Cultural Foundation of Metaphors of Love in Rumi's Works

Culture and its components play a very important role in creating mental structures and patterns of thought, speech, behavior, and actions of individuals in society as they form the collective identity and social personality of individuals in society. In particular, the beliefs and rituals of creation and resurrection are the foundation of most human beliefs, thoughts, speeches, and actions. Poets are the inheritors and carriers of culture and thought. Great and popular poets, such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, Sa'di, and Hafez, are the main mediators of the transmission of culture and the greatest architects of thought, speech, and action of not only Iranians but also many neighboring and even distant nations. We have no choice but to study ancient cultures, beliefs, and rituals to recognize our identity and the foundations of our thought. With the approach of cultural linguistics, this study examines the role of culture in the processing of love metaphors in Rumi's works to identify and introduce the function of love in the theory of Islamic mysticism and its cultural foundations and basic epistemological format. According to the analysis of metaphors of love, the main functions of love according to Rumi are life-giving, beauty (goodness), cultivation (liberation, shelter, and promotion), and agency in knowledge and connection to the truth. These functions are taken from Islamic culture, ancient Iranian culture, and Greek culture and are reflected in the metaphors of love.