This collection presents, for the first time in English, a compilation of seven centuries of the mystic hymns of Turkey’s rebellious Sufi poets. At the time Rumi was writing in ancient Anatolia, many other great mystics in the region were also composing wild, ecstatic, and controversial poems that were shared among the people as spiritual songs. Many are still played and sung today in sacred dervish ceremonies.
Poet Jennifer Ferraro and translator/performer Latif Bolat have organized the poems into insightful themes and also provide concise but essential cultural context that helps us swiftly join the rebels in their reverie. Quarreling with God welcomes us into a spiritual tradition from the Islamic world that bravely challenged orthodox religion and emphasized universal mystic love and tolerance. These songs reach across the ages to awaken your heart to our divine inheritance.
Excerpt From the Book In the relationship between lover and Beloved, rules of etiquette may often be suspended. A mystic’s prayers might seem crude or irreverent to the average believer, full of challenge, informality, or occasionally, even accusation. Scandalously intimate words may pour forth, bearing the intensity of erotic love or of queries and complaints that may seem blasphemous. Azmi’s famous poem, which begins the section, pokes fun at limited conceptions of the Creator and queries Allah about His contradictory and nonsensical arrangements. “I’m not afraid of your hundred thousand hells,” Azmi writes. “The name All Compassionate—doesn’t that come from you?” Edip Harabi openly defends the spiritual stature of women and challenges the sexism in traditional religious dogmas, particularly in the sexism evident in the Islam of his time. In a rare poem written with a female persona and signed with a woman’s pen name, the speaker of the poem provocatively asks, “O men and knowers of the truth, tell us—/Didn’t we give birth to all the masters/who led you on God’s way?”
Here are the unheard voices of the mystical poets of the Turkish Bektashi tradition, a tradition that influenced Jelaluddin Rumi and that also remains one of the most vibrant, independent and passionate in living Sufism today. In clear and elegant translations, the authors unleash the wild voices of these mystics for us, as they sing about love, relationship and the purpose of life.
—Neil Douglass- Klotz, PhD, author of The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish
We are truly grateful to Latif Bolat and Jennifer Ferraro for offering us a rare glimpse into the universe of Anatolian Sufi poetry. For from that universe of the Heart we are given a fresh perspective on our human life here. It is a joy to be in the company of the friends of the Friend. Their songs resonate through the centuries.
~Kabir Helminski, Sufi Shaikh, translator and author of Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self