PhD defence Maarten Holtzapffel: The vagabond poetry of Rūmī

On Thursday 27 August, Maarten Holtzapffel will defend his dissertation ‘Of Love and Wisdom: The Appeal of Rūmī’s Qalandarī Poetry in the Modern World’. In it, he examines the tradition of qalandariyyāt, or ‘vagabond poetry’, in the work of the 13th-century Persian poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, alongside his unprecedented popularity today.

Qalandarī poetry

Rūmī belongs to a major Persian literary tradition in which the figure of the qalandar appears time and again, a vagabond who deliberately flouts social and religious conventions. The qalandar prefers the tavern to the mosque, presenting themself as an unbeliever rather than a pious Muslim. In this kind of poetry, however, the roles are quickly reversed: the Muslim who appears devout on the outside proves hypocritical and spiritually impoverished within, while the non-conformist qalandar turns out to be deeply devout at heart.

The qalandar figure gave poets a means of raising fundamental questions about what faith entails and what makes a good Muslim. The same themes recur throughout Rūmī’s poetry, where he uses the qalandar to pose these very questions. What distinguishes a believer from an unbeliever, and does outward piety matter more than inward love of God?

Rūmī’s popularity today

According to Holtzapffel, there is a connection between Rūmī’s use of the literary qalandar and the non-conformist behaviour this figure embodies, and his extraordinary popularity today. Popular contemporary translators and writers often interpret Rūmī’s qalandarī motifs as a rejection of institutionalised religion. In doing so, however, these motifs are frequently stripped of the Islamic and Persian literary context from which they derive their meaning.

Drawing on influential modern English translations, Holtzapffel shows how Rūmī’s poetry has been secularised in the West: Islamic and Persian-literary elements are filtered out, while the non-conformist element is magnified into a universal message that transcends religion. This selective reading reveals something about contemporary Western popular assumptions regarding what counts as ‘good’ religion – personal, spiritual, individual – versus what is considered ‘bad’, namely dogmatic and institutional, religion.

Prior to the defence, Holtzapffel will give a layman’s talk starting at 16:00.