Born in 1207 to a family from Balkh, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī fled westward with his family to escape the advancing Mongol hordes. After traveling through Iran, Baghdad, and Damascus, they settled in Konya when Rumi was nineteen. Because Konya had recently been part of the Eastern Roman Empire, he acquired the name "Rumi," meaning "the Roman." Although raised to follow his father's path as an orthodox Islamic scholar, Rumi was exposed to Sufi mysticism from an early age.
The turning point in Rumi's life occurred with the arrival of Shams Tabrizi, a wandering dervish, in Konya. The two formed a profound spiritual bond that led Rumi to neglect his traditional scholarly duties. Following Shams's mysterious disappearance, Rumi channeled his intense grief into ecstatic poetry, marking the beginning of his major poetic output. This period of loss and spiritual evolution is immortalized in his collection, the Divan of Shams Tabrizi.
Rumi's magnum opus, the Masnavi, is a monumental spiritual poem often referred to as the "Qur'an in Persian" due to its immense influence within the Turko-Persian cultural sphere and Islamic literature. Rumi also founded the Mevlevi Order, a Sufi brotherhood. Today, his works are celebrated globally, making him one of the best-selling and most widely translated poets in the world.
