Rhythm as Ontology: Rethinking Rūmī's Concept of Samā between Sufi Praxis and Contemporary Performance Theory

Abstract

This article reconsiders the role of music, rhythm, and samāʿ in the thought of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī by moving beyond their conventional classification as symbolic or auxiliary elements of Sufi spirituality. While existing scholarship has predominantly framed Rūmī's intellectual legacy around metaphysical love, ethical universalism, or mystical pedagogy, rhythm and embodied movement have been mainly treated as representational or secondary devices. This study challenges that tendency and argues that samāʿ in Rūmī constitutes an ontological domain in which being is disclosed through movement rather than conceptual abstraction. The article's originality lies in its theoretical repositioning of samāʿ as a mode of knowing and being rather than a ritualized aesthetic expression. Drawing on close readings of the Masnavi and the Dīvān-e Kabīr, the study demonstrates that rhythm in Rūmī functions as a generative structure that mediates between cosmology, temporality, and corporeality. Furthermore, the article extends its analysis to contemporary digital and performative representations of Rūmī, arguing that modern visual circulation often flattens the ontological depth of samāʿ by transforming lived movement into consumable spectacle (Han, 2017). Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative and interdisciplinary framework that integrates hermeneutic textual analysis with contemporary performance theory and philosophies of time. By situating Rūmī within current debates on embodiment, temporality, and performativity, the article positions Rūmī not as a historical mystic confined to a religious tradition but as an enduring theoretical interlocutor whose thought remains critically relevant to modern discussions of meaning, body, and time.