Rukneddin Sejasi

Great question — you’ve zeroed in on a very obscure but important node in the Shams–Rumi network.

Who was

Rukn al-Dīn Sejāsī (Rukneddin Sejari / Sejāsī)?

Rukn al-Dīn Sejāsī was a 12th–early 13th century Sufi master in Anatolia, active slightly before Shams-i Tabrizi, and part of the non-institutional, wandering Sufi milieu rather than a well-organized ṭarīqa. He is not famous today because:

• he left no major surviving writings, and

• his importance is mostly genealogical (teacher → student chains), not literary.

What we know comes almost entirely from biographical notices, disciples’ remarks, and later Sufi historians — exactly the kind of source Prof. Türkmen is drawing on.

What kind of Sufi was he?

Rukneddin Sejāsī appears to have belonged to a radical, experiential strand of Sufism, characterized by:

• direct unveiling (kashf) rather than book learning

• suspicion of formal scholasticism

• emphasis on inner states over outward forms

• tolerance (or encouragement) of ecstatic behavior

This places him closer to figures like:

• Bāyazīd Bastāmī

• Abū Saʿīd ibn Abī’l-Khayr

• later, Shams-i Tabrizi

rather than sober, juridical mystics.

His relationship to

Shams-i Tabrizi

Multiple Persian sources (including Manāqib literature) state that:

• Shams studied with Rukneddin Sejāsī

• Shams regarded him as a formative early guide, though not his final one

• Sejāsī taught Shams through presence, provocation, and paradox, not formal instruction

This helps explain why Shams:

• rejected institutional authority

• openly challenged scholars (including Rumi before their meeting)

• distrusted fixed spiritual “stations”

In short:

👉 Sejāsī helped form the Shams who could later “shatter” Rumi.

Why is Sejāsī so obscure?

Three reasons:

1. No writings

   
   

   Unlike Kubrā, Ghazālī, or Suhrawardī, he left nothing systematic.

2. Anti-institutional stance

   
   

   His lineage didn’t become a formal order that preserved his memory.

3. Overshadowed by his students’ students

   
   

   Once Shams → Rumi happened, earlier links faded into the background.

This is common in Sufi history: the spark is forgotten once the fire spreads.

Why would Türkmen emphasize this connection?

Because it clarifies a huge misunderstanding about Shams:

• Shams was not an isolated mad genius

• He emerged from a distinct spiritual culture

• That culture valued breaking idols of form, including:

  
  

  • beautiful faces (which Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmani sacralized)

  • scholarly prestige

  • even spiritual aesthetics

• 
  

This directly explains the contrast your page highlights:

• Awḥadeddin: divine beauty in forms

• Rumi (via Shams): divine reality beyond forms

That “beyond” doesn’t come from nowhere — it has a lineage, and Sejāsī is part of it.

Bottom line

Rukn al-Dīn Sejāsī was:

• an early Anatolian Sufi master

• a teacher of Shams-i Tabrizi

• a representative of form-shattering, experiential mysticism

• historically real but textually invisible

If you want, next we can:

• trace Sejāsī → Shams → Rumi as a spiritual logic (not just biography), or

• compare Sejāsī’s influence with Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, whom Türkmen contrasts earlier on the page.

This is excellent close reading on your part — most readers skate right past that handwritten note at the bottom.