UN Special, May 2002 Issue

Article on the International Year of the Mountains

I refer to the article on the International Year of the Mountains, which cites some very moving passages from wise men, poets, philosophers, and the like. One of those, a most impressive appeal for tolerance on page 48, was ascribed to «Mevlana Jeladuddin Rumi, great poet of Afghanistan of the 13th century»

In reality, Molana (or Mevlana) Jaladuddin Rumi is perhaps the greatest and most famous Persian (not Afghani!) mystics of all times. As his birthplace of Balkh, due to the vagaries of history, colonial redrawings of the political maps, etc., happens to be on Afghanistan territory now, this was probably enough to ascribe this nationality to him tax-free.

But why do I care and why should anybody indeed care about this small difference in the eyes of perhaps most Westerners? For once, because these types of inaccuracies sometimes out of sheer ignorance, other times with ulterior motives behind, are very frequent and can indeed become a tool in the propaganda war of one country or culture versus another. But what would you say if Immanuel Kant was henceforth considered as a Russian philosopher because his town Königsberg, has become part of Russia after 1945 and is now called Kalinigrad? Or if Béla Bartok was to be referred to as a Romanian composer since his birthplace has since changed hands between Hungary and Romania?

These examples will surely ring a bell with almost everyone, but only because they concern famous Westerners who lived in a more recent past. But it was to exactly the same kind of error that Rumi had fallen victim to in this article.

The other reason why I care about this has more specifically to do with the personality and lasting works of Rumi, who are often also claimed by the Turks (with as little justification as by the Afghanis), because he used to spend most of his later life in Turkey, having had to escape from the Mongols who had invaded his country. Once again, the fact that Beethoven or Brahms spent most of their later lives in Vienna still does not change them from Germans to Austrians, much as I as an Austrian might regret this.

Famous people of impeccable reputation who contributed a lot to the world’s culture will always have a lot of takers. Yet it still behoving to all of us, in particular the researchers, authors and other knowledge disseminators, to remain objective, accurate, accurate, rigorous in their analysis and critical of the sources used in their work.

Sincerely yours, 
Georg Axmann.