Afghan fury as Iran, Turkey claim poet Rumi

Who can lay claim to Rumi, the Sufi mystic who is one of the world’s most beloved poets A bid by Iran and Turkey to do so has exasperated Afghanistan, country of his birth eight centuries ago. Tehran and Ankara asked to list the work of Jalal ud-Din Muhammad Rumi as their joint heritage on the UN’s “Memory of the World” register in May.

The register, falling under the UN’s cultural organisation Unesco, was formed in 1997 to protect the world’s documentary heritage, archives, correspondence and writing, especially in troubled or conflict-ridden areas.

But the Afghan government has denounced the bid, which mainly concerns the 25,600 verses of “Masnavi-i-Ma’navi”, one of the most influential works in Persian literature. He is one of the best-selling poets in the US, and his works have been translated into more than 23 languages. Hollywood is planning a Rumi biopic, also mired in controversy after rumoured plans for Leonardo DiCaprio to play him were met with accusations of “whitewashing”. Thousands of people have signed a petition for not casting Dicaprio as a protagonist in a biopic of the Persian poet. The agitators have demanded the producers to drop the Revenant actor’s name from the list and cast a Middle-Eastern actor to play the poet. The poet and philosopher “was born in Balkh in Afghanistan and made us proud,” the ministry of information and culture insisted.

Unesco “never asked us” about the proposal, Harron Haklimi, the ministry’s spokesman, said, acknowledging that Kabul had been beaten to the punch but hoping they can yet convince the organisation that Afghanistan has the better claim to the poet.

For Afghans, who learn his poems in primary school, Rumi is “Maulana Jalaludin Balkh”, or “Maulana” (literally “our master”), or simply “Balkhi”. Most researchers agree he was born in Balkh, Afghanistan in 1207 — though this too has been the subject of debate: a few argue he was born just across the border, in what is modern day Tajikistan, in a region also known as Balkh.

Today, the Afghan town of Balkh is a small provincial settlement, but back then it was an ancient religious capital and centre for Buddhist and Persian literature. It was sacked by Genghis Khan and his Mongal hordes in 1221. The young Rumi and his family fled to Turkey, where he spent most of his life, he died in the city of Konya in 1273. It was there that his son founded the Order of the Whirling Dervishes to perpetuate his father’s teachings.

But for Afghans, he remains a child of their country and it is still possible to visit the house in which they believe he was born. The powerful governor of Balkh province, former warlord General Ata Mohammed Noor called on Afghanistan’s representative to the United Nations to protest. “By limiting Maulana to only two countries, we do not do justice to a global personality who is truly cherished and admired across the world,” he said.

“He is considered an important part of the culture and identity of Afghanistan,” writer and poet Sadiq Usyan, professor at the Balkh university in nearby provincial capital Mazar-i-Sharif, told AFP. Separating the two is considered an “insult” and even a “threat” to Afghanistan, he said. A Unesco representative in Kabul argued there had been some “confusion”.

“Any country, delegation or even individual can submit a request to be considered under this program,” said spokesman Ricardo Grassi.