مسلمانان کہ من خود را نہ می دانم
نہ ترسا نہ یہودم من نہ گبرم نہ مسلمانم
Later, I came to know that this poem was of Maulana Jalaluddin Roomi’s, and when I started to read Iqbal, I learned that Iqbal considered himself to be a disciple of Roomi:
ہم خوگر محسوس ہیں ساحل کے خریدار
اک بحر پر آشوب و پر اسرار ہے رومی
Then, when I started (or at least tried to) read and understand Roomi’s “Masnavi”, I came to know (to my own understanding) that the Maulana may have developed the philosophy behind the theory of evolution, and probably Charles Darwin may never have heard Roomi’s name, but it would have been extremely interesting for him had he read the following of Roomi’s:
آمدہ اول بہ اقلیم جماد
وز جمادی در نباتی او فتاد
وز نباتی چون بہ حیوانی فتاد
نامدش حال نباتی ہیچ یاد
باز از حیوان شو انسانیش
میکشد آن خالقے کہ دانیئش
ہمچنین اقلیم تا اقلیم رفت
تا شد اکنون عاقل و دانا و زفت
(It came initially in a state of a mineral,
And then turned into a plant
Though remained in that state for years
But no memories of that part
Then from a plant took the form of a animal.
Then the almighty transformed him from the animal into a human
And in phases from state to state
Till he achieved consciousness and became wise)
When we took a bus tour of Turkiye in 2014, the visit to the resting place of Roomi in Konya was a must, but the normal tour that we had booked did not include Konya, so we had to take a detour from Cappadocia to Konya. The bus reached there at around midnight and the taxi took a further 40 minutes to the hotel.
Luckily, Roomi’s Mazaar was just a couple of hundred meters from the hotel, so we could spend a good part of the day visiting the halls including the one containing the grave, reading maulana’s verses written on the walls, and trying to feel the calm and the spiritual atmosphere of the site, which was frequently disrupted by the Japanese teenagers more interested in using their selfie sticks.
The Whirling sessions used to take place in the evenings, and since we had to join our normal bus tour, so after the long awaited and satisfying trip to Konya, we took the afternoon bus for Antalya.
