The Persian poet and Sufi mystic Jalai ed-Din Muhammad Rumi is one of the world’s most celebrated philosophers and poet. He was born on September 30, 1207, in Balkh, Afghanistan, which at that time was a part of the Persian Empire. His birthplace and native language both indicate a Persian heritage.
In his younger years his family travelled through Baghdad, Mecca, and Damascus. Eventually his father moved their family more than 2,000 miles west to avoid the invasion of Genghis Khan’s armies, where they settled at Karaman near Konya, now present-day Turkey.This was where Rumi lived most of his life and where he composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature which profoundly affected the cultural of the area
Rumi inherited his father’s position in the community and became a prominent religious teacher where he preached in the mosques of Konya. By the time Rumi reached the age of 24, he had proven himself to be a well-informed scholar in the field of religious science.
However, his life changed forever when in 1244, around the age of 39, when he met the wandering mystic Shams-e Tabriz. The meeting had profound impact on Rum and the two shared an intense student-master relationship that unlocked Rumi’s poetic talents.
Shams-e Tabriz stirred Rumi’s genius away from religious orthodoxy towards a more inclusive understanding of humanity, spirituality, and love.
When Shams mysteriously disappeared one day, Rumi was bereft, but was inspired to produce some of the best poetry known to man.
Rumi’s grief for the loss of his Master led to the outpouring of more than 40,000 lyric verses, including odes, eulogies, quatrains, and other styles of Eastern-Islamic poetry. The resulting collection, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi or The Works of Shams Tabriz, is considered one of Rumi’s masterpieces and one of the greatest works of Persian literature.
In his introduction to his translation of Rumi’s The Shams, Coleman Barks has written: “Rumi is one of the great souls, and one of the great spiritual teachers. He shows us our glory. He wants us to be more alive, to wake up… He wants us to see our beauty, in the mirror and in each other.”
In 1262, Rumi dictated a single, six-volume poem to his scribe, Husam Chelebi. The resulting masterwork, the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi (Spiritual Verses), consists of sixty-four thousand lines, and is considered Rumi’s most personal work of spiritual teaching. Rumi described the Masnavi as “the roots of the roots of the roots of the (Islamic) Religion,” and the text has come to be regarded by some Sufis as the Persian-language Koran.
- Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi: Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi (or Diwan-e-Kabir) is one of the masterpieces of Rumi. It is a collection of ghazals named in the honor of dervish Shamsuddin, who was Rumi’s great friend and inspiration. It also contains an assortment of poems arranged according to the rhyming scheme. Diwan-e-Kabir has been written in ‘Dari’ dialect. It is regarded as one of the greatest works of Persian literature.
- Mathnawi: Mathnawi is a compilation of six volumes of poetry, written in a didactic style. The poems are intended to inform, instruct as well as entertain the reader. It is believed that Rumi started the work of Mathnawi at the suggestion of his then companion, Husam al-Din Chalabin. Mathnawi attempts to explain the various facets of spiritual life.
His poems are passionate, intense and spiritual. Rumi’s consistent encouragement of peace, tolerance, compassion and love is what continues to drive admirers to his works generation after generation. He is regarded as one of the greatest spiritual teachers, Sufi masters and poetical intellects of the millennium.
“Come! Come ! Whoever, whatever you may be, come! Heathen, idolatrous or fire worshipper, come! Even if you deny your oaths a hundred times, come! Our door is the door of hope, come! Come as you are!”
On December 17, 1273 C. E., in Konya, Turkey Rumi fell ill and left his mortal body behind. He was buried in Konya and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage, as it still is today. Following his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mawlawīyah Sufi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for its Sufi dance known as the samāʿ ceremony.
Thousands of visitors, of all faiths, still visit his tomb in Konya each month, honoring the poet of legendary spiritual understanding.
His original works are widely read in their original language across the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular in other countries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world’s languages and transposed into various formats. In 2007, he was described as the “most popular poet in America.”
Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry, and dance as a path for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their entire being on the divine, and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected at the same time. It was from these ideas that the practice of “whirling” dervishes developed into a ritual form. His teachings became the base for the order of the Mawlawi which his son Sultan Walad organized. Rumi encouraged samāʿ, listening to music and turning or doing the sacred dance. In the Mevlevi tradition, samāʿ represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes, and nations.
In the following verses in the Masnavi, Rumi describes in detail the universal message of love:
Lover’s nationality is separate from all other religions,
The lover’s religion and nationality is the Beloved (God).
The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes
Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.
(Poem translated by Majid. Naini, The Mysteries of the Universe and Rumi’s Discoveries on the Majestic Path of Love.)