The Sultan Zeshan–Rūmī Thesis: Nūr al-Handasa, The Light of Divine Geometry

A teaser for an upcoming book. This scholarly poetic prolegomenon presents the Sultan Zeshan-Rūmī Thesis: Rūmī's prose preserves the social body of the mystic, the point at which inward encounter returns as public responsibility. The essay addresses a persistent imbalance in English-language reception, where Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī is commonly encountered as a lyric poet of love and ecstasy while his letters and public addresses remain comparatively less visible. Reading the Maktūbāt and Majālis-i Sabʿa through Persianate epistolary practice, public religious speech, social relation, and moral consequence, the essay proposes seventy-seven interpretive apertures across four Selams. These Latin names do not claim historical self-description. They name human acts visible in the prose corpus. The method joins literary history, close reading, reception history, prosopographical attention, and an original poetic architecture called Nūr al-Handasa, the Light of Divine Geometry. The core argument is that Rūmī's mysticism does not withdraw from civic life. It returns through petition, counsel, mediation, family obligation, law, office, memory, mercy, writing, and service. The contribution is both scholarly and editorial: a framework for reading the poet, preacher, correspondent, migrant, jurist, father, friend, and mystic as one sentient and relational human being. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī; Sultan Zeshan–Rūmī Thesis; Nūr al-Handasa; Sufism; Islamic mysticism; Persianate studies; Maktūbāt; Majālis-i Sabʿa; inshāʾ; tarassul; Persian epistolography; religion and society; Islamic ethics; mystical authority; civic responsibility; political theology; medieval Anatolia; Seljuk Anatolia; translation studies