The Place of Asceticism in Rumi's Thought

Asceticism, as one of the main factors shaping Sufism, is an important topic for Sufis and has been spoken about it in the most mystical texts. In this research, Jalal al-Din Rumi's views about asceticism have been discussed. The present research claims that Rumi has different views about asceticism and he has looked at it from various perspectives. The aim of the article is to explain different perspectives of Rumi about asceticism and to answer this question why Rumi had different views on asceticism. In order to achieve the purposes of the research, the terms of asceticism (zohd) and ascetic (zahid) in the prose and verse texts of Rumi are analyzed and is tried to examine the position of asceticism and its functions in these texts; also Rumi's different views on asceticism are explained. The results show that Rumi has looked at asceticism from the perspectives of jurisconsults, mystics and qalandars (wandering darvishs and Bohemians). From the perspective of the jurisconsults, asceticism has a high value, but from two others it is worthless. It seems that the degree of individuality expressed in his various works is the reason of his different valuation of asceticism.