Rumi

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, commonly known in English as Rumi, was born on 30 September 1207 and died on 17 December 1273. He was a Sufi mystic and poet whose work stands at the center of Persian literature and mystic poetry. His family hailed from Balkh, and he was born to Persian parents in Wakhsh, a village on the east bank of the Wakhsh River in present-day Tajikistan. The region around Greater Balkh was then a major center of Persian culture, where Sufism had already been developing for centuries.

Rumi’s childhood was marked by movement. His father, Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, was a theologian, jurist, mystic, preacher, and teacher in a family of Islamic preachers of the Hanafi Maturidi school. When Mongol forces advanced across Central Asia, the family set out west, passing through cities across Iran, Baghdad, and Damascus. Rumi eventually settled with his family in Konya at about age 19. The area had recently belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire and was known as Rûm, which is why he came to be called Rumi, meaning “from Rûm.”

Although Rumi had been exposed to Sufi thought from early childhood, he was expected to follow his father’s path as an Islamic scholar. His father was one of his major influences, along with the Persian poets Attar and Sanai, whom Rumi openly praised in his verse. He spent most of his life under the Persianate Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, where he taught, wrote, and formed the spiritual outlook that later readers would recognize in his poetry.

The arrival in Konya of the wandering dervish Shams Tabrīzī changed Rumi’s life. The two became deeply attached, and Rumi neglected his duties. When Shams disappeared mysteriously, Rumi entered an intense period of grief. That grief is reflected in the Divan of Shams Tabrīzī, and it also marked the beginning of his poetic output. His best-known work, the Masnavi, has often been called a “Qur’an in Persian” and is considered one of the greatest poems in the Persian language. Many Muslims, especially in the Turko-Persian cultural sphere, regard it as one of the most important works of Islamic literature after the Quran.

Rumi died in Konya in 1273 and was buried beside his father. A shrine was later raised over his remains, and it became a place of pilgrimage. After his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for the Sufi dance called the Sama ceremony. Today, Rumi’s works are read across Greater Iran and Turkey, translated into many languages, and enjoyed around the world. His words still speak with unusual directness because they return to attention, love, patience, and the heart: “Sit, be still, and listen.”