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    Salvation of the True Rock: The Sufi Poetry of Najat Ozkaya
    Salvation of the True Rock: The Sufi Poetry of Najat Ozkaya
    Salvation of the True Rock: The Sufi Poetry of Najat Ozkaya
    Ebook170 pages1 hour

    Salvation of the True Rock: The Sufi Poetry of Najat Ozkaya

    By John R. Mabry

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    About this ebook

    Najat Ozkaya was born in Konya, Turkey, in the 14th century CE. His father was a Sufi teacher, and Najat assumed his mantle upon his death. Najat's poetry is similar to the Sufi poetry of Rumi or Hafiz, centered on the relationship of the soul with its Beloved, Allah. Najat's writings were thought to be lost to the world, until religion scholar John Mabry discovered a hand-copied manuscript in the Bu Bir Şaka mosque. Translating in the free, contemporary style of Coleman Barks' Rumi or Daniel Ladinsky's renderings of Hafiz, Mabry has brought Najat back to life, restoring his challenging yet oddly comforting poetry to the world.

    ...except of course, that all of the above is nonsense. Najat Ozkaya never existed. He is the invention of the poet and religion scholar Mabry. Mabry didn’t discover any long lost text, he just wrote a bunch of poems in the style of Rumi and Hafiz. And you know what? If you like Rumi or Hafiz, we’re betting you’ll like Najat too, whether he actually existed or not.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn R. Mabry
    Release dateFeb 8, 2016
    ISBN9781940671680
    Salvation of the True Rock: The Sufi Poetry of Najat Ozkaya

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      Book preview

      Salvation of the True Rock - John R. Mabry

      Contents

      Introduction

      Absolute Solution

      Allah Cannot Be Caged

      Allah Needs You

      Allah, the Merciful

      Allah's Help

      Ambition

      Are You Sure About This?

      Commitment

      Connection

      The Corpse

      Courage

      Dangerous Faithfulness

      The Desert

      Discernment

      Distress

      Don't Feel Bad

      Don't Think You Are Special

      Down from Heaven

      A Drop of Pain

      Drunkeness and Wine

      Faith and Belief

      Fire

      Five Pillars

      Five Times a Day

      Gift

      Gratitude

      Hard to Get

      How Lovers Long to Die

      How to Grow Your Soul

      I am Not a Believer

      If I Had a Servant

      If You Want to Be Great

      Imagination

      The Intimacy of Silence

      Jesus and the Dog

      Just Listen

      Just So You Know

      Lashing Out

      Lay It Down

      The Loneliness of the Desert

      Love Doesn't Care

      Love is a Tiger

      Love or Fear?

      Majesty

      My Life with Allah

      My Soul Wants to Fly

      Night is Coming

      No Help at All

      No Shame

      No Trick

      Not Speaking

      Not Tonight

      One Great Sun

      Outward Forms

      Parlor Tricks

      The Perfection of Allah

      Pleasing Two Loves

      The Power of Death

      Preparing the Heart

      The Promise of Allah

      The Promise of Rain

      Pure Religion

      Real Lovers

      Religion

      Responsibility

      The Robber

      The Rules of Propriety

      Save Your Feet

      Sickness

      Silence

      Silly Chatter

      Speak

      Spiritual Master

      Spiritual Progress

      Stray Dog

      Submitting All Things

      Sufism

      Sunni and Shia

      Surrender

      Talk and Listen

      The Teacher's Wisdom

      Tease

      The Third Way

      This Silence is Pregnant

      Today's Inspiration

      Too Much

      Tragedies

      Two Kinds of People

      Vision

      We Are All Broken

      Wake Up

      Weak Words

      What Allah is Feeling

      What Allah is Like

      What Islam is About

      What Prayer is For

      What They Do Not Teach

      What They Say About You

      What You Were Made For

      When a Person Falls in Love

      When You Finally Submit

      Who Am I?

      Who I Am

      Who Needs the Mosque?

      Who Told You

      Why Should I Pray?

      You Must Move

      Your Piety

      Your Wealth is Not Yours

      The Secret about Najat Ozkaya

      About the Translator

      Introduction

      I had long wanted to visit Konya, the famed city of Rumi, but as it happened I went there largely by accident. I went to assist a friend with his research on Shams Tebrizi, and along the way largely abandoned that well-intentioned pursuit (sorry, Ian!) after running afoul of another Sufi troublemaker, Najat Ozkaya.

      We were in the tiny, dusty library of the Bu Bir Şaka mosque, which must have been a sleepy village mosque in the 14th century when Najat was writing. The mosque itself dates back to the 12th century, full of rough-hewn charm and threadbare carpet. Today, the mosque sits in a residential neighborhood filled with the noise of scooters, the distant sound of an oud blaring from overdriven shop speakers, and skinny kittens covered with sores.

      We were not having much luck with our research. I had recently added Turkish to my list of academic languages (which means I read it poorly, speak it not at all, and know how to look up absolutely anything) and had learned to recognize Shams’ name in Persian and Arabic, as well. I was sorting through a pile of codices with little success and less hope. It was stinking hot, and Ian, bless him, is one of those academic types who only remembers to bathe sporadically.

      One morning I happened upon a 16th century anthology of Sufi poetry, compiled by Lâmlî Çelebi of Bursa and titled, Ruh Soluyor (Gasping of the Soul). Intrigued, I snapped about a hundred pages with my iPhone and in my spare time began to haltingly decipher its contents.

      I have always enjoyed Sufi poetry. Part of the reason I agreed to help Ian is that I am, in fact, a sizeable fan of Rumi, as well as Yunus Emre, Hafiz, and others. I came to Konya as much to help my friend as to pay my respects at Rumi’s tomb (and, of course, Shams’). I was delighted to see what poems a 16th century compiler would select, and there were indeed some great ones. But my favorites were two by a poet I had never heard of: Najat Ozkaya.

      The next day I had Najat on the brain, and while Ian took a cigarette break in the courtyard of the mosque, I went back over the materials we had already sorted through. And that’s when I found it: a Najat stash.

      Najat’s Works

      It wasn’t all in one place, nor was it complete. According to the compiler of the anthology, Najat is the author of five works, Discourses on Ultimate Things, Sermons to the Damned, Tail of the Donkey, A Soul of Beaten Felt, and The Absence of Light, the last three of which are collections of poetry.

      Further research turned up an incomplete copy of A Soul of Beaten Felt at the Aziziye mosque, and a complete copy at the Selimiye mosque, also in Konya. I found another complete copy, useful for comparison, in the library of a Sufi madrassah in nearby Karaman. There I also found a complete copy of The Absence of Light and several poems from Tail of the Donkey in other anthologies. I have not yet been successful at locating either his sermons or his discourses.

      Najat’s collections do not seem to cohere to any discernible structure. The arrangement seems to be random and the collections, despite their evocative titles, do not seem to be in any way thematic. Consequently, I have felt free to follow my own instincts as to what to include in this collection, and indeed, all three of his poetic collections are represented (although, admittedly, Tail of the Donkey only has one representative in this volume).

      A more scholarly presentation would include the complete collections, in order, with annotations, and indeed, such an edition of The Absence of Light is underway. But the purpose of this collection is not academic, but spiritual enjoyment. I hope that the many readers of Coleman Barks’ translations of Rumi might discover in Najat some of that same irreverent reverence, that luminosity for which the Mevlana is famous. This edition, then is intended

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