Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi was born in 1207 in Balkh — present-day Afghanistan — into a family of Persian-speaking scholars and Sufi mystics. As the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan swept west, the family fled across the Iranian plateau and eventually settled in Konya, in Seljuk Anatolia. There Rumi became a respected jurist, theologian, and teacher — until 1244, when a wandering dervish named Shams-i Tabriz arrived and shattered his orderly life. Their friendship, perhaps the most discussed in Sufi history, ended in 1248 when Shams disappeared, possibly murdered. Out of that grief Rumi began to speak in verse: the Masnavi, a six-volume mystical epic of 25,000 couplets, and the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, dedicated to his vanished friend. After his death his son Sultan Walad organised his followers into the Mevlevi tariqa — the Whirling Dervishes, who turn slowly on the floor in a ritual called sema, one hand raised to receive grace and one lowered to give it back to the earth. Eight centuries on, Rumi is regularly the bestselling poet in the United States.
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Sufi Mystic · Poet · Founder of the Mevlevi Order
Rumi
1,207 CE – 1,273 CE
The Persian poet whose verses on love and longing — written in 13th century Konya — remain the bestselling poetry in America today.
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