John Baldock

Study me as much as you like, you will not know me,

for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be.

Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself,

for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

(Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi 1372: A1:168)

A number of philosophers, mystics and saints emerged at this time in Europe, and were thus Rumi’s contemporaries. In Britain, we find Roger Bacon (c.1214–92), the Franciscan monk, philosopher, and alchemist, known as Doctor Mirabilis for his wide-ranging skills and learning; William of Ockham (1285–1349), the philosopher and theologian, famous for the introduction of the principle of ‘Ockham’s razor’(the principle of the fewest possible assumptions); and the Scottish-born philosopher and theologian, John Duns Scotus (c.1265–1308). In Spain, there was Maimonides (1135–1204), the Jewish philosopher; Moses de Leon (d.1305), to whom is attributed authorship of the Zohar (The Book of Splendour), the classic text of Jewish Kabbala; and Ibn ‘Arabi (see ‘The Islamic World’ below), the great Sufi teacher and metaphysician, who was born in Murcia, southeast Spain in 1165. In Italy, Francis of Assissi (1182–1226), founder of the Franciscan Order; Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), Dominican theologian, author of the Summa Theologica; and Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), whose Vita Nuova was published around 1290. In Germany, the mystic, Mechthilde of Magdeburg (1217–82); and Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328), the influential Dominican mystic, posthumously condemned as a heretic.