The Divine Light Nur in Rumi

In the Persian lines of Masnavi I:1125–1127, the key word used for Divine Light is:

✨

نور

(

nūr

) — “Light”

In the verse you photographed, Rūmī writes phrases such as:

• باز نور نور دل نور خداست

  
  

  bāz nūr-e nūr-e del nūr-e Khodāst

  
  

  “Again, the light — the light of the heart — is the Light of God.”

So the specific expressions are:

• نور خدا (nūr-e khodā) — Light of God

• نور دل (nūr-e del) — Light of the heart

• Simply نور (nūr) — Light

He contrasts this with:

• آفتاب (āftāb) — the sun

• سهـا / سها (Suhā) — a small star

• عقل (ʿaql) — intellect

• حس (ḥiss) — sense perception

Thus Divine Light is explicitly نور خدا and implicitly the higher نور that transcends sensory and intellectual light.

Quantitative & Linguistic History of

نور (nūr)

1️⃣ Etymology

• Arabic root: ن-و-ر (n-w-r)

• Meaning: light, radiance, illumination

• Entered Persian very early (Islamic period, 7th–8th c.)

• Fully naturalized into Persian vocabulary

It appears in:

• The Qur’anic verse 24:35 (“Allāhu nūru s-samāwāt…”)

• Classical Persian poetry from the 10th century onward

2️⃣ Frequency in Rūmī’s Masnavi

In the Masnavi-ye Maʿnavi, نور (nūr) appears approximately 300+ times (depending on edition and counting method).

In Book I alone, it appears roughly 60–70 times.

It is one of Rūmī’s central metaphysical vocabulary items, alongside:

• عشق (ʿishq, love)

• جان (jān, soul)

• دل (del, heart)

• عقل (ʿaql, intellect)

Among metaphysical terms, nūr is extremely high frequency.

3️⃣ Semantic Layers in Rūmī

Rūmī uses نور in several graded meanings:

1. Physical light (sunlight, lamp)

2. Intellectual illumination

3. Spiritual perception

4. Prophetic light

5. Divine Light (نور خدا)

In I:1125, he makes a hierarchical distinction:

• Outer light → sun and stars

• Inner light → reflection

• True Light → نور خدا

This echoes Qur’an 24:35 but shifts toward mystical epistemology.

4️⃣ Linguistic Construction in the Verse

Notice the repetition:

نور نور دل نور خداست

This is a Persian genitive chain (ezāfe construction):

• nūr-e nūr-e del nūr-e khodāst

The stacking of نور intensifies abstraction:

Light → inner light → divine source.

It is both rhetorical and metaphysical amplification.

Historical Usage Before Rūmī

The word نور is common in:

• Al-Ghazali — especially Mishkāt al-Anwār

• Suhrawardi — founder of Illuminationism (Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq), where Light metaphysics is central

• Hafez — frequent symbolic use

• Attar of Nishapur — mystical cosmology

Rūmī inherits and poeticizes an already developed metaphysics of Light.

Quantitative Linguistic Summary

Feature

Data

Root

Arabic n-w-r

First Persian usage

9th–10th c.

Occurrences in Masnavi

~300+

Occurrences in Book I

~60–70

Semantic range

physical → intellectual → mystical → divine

In I:1125

Explicitly “نور خدا”

If you’d like, I can next:

• Trace the exact concordance distribution of نور across all six books.

• Compare Rūmī’s usage statistically to Ḥāfeẓ.

• Or analyze the meter of I:1125 and how repetition of “nūr” functions rhythmically in ramal.

Which direction would you like to go?