Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

‘40 Rules of Love’… Spiritual Supremacy Over Material Standardization


Tue 25 Dec 2018 | 02:28 PM
Yassmine Elsayed

By: Nour Elhoda Fouad:

Though many years passed since the publication of the ‘40 rules of love’, it still represents a radical shift on the Arab cultural arena, especially as it tackled religious philosophical ideas that transcend the rigidity of the religious discourse of Islam in the Arab world. It tackle the deep rooted thought about belief, relation between humans and universe, nature as well as the creator.

Indeed, the novel revived the Sufi arts in the Arab world in general and in Egypt in particular, for several years, until the Sufi dances, arts of singing and performances transcend the typical religious forms. This was reflected in their shows at Opera house and ‘ElSawy’ cultural wheel, where special time was given to sufi shows, and special bands were focusing only in that kind of art such as the “Moulouya” and “Hadra”.

The novel is pided into a large number of parts, each of which contains a scene or several scenes, but from the perspective of one of the characters, which, eventually, helped in avoiding the typical format of novels which depend on dialogues.

This allowed the reader to get a close look at all characters and feels as if he/she was addressed personally with the storytelling, and left free to judge without being dictated any point of view.

At one time, Jalaluddin Al-Roumi tells about his life and his dreams a dialogue with a friend who is a cleric who enjoys the support of authority and the love of people. Another time, its Shams Eltebreezy tells about his strange childhood and tired life, to and extent which gets the reader to understand his life and tolerates his traits.

You will also be impressed to see each character through the eyes of the rest of the characters. This persity of images and views gave the story a lot of realistic contrast Which expressed in the first place the persity among people.

For instance, the reader can know more about the guard through his opinion in “ Eltebreezy and in the prostitute, and the reader can get to know more about the prostitute and her kind heart through her self perspective and opinions about the others.

Perhaps the power of this novel is that it gets you to discover your true self through the eyes of others, and awaken the supreme principles and virtue inside yourself as well as motivating to search for the inner light inside each of us, but indirectly and without even realizing this overriding goal.

Eventually, it leaves you with puzzles and open questions including, for example, why did Shams married the girl Kimya? Why he was killed by such naive motives, in spite of king's anger which was a stronger justification? Why did Shams return to the city though he knew that he would not come out of it? Those puzzles and others seem to be deliberately made to trigger deep thinking about the details of the story, which implies an idea that the obvious things do have invisible aspects and that one has to accept them as they are.

The character of Shams Eltebreezy remains the main character who reflects the story of the great scholar Jalaluddin Al-Roumi, later became a poet of Sofia. He counted on his trips, spiritual meditation rather than his knowledge about religion.

In parallel, there is another main story played, which happened in the 13th century, and reflect a contemporary incident. A European wife “Ella” suffers from a cold, cheating husband and continuously feeling alienation, and then met with ‘Aziz’, writer of a novel which she had to write a critique for.

The novel was written by Turkish writer Elif Shafak (47 years old) in 2009 in Turkish and English. It has been translated into more than 30 languages, including the Arabic translation by Khalid Al-Jubaili. It also has eight other novels and four books, most of which revolve around Sufi thought.

Translated by: Yassmine ElSayed