Thank you to Mevlana Rumi, Watkins, Watkins Publishing, and NetGalley for this free honest reviewer copy of "Warriors of Love: Rumi's Odes to Shams of Tabriz."

I have always had a deep and abiding love for the works of Rumi, and so it was no surprise I jumped at this book when there was the chance to both read and review it for NetGalley.

I was moved to discover so much about his past, that I'd never known before, in the section covering his biography (which I both never expected to find in a poetry text, and was swept over the moon with recieving as an extra gift in this time).

The poetry, itself, was a beautiful delving into a relationship and friendship of two great scholars and learned men, Mevlana Rumi and Shams of Tabriz. While the story does date back to the 13th century, it's never been lost entirely from renown discussion. You will feel and see those bonds of deep truth, love, and friendship reflected throughout the whole reading. I had several passages I stopped on to read over and bookmarked to share with those dear to me.

First of all, this book has two equally important parts: Rumi's biography, focused on his relationship with Shams, and Rumi's poetry. The biography gives us the very needed context to his poems, though they are great even without that.

Now, what I'm most amazed by. The author describes the bond between Rumi & Shams in great detail, using beautiful language, elaborate metaphors and generally doing everything in his power to ensure we understand said relationship & properly appreciate it. He also makes it abandonly clear from basically the first sentence that they were gay and in love. And yet among all those fancy words & countless epithets for the love the mystics felt for each other, not once did he use "gay" or "in love". Truly amazing! Especially when he compares them at some point to Achilles and Patroclus or to Raimbaud and Verlaine. Especially when all the imagery he uses rings so true to a gay ear. We get lines like "Rumi became intoxicated while in Shams' company" or "burned in the fire of bitterness at their separation", we get the "Warriors of Love" title!! and the author is never brave enough to call it what it is.

Okay.

As for Rumi's poetry, I honestly feel like I don't have adequate skills & knowledge to judge it. Let me just say, it's even better than you would have expected. (And very gay.)

I wish I could have liked this book better. Firstly, I admire anyone with the courage to speak about other religious and beliefs confidently without rubbing other people's noses in it. The structure of writing felt academic but I liked that. I liked how informed the topic was and the organized manner of delivery.

That being said, it was hard for me to get into because it was dry, slow, and difficult to understand the foreign concepts. I was interested in this book because it was different but I wish there was footnotes to explain foreign concepts. The story was....not that interesting, to be honest, and I wondered more about where the heck it was going than anything. It seemed to lack obvious purpose.

Someone else might enjoy this story better but for me, I don't think I found much in common with it, sadly.

Warriors of Love: Rumi's Odes to Shams of Tabriz by Mevlana Rumi is a partial biography and a small selection of poetry. Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages, and he has been described as the most popular poet and the best-selling poet in the United States.

James Cowan provides the introduction and translation in this work. This inclusion is important since the introduction makes up the bulk of the book. Cowan describes the relationship of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz. The friendship between the two grew into something that Cowan describes as seeing a reflection of God in each other. Thier friendship expanded into a spiritual love and a great understanding of God. They were both practitioners of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that centers on internal purification and self-discovery. Strict dogma is missing from this practice and includes things that may not be acceptable in stricter interpretations like dancing and being a fool for God.

Much of the introduction concerns itself specifically with Rumi's deep friendship with Shams and his discovery of poetry in the process of and in remembrance of that friendship after Shamsdisappearence and murder, something Rumi never fully accepted. Comparisons of other very strong friendships are covered before the poetry section.

The poetry is translated by Cowan and represents a more poetic translation of these verses using modern style instead of the traditional Victorian style. He attempts to keep the rhythm and intent of the original poetry intact rather than strict meaning. Shams is presented as the perfect man and the wild one (his dancing in part). The short selection of poetry is interesting in a modern sense and always written in couplets although not rhyming. A translation that, however, does seem to keep the original intent of the writing intact. It is difficult to classify the book itself as poetry since so much is written as an introduction.  However, calling it a biography supported with poetry may be closer to reality.  Either way, very well done and informative.

It is rather hard to find the right words to describe this interesting friendship between the two men of knowledge, Mevlana Rumi and the traveling dervish, Shams of Tabriz. It is a story that dates back to the 13th century, and causes a great public interest even today. Last year I got familiar with this story reading the book by Elif Shafak “The Forty Rules of Love". Shafak gives us a contemporary story of a middle-aged woman who finds herself unlucky with the life she’s living, so she falls in love with a person who she has never seen, Aziz Z. Zahara, the author of the novel Shafak uses to bring us a very interesting comparative story about Rumi and Shams. For me, that was one of those books that you don’t want to put down, but it was also an excellent reason to be interested in Rumi’s verses. So, when I saw “Warriors of Love” in front of me, I knew I had to read it.

James Cowan gives us an introduction into the lives of Rumi and Shams. The way Cowan describes this intriguing story will surely be interesting to all of you who read it for the first time, although for me there were not so many informations I didn't know before. Nevertheless, the author of the introductory study was able to answer the question I had in my mind for a long time; is this kind of male friendship, based on the exchange of knowledge and efforts to reach the highest truths about life and God, characteristic only for the Islamic culture and centuries that has been long behind us, or similar examples can also be found elsewhere? Though I had some examples on my mind, Cowan brings his answer to my question.

He compared the friendship of Rumi and Shams with the relationship between the brothers Vincent and Theo van Gogh, with epic heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Dante and Vergilius, the Italian Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino and his friend Giovanni Cavalcante, Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and composer Richard Wagner, Nikos Hazantzakis and Greek Zorba. Athough these are excellent examples of friendship, they had no mythical dimensions like the one of Rumi and Shams. Cowan says that their friendship is an archetype of unity like no other we knew in history or literature.

Shams and Rumi are examples of friends who have found teachers among themselves, as opposed to many who had teacher-student relationship. For one another they were a friend and a guide, not a servant. Their friendship was totally equal because they were both at a very high spiritual level so they could progress far more together. Shams was the cause of Rumi's transformation into a poet, and Rumi was inspired by their friendship, mythical friendship, like no other mentioned in Islam since the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

The death of Shams of Tabriz thus brings only the end of their physical friendship, while spiritually it continues through Rumi's verses. Shams's death was an ultimate sign of friendship to Rumi, the moment in which a friend renounced his own life to allow the other to completely free himself from his influence and to allow him to further increase the heights that were intended for him.

Though Rumi in his verses never renounces the principles of his Islamic faith, he is convinced that the religion of love crosses the boundaries of all doctrines, including religious ones. Cowan says that Rumi's pantheism (or panentheism, as he states) was directed at one of the supreme goals: the unification of mankind with God. Perhaps with this idea, his verses today are shared throughout the world, especially from the 18th and 19th century, when translations into European languages became available to the general public. Shams's thoughts needed a little longer, only in 1990, after the various records of his thoughts were found in Turkish archives, they saw the light of day and gave the other dimension and the integrity to the well-known thoughts of his friend Rumi.

Although it would be wonderful to read the Rumi's verses in the original language, because I believe that is the only way one can reach the depths that he discovered, the verses that Cowan brings to us are quite a worthy substitute. So if you're in the mood for some poetry and very interesting introductory study about lives of Shams and Rumi by James Cowan, I certainly recommend this book to you. Those of you who would like something a bit easier to read, I suggest to go with "The Forty Rules of Love" by Elif Shafak. Or, maybe you could just read both of them...

This book was an interesting exploration of the instrumental historical wisdom that is Rumi's Islamic spirituality and insightfully meaningful friendship with Shams, which impacted him deeply.