Rumi

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Persian: ‫ﺟﻼلاﻟﺪﯾﻦ‬

‫)ﻣﺤﻤﺪ روﻣﯽ‬, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn
Muhammad Balkhī (‫)ﺟﻼلاﻟﺪﯾﻦ ﻣﺤﻤﺪ ﺑﻠﺨﻰ‬,
Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (‫ﻣﻮﻻﻧﺎ‬, "our master"),
Mevlevî/Mawlawī (‫ﻣﻮﻟﻮی‬, "my master"), and more
popularly simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17
December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian[11][1][12]
poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi
theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater
Khorasan in Greater Iran.[12][13] Rumi's influence
transcends national borders and ethnic divisions:
Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other
Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of the
Indian subcontinent have greatly appreciated his
spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries.[14] His
poems have been widely translated into many of
the world's languages and transposed into various
formats. Rumi has been described as the "most
popular poet"[15] and the "best selling poet" in the
United States.[16][17]
 Rumi

Statue of Rumi in Buca, Turkey

Title Mevlânâ, Mawlānā,[1]

Mevlevî, Mawlawī

Personal

Born 30 September 1207

Balkh (present-day
Afghanistan),[2] or Wakhsh
(present-day
Tajikistan),[3][4]
Khwarezmian Empire
Died 17 December 1273 (aged
66)
Konya (present-day
Turkey), Sultanate of Rum

Resting place Tomb of Mevlana Rumi,

Mevlana Museum, Konya,
Turkey

Religion Islam

Ethnicity Persian

Era Islamic Golden Age

Region Khwarezmian Empire

(Balkh: 1207–1212, 1213–
1217; Samarkand: 1212–
1213)[5][6]
Sultanate of Rum
(Malatya: 1217–1219;
 Akşehir: 1219–1222;
Larende: 1222–1228;
Konya: 1228–1273)[5]

Denomination Sunni[7]

Jurisprudence Hanafi

Creed Maturidi[8][9]

Main interest(s) Sufi poetry, Hanafi

jurisprudence, Maturidi
theology

Notable idea(s) Sufi whirling, Muraqaba

Notable work(s) Mathnawī-ī ma'nawī,

Dīwān-ī Shams-ī Tabrīzī,
Fīhi mā fīhi

Tariqa Mevlevi

Muslim leader

I fl db
Influenced by
Muhammad, Abu Hanifa, al-Maturidi, Al-Ghazali,
Muhaqqeq Termezi, Baha-ud-din Zakariya, Attār,
Sanā'ī, Abu Sa'īd Abulḫayr, Ḫaraqānī, Bayazīd
Bistāmī, Sultan Walad, Shams Tabrizi, Ibn Arabi,
Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi

Influenced
Jami, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Kazi Nazrul Islam,
Abdolhossein Zarrinkoob, Abdolkarim Soroush,
Hossein Elahi Ghomshei, Muhammad Iqbal,
Hossein Nasr[10] Yunus Emre

This article contains Persian text. Without proper

rendering support, you may see question marks,
boxes, or other symbols.
Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but
occasionally he also used Turkish,[18] Arabic,[19] and
Greek[20][21][22] in his verse. His Masnavi
(Mathnawi), composed in Konya, is considered one
of the greatest poems of the Persian
language.[23][24] His works are widely read today in
their original language across Greater Iran and the
Persian-speaking world.[25][26] Translations of his
works are very popular, most notably in Turkey,
Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia.[27]
His poetry has influenced not only Persian
literature, but also the literary traditions of the
Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Urdu, Bengali and
Pashto languages.[28][29]

Name
He is most commonly called Rumi in English. His full
name is Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian:
‫ )ﺟﻼلاﻟﺪﯾﻦ ﻣﺤﻤﺪ ﺑﻠﺨﻰ‬or Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad
Rūmī (‫)ﺟﻼلاﻟﺪﯾﻦ ﻣﺤﻤﺪ روﻣﯽ‬. Jalal ad-Din is an
Arabic name meaning "Glory of the Faith". Balkhī
and Rūmī are his nisbas, meaning, respectively,
"from Balkh" and "from Rûm" ('Roman,' what
European history now calls Byzantine, Anatolia[30]).
According to the authoritative Rumi biographer
Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago, "[t]he
Anatolian peninsula which had belonged to the
Byzantine, or eastern Roman empire, had only
relatively recently been conquered by Muslims and
even when it came to be controlled by Turkish
Muslim rulers, it was still known to Arabs, Persians
and Turks as the geographical area of Rum. As
such, there are a number of historical personages
born in or associated with Anatolia known as Rumi,
a word borrowed from Arabic literally meaning
'Roman,' in which context Roman refers to
subjects of the Byzantine Empire or simply to
people living in or things associated with
Anatolia."[31] He was also known as "Mullah of Rum"
(‫ ﻣﻼی روم‬mullā-yi Rūm or ‫ ﻣﻼی روﻣﯽ‬mullā-yi
Rūmī).[32]

He is widely known by the sobriquet

Mawlānā/Molānā[1][5] (Persian: ‫ ﻣﻮﻻﻧﺎ‬Persian
pronunciation: [moulɒːnɒ]) in Iran and popularly
known as Mevlânâ in Turkey. Mawlānā (‫ )ﻣﻮﻻﻧﺎ‬is a
term of Arabic origin, meaning "our master".
The term ‫ ﻣﻮﻟﻮی‬Mawlawī/Mowlavi (Persian) and
Mevlevi (Turkish), also of Arabic origin, meaning
"my master", is also frequently used for him.[33]

Life

Jalal ad-Din Rumi gathers Sufi mystics.

Double-page illuminated frontispiece, 1st book (daftar) of the
Collection of poems (Masnavi-i ma'navi), 1461 manuscript

Bowl of Reflections with Rumi's poetry, early 13th century.

Brooklyn Museum.
Overview

Rumi was born to native Persian-speaking

parents,[18][19][34] originally from the Balkh, which at
the time was part of the Khwarezmian Empire, but
is now in present-day Afghanistan. He was born
either in Wakhsh,[4] a village on the Vakhsh River
in present-day Tajikistan,[4] or in the city of Balkh,
in present-day Afghanistan.[2][35]

Greater Balkh was at that time a major centre of

Persian culture[24][34][36] and Sufism had
developed there for several centuries. The most
important influences upon Rumi, besides his father,
were the Persian poets Attar and Sanai.[37] Rumi
expresses his appreciation: "Attar was the spirit,
Sanai his eyes twain, And in time thereafter, Came
we in their train"[38] and mentions in another poem:
"Attar has traversed the seven cities of Love, We
are still at the turn of one street".[39] His father
was also connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm
al-Din Kubra.[14]

Rumi lived most of his life under the

Persianate[40][41][42] Seljuk Sultanate of Rum,
where he produced his works[43] and died in
1273 AD. He was buried in Konya, and his shrine
became a place of pilgrimage.[44] Upon 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
known as the Sama ceremony. He was laid to rest
beside his father, and over his remains a shrine
was erected. A hagiographical account of him is
described in Shams ud-Din Ahmad Aflāki's Manāqib
ul-Ārifīn (written between 1318 and 1353). This
biography needs to be treated with care as it
contains both legends and facts about Rumi.[45]
For example, Professor Franklin Lewis of the
University of Chicago, author of the most complete
biography on Rumi, has separate sections for the
hagiographical biography of Rumi and the actual
biography about him.[46]

Childhood and emigration

Rumi's father was Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, a theologian,

jurist and a mystic from Balkh, who was also known
by the followers of Rumi as Sultan al-Ulama or
"Sultan of the Scholars". The popular hagiographical
assertions that have claimed the family's descent
from the Caliph Abu Bakr does not hold on closer
examination and is rejected by modern scholars.
The claim of maternal descent from the
Khwarazmshah for Rumi or his father is also seen
as a non-historical hagiographical tradition
designed to connect the family with royalty, but
this claim is rejected for chronological and
historical reasons. The most complete genealogy
offered for the family stretches back to six or
seven generations to famous Hanafi
jurists.[46][47][48]

We do not learn the name of Baha al-Din's mother

in the sources, only that he referred to her as
"Māmi" (colloquial Persian for Māma),[49] and that
she was a simple woman who lived to the 1200s.
The mother of Rumi was Mu'mina Khātūn. The
profession of the family for several generations
was that of Islamic preachers of the relatively
liberal Hanafi Maturidi school, and this family
tradition was continued by Rumi (see his Fihi Ma
Fih and Seven Sermons) and Sultan Walad (see
Ma'rif Waladi for examples of his everyday
sermons and lectures).

When the Mongols invaded Central Asia sometime

between 1215 and 1220, Baha ud-Din Walad, with
his whole family and a group of disciples, set out
westwards. According to hagiographical account
which is not agreed upon by all Rumi scholars,
Rumi encountered one of the most famous mystic
Persian poets, Attar, in the Iranian city of Nishapur,
located in the province of Khorāsān. Attar
immediately recognized Rumi's spiritual eminence.
He saw the father walking ahead of the son and
said, "Here comes a sea followed by an
ocean."[50][51] Attar gave the boy his Asrārnāma, a
book about the entanglement of the soul in the
material world. This meeting had a deep impact on
the eighteen-year-old Rumi and later on became
the inspiration for his works.

From Nishapur, Walad and his entourage set out for

Baghdad, meeting many of the scholars and Sufis
of the city. From Baghdad they went to Hejaz and
performed the pilgrimage at Mecca. The migrating
caravan then passed through Damascus, Malatya,
Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri and Nigde. They finally
settled in Karaman for seven years; Rumi's mother
and brother both died there. In 1225, Rumi married
Gowhar Khatun in Karaman. They had two sons:
Sultan Walad and Ala-eddin Chalabi. When his wife
died, Rumi married again and had a son, Amir Alim
Chalabi, and a daughter, Malakeh Khatun.

On 1 May 1228, most likely as a result of the

insistent invitation of 'Alā' ud-Dīn Key-Qobād, ruler
of Anatolia, Baha' ud-Din came and finally settled in
Konya in Anatolia within the westernmost
territories of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm.

Education and encounters with Shams-e

Tabrizi

Baha' ud-Din became the head of a madrassa

(religious school) and when he died, Rumi, aged
twenty-five, inherited his position as the Islamic
molvi. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed
Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to
train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa,
especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years,
Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-
Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's
public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist,
issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques
of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic
teacher) and taught his adherents in the
madrassa.
During this period, Rumi also travelled to Damascus
and is said to have spent four years there.

It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e

Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely
changed his life. From an accomplished teacher
and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.

Tomb shrine of Shams Tabrizi, Khoy

Shams had travelled throughout the Middle East

searching and praying for someone who could
"endure my company". A voice said to him, "What
will you give in return?" Shams replied, "My head!"
The voice then said, "The one you seek is Jalal ud-
Din of Konya." On the night of 5 December 1248, as
Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to
the back door. He went out, never to be seen
again. It is rumoured that Shams was murdered
with the connivance of Rumi's son, 'Ala' ud-Din; if
so, Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of
mystical friendship.[52]

Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death

of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring
of lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself
went out searching for Shams and journeyed again
to Damascus. There, he realised:
 Why should I seek? I am the
same as
He. His essence speaks through
me.
I have been looking for
myself![53]

Later life and death

Tomb shrine of Rumi, Konya

Mewlana had been spontaneously composing
ghazals (Persian poems), and these had been
collected in the Divan-i Kabir or Diwan Shams
Tabrizi. Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-
Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's
death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student,
Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's
companion. One day, the two of them were
wandering through the Meram vineyards outside
Konya when Hussam described to Rumi an idea he
had had: "If you were to write a book like the
Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq ut-Tayr of 'Attar, it
would become the companion of many troubadours.
They would fill their hearts from your work and
compose music to accompany it." Rumi smiled and
took out a piece of paper on which were written
the opening eighteen lines of his Masnavi,
beginning with:

Listen to the reed and the tale it

tells,
How it sings of separation...[54]

Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent

the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia
dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the
Masnavi, to Hussam.

In December 1273, Rumi fell ill; he predicted his

own death and composed the well-known ghazal,
which begins with the verse:
 How doest thou know what sort
of king I have within me as
companion?
Do not cast thy glance upon my
golden face, for I have iron
legs.[55]

Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya. His

death was mourned by the diverse community of
Konya, with local Christians and Jews joining the
crowd that converged to bid farewell as his body
was carried through the city.[56] Rumi's body was
interred beside that of his father, and a splendid
shrine, the Yeşil Türbe (Green Tomb, ‫;ﻗﺒﻪ اﻟﺨﻀﺮاء‬
today the Mevlâna Museum), was erected over his
place of burial. His epitaph reads:

When we are dead, seek not our

tomb in the earth, but find it in
the hearts of men.[57]

Georgian princess and Seljuq queen Gurju Khatun

was a close friend of Rumi. She was the one who
sponsored the construction of his tomb in
Konya.[58] The 13th century Mevlâna Mausoleum,
with its mosque, dance hall, schools and living
quarters for dervishes, remains a destination of
pilgrimage to this day, and is probably the most
popular pilgrimage site to be regularly visited by
adherents of every major religion.[56]
Teachings

A page of a copy c. 1503 of the Diwan-e Shams-e Tabriz-i. See

Rumi ghazal 163.

Like other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian

literature, Rumi's poetry speaks of love which
infuses the world. Rumi's teachings also express
the tenets summarized in the Quranic verse which
Shams-e Tabrizi cited as the essence of prophetic
guidance: "Know that ‘There is no god but He,’ and
ask forgiveness for your sin" (Q. 47:19). In the
interpretation attributed to Shams, the first part of
the verse commands the humanity to seek
knowledge of tawhid (oneness of God), while the
second instructs them to negate their own
existence. In Rumi's terms, tawhid is lived most
fully through love, with the connection being made
explicit in his verse that describes love as "that
flame which, when it blazes up, burns away
everything except the Everlasting Beloved."[59]
Rumi's longing and desire to attain this ideal is
evident in the following poem from his book the
Masnavi:[60]
 ‫از ﺟﻤﺎدی‬ I died to the mineral state and
‫ُﻣﺮدم و ﻧﺎﻣﯽ‬ became a plant,
‫ﺷﺪم‬ I died to the vegetal state and
‫وز ﻧﻤﺎ ُﻣﺮدم ﺑﻪ‬ reached animality,
‫ﺣﯿﻮان ﺑﺮزدم‬ I died to the animal state and
‫ُﻣﺮدم از‬ became a man,
‫ﺣﯿﻮاﻧﯽ و آدم‬ Then what should I fear? I have
‫ﺷﺪم‬ never become less from dying.
‫ﭘﺲ ﭼﻪ ﺗﺮﺳﻢ‬ At the next charge (forward) I
‫ﮐﯽ ز ﻣﺮدن ﮐﻢ‬ will die to human nature,
‫ﺷﺪم؟‬ So that I may lift up (my) head
‫ﺣﻤﻠﻪ دﯾﮕﺮ‬
ٔ and wings (and soar) among
‫ﺑﻤﯿﺮم از ﺑﺸﺮ‬ the angels,
‫ﺗﺎ ﺑﺮآرم از‬ And I must (also) jump from the
‫ﻣﻼﺋﮏ ﺑﺎل و‬ river of (the state of) the
 ‫ﭘﺮ‬ angel,
‫وز ﻣﻠﮏ ﻫﻢ‬ Everything perishes except His
‫ﺑﺎﯾﺪم ﺟﺴﺘﻦ ز‬ Face,
‫ﺟﻮ‬ Once again I will become
‫ﮐﻞ ﺷﯽء ﻫﺎﻟﮏ‬ sacrificed from (the state of)
‫اﻻ وﺟﻬﻪ‬ the angel,
‫ﺑﺎر دﯾﮕﺮ از‬ I will become that which cannot
‫ﻣﻠﮏ ﭘﺮان‬ come into the imagination,
‫ﺷﻮم‬ Then I will become non-
‫آﻧﭻ اﻧﺪر وﻫﻢ‬ existent; non-existence says
‫ﻧﺎﯾﺪ آن ﺷﻮم‬ to me (in tones) like an organ,
‫ﭘﺲ ﻋﺪم ﮔﺮدم‬ Truly, to Him is our return.
‫ﻋﺪم ﭼﻮن‬
‫ارﻏﻨﻮن‬
‫ﮔﻮﯾﺪم ﮐﻪ اﻧﺎ‬
‫اﻟﯿﻪ راﺟﻌﻮن‬
The Masnavi weaves fables, scenes from
everyday life, Qur'anic revelations and exegesis,
and metaphysics into a vast and intricate
tapestry.

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 whole
being on the divine and to do this so intensely that
the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. 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
Mevlevi, which his son Sultan Walad organised.
Rumi encouraged Sama, 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 other verses in the Masnavi, Rumi describes in

detail the universal message of love:
 The lover's cause is separate
from all other causes
Love is the astrolabe of God's
mysteries.[61]

Rumi's favourite musical instrument was the ney

(reed flute).[15]

Major works

An Ottoman era manuscript depicting Rumi and Shams e

An Ottoman era manuscript depicting Rumi and Shams-e
Tabrizi.

Rumi's poetry is often divided into various

categories: the quatrains (rubayāt) and odes
(ghazal) of the Divan, the six books of the Masnavi.
The prose works are divided into The Discourses,
The Letters, and the Seven Sermons.

Poetic works

Maṭnawīye Ma'nawī
Mevlâna Museum, Konya, Turkey
Rumi's best-known work is the Maṭnawīye
Ma'nawī (Spiritual Couplets; ‫)ﻣﺜﻨﻮی ﻣﻌﻨﻮی‬. The
six-volume poem holds a distinguished place
within the rich tradition of Persian Sufi literature,
and has been commonly called "the Quran in
Persian".[62][63] Many commentators have
regarded it as the greatest mystical poem in
world literature.[64] It contains approximately
27,000 lines,[65] each consisting of a couplet
with an internal rhyme.[56] While the mathnawi
genre of poetry may use a variety of different
metres, after Rumi composed his poem, the
metre he used became the mathnawi metre par
excellence. The first recorded use of this metre
for a mathnawi poem took place at the Nizari
Ismaili fortress of Girdkuh between 1131–1139. It
likely set the stage for later poetry in this style
by mystics such as Attar and Rumi. [66]
Rumi's other major work is the Dīwān-e Kabīr
(Great Work) or Dīwān-e Shams-e Tabrīzī (The
Works of Shams of Tabriz; ‫)دﯾﻮان ﺷﻤﺲ ﺗﺒﺮﯾﺰی‬,
named in honour of Rumi's master Shams.
Besides approximately 35000 Persian couplets
and 2000 Persian quatrains,[67] the Divan
contains 90 Ghazals and 19 quatrains in
Arabic,[68] a couple of dozen or so couplets in
Turkish (mainly macaronic poems of mixed
Persian and Turkish)[69][70] and 14 couplets in
Greek (all of them in three macaronic poems of
Greek-Persian).[71][72][73]
Prose works

Fihi Ma Fihi (In It What's in It, Persian: ‫ﻓﯿﻪ ﻣﺎ‬

‫ )ﻓﯿﻪ‬provides a record of seventy-one talks and
lectures given by Rumi on various occasions to
his disciples. It was compiled from the notes of
his various disciples, so Rumi did not author the
work directly.[74] An English translation from the
Persian was first published by A.J. Arberry as
Discourses of Rumi (New York: Samuel Weiser,
1972), and a translation of the second book by
Wheeler Thackston, Sign of the Unseen (Putney,
VT: Threshold Books, 1994). The style of the Fihi
ma fihi is colloquial and meant for middle-class
men and women, and lack the sophisticated
wordplay.[75]
Majāles-e Sab'a (Seven Sessions, Persian:
‫ )ﻣﺠﺎﻟﺲ ﺳﺒﻌﻪ‬contains seven Persian sermons
(as the name implies) or lectures given in seven
different assemblies. The sermons themselves
give a commentary on the deeper meaning of
Qur'an and Hadith. The sermons also include
quotations from poems of Sana'i, 'Attar, and
other poets, including Rumi himself. As Aflakī
relates, after Shams-e Tabrīzī, Rumi gave
sermons at the request of notables, especially
Salāh al-Dīn Zarkūb. The style of Persian is
rather simple, but quotation of Arabic and
knowledge of history and the Hadith show
Rumi's knowledge in the Islamic sciences. His
style is typical of the genre of lectures given by
Sufis and spiritual teachers.[76]
 Makatib (The Letters, Persian: ‫ )ﻣﮑﺎﺗﯿﺐ‬or
Maktubat (‫ )ﻣﮑﺘﻮﺑﺎت‬is the collection of letters
written in Persian by Rumi to his disciples,
family members, and men of state and of
influence. The letters testify that Rumi kept
very busy helping family members and
administering a community of disciples that had
grown up around them. Unlike the Persian style
of the previous two mentioned works (which are
lectures and sermons), the letters are
consciously sophisticated and epistolary in style,
which is in conformity with the expectations of
correspondence directed to nobles, statesmen
and kings.[77]

Religious outlook
Rumi belongs to the class of Islamic philosophers
which include Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra. These
transcendental philosophers are often studied
together in traditional schools of irfan, philosophy
and theosophy throughout the Muslim world.[78]

Rumi embeds his theosophy (transcendental

philosophy) like a string through the beads of his
poems and stories. His main point and emphasis is
the unity of being.

It is undeniable that Rumi was a Muslim scholar

and took Islam seriously. Nonetheless, the depth of
his spiritual vision extended beyond narrow
understanding sectarian concerns. One rubaiyat
reads:
 ‫در راه ﻃﻠﺐ ﻋﺎﻗﻞ و‬ On the seeker's path,
‫دﯾﻮاﻧﻪ ﯾﮑﯽ اﺳﺖ‬ wise men and fools are
‫در ﺷﯿﻮهی ﻋﺸﻖ‬ one.
‫ﺧﻮﯾﺶ و ﺑﯿﮕﺎﻧﻪ ﯾﮑﯽ‬ In His love, brothers and
‫اﺳﺖ‬ strangers are one.
‫آن را ﮐﻪ ﺷﺮاب وﺻﻞ‬ Go on! Drink the wine of
‫ﺟﺎﻧﺎن دادﻧﺪ‬ the Beloved!
‫در ﻣﺬﻫﺐ او ﮐﻌﺒﻪ و‬ In that faith, Muslims
‫ﺑﺘﺨﺎﻧﻪ ﯾﮑﯽ اﺳﺖ‬ and pagans are one.[79]

—Quatrain 305

According to the Quran, Prophet Muhammad is a

mercy sent by God to the Alamin (to all worlds),
including humanity overall.[80] In regards to this,
Rumi states:
 "The Light of Muhammad does
not abandon a Zoroastrian or
Jew in the world. May the shade
of his good fortune shine upon
everyone! He brings all of those
who are led astray into the Way
out of the desert."[81]

Rumi, however, asserts the supremacy of Islam by

stating:

"The Light of Muhammad has

become a thousand branches (of
knowledge), a thousand, so that
both this world and the next
 have been seized from end to
end. If Muhammad rips the veil
open from a single such branch,
thousands of monks and priests
will tear the string of false belief
from around their waists."[82]

Many of Rumi's poems suggest the importance of

outward religious observance and the primacy of
the Qur'an.[83]

Flee to God's Qur'an, take refuge

in it
there with the spirits of the
prophets merge.
The Book conveys the prophets'
 circumstances
those fish of the pure sea of
Majesty.[84]

Rumi states:

I am the servant of the Qur'an as

long as I have life.
I am the dust on the path of
Muhammad, the Chosen one.
If anyone quotes anything except
this from my sayings,
I am quit of him and outraged by
these words.[85]
Rumi also states:

"I "sewed" my two eyes shut

from [desires for] this world and
the next – this I learned from
Muhammad."[86]

On the first page of the Masnavi, Rumi states:

"Hadha kitâbu 'l- mathnawîy wa

huwa uSûlu uSûli uSûli 'd-dîn wa
kashshâfu 'l-qur'ân."
"This is the book of the Masnavi,
and it is the roots of the roots of
the roots of the (Islamic)
 Religion and it is the Explainer
of the Qur'ân."[87]

Hadi Sabzavari, one of Iran's most important 19th-

century philosophers, makes the following
connection between the Masnavi and Islam, in the
introduction to his philosophical commentary on the
book:

It is a commentary on the
versified exegesis [of the Qur’ān]
and its occult mystery, since all
of it [all of the Mathnawī] is, as
you will see, an elucidation of
the clear verses [of the Qur’ān],
a clarification of prophetic
utterances, a glimmer of the
light of the luminous Qur’ān,
and burning embers irradiating
their rays from its shining lamp.
As respects to hunting through
the treasure-trove of the Qur’ān,
one can find in it [the Mathnawī]
all [the Qur’ān's] ancient
philosophical wisdom; it [the
Mathnawī] is all entirely
eloquent philosophy. In truth,
the pearly verse of the poem
combines the Canon Law of
Islam (sharīʿa) with the Sufi Path
 (ṭarīqa) and the Divine Reality
(ḥaqīqa); the author's [Rūmī]
achievement belongs to God in
his bringing together of the Law
(sharīʿa), the Path, and the Truth
in a way that includes critical
intellect, profound thought, a
brilliant natural temperament,
and integrity of character that is
endowed with power, insight,
inspiration, and illumination.[88]

Seyyed Hossein Nasr states:

 One of the greatest living
authorities on Rûmî in Persia
today, Hâdî Hâ'irî, has shown in
an unpublished work that some
6,000 verses of the Dîwân and
the Mathnawî are practically
direct translations of Qur'ânic
verses into Persian poetry.[89]

Rumi states in his Dīwān:

The Sufi is hanging on to

Muhammad, like Abu Bakr.[90]

His Masnavi contains anecdotes and stories

derived largely from the Quran and the hadith, as
well as everyday tales.

Legacy

Universality

Shahram Shiva asserts that "Rumi is able to

verbalise the highly personal and often confusing
world of personal growth and development in a
very clear and direct fashion. He does not offend
anyone, and he includes everyone.... Today Rumi's
poems can be heard in churches, synagogues, Zen
monasteries, as well as in the downtown New York
art/performance/music scene."

To many modern Westerners, his teachings are

one of the best introductions to the philosophy and
practice of Sufism. In the West Shahram Shiva has
been teaching, performing and sharing the
translations of the poetry of Rumi for nearly
twenty years and has been instrumental in
spreading Rumi's legacy in the English-speaking
parts of the world.

According to Professor Majid M. Naini,[91] "Rumi's

life and transformation provide true testimony and
proof that people of all religions and backgrounds
can live together in peace and harmony. Rumi’s
visions, words, and life teach us how to reach inner
peace and happiness so we can finally stop the
continual stream of hostility and hatred and
achieve true global peace and harmony.”
Rumi's work has been translated into many of the
world's languages, including Russian, German, Urdu,
Turkish, Arabic, Bengali, French, Italian, and
Spanish, and is being presented in a growing
number of formats, including concerts, workshops,
readings, dance performances, and other artistic
creations.[92] The English interpretations of Rumi's
poetry by Coleman Barks have sold more than half
a million copies worldwide,[93] and Rumi is one of
the most widely read poets in the United
States.[94] Shahram Shiva book "Rending the Veil:
Literal and Poetic Translations of Rumi" (1995,
HOHM Press) is the recipient of the Benjamin
Franklin Award.
Recordings of Rumi poems have made it to the
USA's Billboard's Top 20 list. A selection of
American author Deepak Chopra's editing of the
translations by Fereydoun Kia of Rumi's love
poems has been performed by Hollywood
personalities such as Madonna, Goldie Hawn, Philip
Glass and Demi Moore.

Rumi and his mausoleum on the reverse of the 5000 Turkish

lira banknotes of 1981–1994

Rumi and his mausoleum were depicted on the

reverse of the 5000 Turkish lira banknotes of
1981–1994.[95]

There is a famous landmark in Northern India,

known as Rumi Gate, situated in Lucknow (the
capital of Uttar Pradesh) named for Rumi.

Iranian world

— ‫ﭘﺎرﺳﯽ ﮔﻮ ﮔﺮﭼﻪ ﺗﺎزی ﺧﻮﺷﺘﺮ اﺳﺖ‬

‫ﻋﺸﻖ را ﺧﻮد ﺻﺪ زﺑﺎن دﯾﮕﺮ اﺳﺖ‬

Say it in Persian although in

Arabic sounds better—Love,
however, has its own many
other dialects
These cultural, historical and linguistic ties between
Rumi and Iran have made Rumi an iconic Iranian
poet, and some of the most important Rumi
scholars including Foruzanfar, Naini, Sabzewari,
etc., have come from modern Iran.[96] Rumi's
poetry is displayed on the walls of many cities
across Iran, sung in Persian music,[96] and read in
school books.[97]

Rumi's poetry forms the basis of much classical

Iranian and Afghan music.[98][99] Contemporary
classical interpretations of his poetry are made by
Muhammad Reza Shajarian, Shahram Nazeri,
Davood Azad (the three from Iran) and Ustad
Mohammad Hashem Cheshti (Afghanistan).
Mewlewī Sufi Order; Rumi and Turkey

The Mewlewī Sufi order was founded in 1273 by

Rumi's followers after his death.[100] His first
successor in the rectorship of the order was
"Husam Chalabi" himself, after whose death in 1284
Rumi's younger and only surviving son, Sultan
Walad (died 1312), popularly known as author of the
mystical Maṭnawī Rabābnāma, or the Book of the
Rabab was installed as grand master of the
order.[101] The leadership of the order has been
kept within Rumi's family in Konya uninterruptedly
since then.[102] The Mewlewī Sufis, also known as
Whirling Dervishes, believe in performing their
dhikr in the form of Sama. During the time of Rumi
(as attested in the Manāqib ul-Ārefīn of Aflākī), his
followers gathered for musical and "turning"
practices.

According to tradition, Rumi was himself a notable

musician who played the robāb, although his
favourite instrument was the ney or reed flute.[103]
The music accompanying the samāʿ consists of
settings of poems from the Maṭnawī and Dīwān-e
Kabīr, or of Sultan Walad's poems.[103] The
Mawlawīyah was a well-established Sufi order in
the Ottoman Empire, and many of the members of
the order served in various official positions of the
Caliphate. The centre for the Mevlevi was in
Konya. There is also a Mewlewī monastery (‫درﮔﺎه‬,
dargāh) in Istanbul near the Galata Tower in which
the samāʿ is performed and accessible to the
public. The Mewlewī order issues an invitation to
people of all backgrounds:

Come,
come,
whoever
Rumi's tomb in Konya, Turkey.
you are,
Wanderer,
During Ottoman times, the
idolater,
Mevlevi produced a number
worshiper
of notable poets and
musicians, including Sheikh of fire,
Ghalib, Ismail Rusuhi Dede Come even
of Ankara, Esrar Dede, though you
Halet Efendi, and Gavsi have
Dede, who are all buried at broken your
the Galata Mewlewī Khāna vows a
(Turkish: Mevlevi-Hane) in thousand
Istanbul.[105] Music,
times,
especially that of the ney,
Come, and
plays an important part in
come yet
the Mevlevi.
again.
With the foundation of the Ours is not
modern, secular Republic of a caravan
Turkey, Mustafa Kemal
of
Atatürk removed religion
despair.[104]
from the sphere of public
policy and restricted it
exclusively to that of personal morals, behaviour
and faith. On 13 December 1925, a law was passed
closing all the tekkes (dervish lodges) and zāwiyas
(chief dervish lodges), and the centres of
veneration to which visits (ziyārat) were made.
Istanbul alone had more than 250 tekkes as well as
small centres for gatherings of various fraternities;
this law dissolved the Sufi Orders, prohibited the
use of mystical names, titles and costumes
pertaining to their titles, impounded the Orders'
assets, and banned their ceremonies and
meetings. The law also provided penalties for those
who tried to re-establish the Orders. Two years
later, in 1927, the Mausoleum of Mevlâna in Konya
was allowed to reopen as a Museum.[106]

In the 1950s, the Turkish government began

allowing the Whirling Dervishes to perform once a
year in Konya. The Mewlānā festival is held over
two weeks in December; its culmination is on 17
December, the Urs of Mewlānā (anniversary of
Rumi's death), called Šabe Arūs (‫)ﺷﺐ ﻋﺮوس‬
(Persian meaning "nuptial night"), the night of
Rumi's union with God.[107] In 1974, the Whirling
Dervishes were permitted to travel to the West for
the first time. In 2005, UNESCO proclaimed "The
Mevlevi Sama Ceremony" of Turkey as one of the
Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of
Humanity.[108]

Religious denomination

As Edward G. Browne noted, the three most

prominent mystical Persian poets Rumi, Sanai and
Attar were all Sunni Muslims and their poetry
abounds with praise for the first two caliphs Abu
Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattāb.[109] According to
Annemarie Schimmel, the tendency among Shia
authors to anachronistically include leading
mystical poets such as Rumi and Attar among their
own ranks, became stronger after the introduction
of Twelver Shia as the state religion in the Safavid
Empire in 1501.[110]

Eight hundredth anniversary celebrations

In Afghanistan, Rumi is known as Mawlānā, in

Turkey as Mevlâna, and in Iran as Molavī.
At the proposal of the Permanent Delegations of
Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, and as approved by
its executive board and General Conference in
conformity with its mission of "constructing in the
minds of men the defences of peace", UNESCO
was associated with the celebration, in 2007, of
the eight hundredth anniversary of Rumi's birth.[111]
The commemoration at UNESCO itself took place
on 6 September 2007;[2] UNESCO issued a medal
in Rumi's name in the hope that it would prove an
encouragement to those who are engaged in
research on and dissemination of Rumi's ideas and
ideals, which would, in turn, enhance the diffusion
of the ideals of UNESCO.[35]
The Afghan Ministry of Culture and Youth
established a national committee, which organised
an international seminar to celebrate the birth and
life of the great ethical philosopher and world-
renowned poet. This grand gathering of the
intellectuals, diplomats, and followers of Mewlana
was held in Kabul and in Balkh, the Mewlana's
place of birth.[112]

On 30 September 2007, Iranian school bells were

rung throughout the country in honour of
Mewlana.[113] Also in that year, Iran held a Rumi
Week from 26 October to 2 November. An
international ceremony and conference were held
in Tehran; the event was opened by the Iranian
president and the chairman of the Iranian
parliament. Scholars from twenty-nine countries
attended the events, and 450 articles were
presented at the conference.[114] Iranian musician
Shahram Nazeri was awarded the Légion d'honneur
and Iran's House of Music Award in 2007 for his
renowned works on Rumi masterpieces.[115] 2007
was declared as the "International Rumi Year" by
UNESCO.[116][117]

Also on 30 September 2007, Turkey celebrated

Rumi's eight-hundredth birthday with a giant
Whirling Dervish ritual performance of the samāʿ,
which was televised using forty-eight cameras and
broadcast live in eight countries. Ertugrul Gunay, of
the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, stated, "Three
hundred dervishes are scheduled to take part in
this ritual, making it the largest performance of
sema in history."[118]

Mawlana Rumi Review

The Mawlana Rumi Review[119] (ISSN 2042-3357 )

is published annually by The Centre for Persian and
Iranian Studies at the University of Exeter in
collaboration with The Rumi Institute in Nicosia,
Cyprus, and Archetype Books[120] in Cambridge.[120]
The first volume was published in 2010, and it has
come out annually since then. According to the
principal editor of the journal, Leonard Lewisohn:
"Although a number of major Islamic poets easily
rival the likes of Dante, Shakespeare and Milton in
importance and output, they still enjoy only a
marginal literary fame in the West because the
works of Arabic and Persian thinkers, writers and
poets are considered as negligible, frivolous,
tawdry sideshows beside the grand narrative of
the Western Canon. It is the aim of the Mawlana
Rumi Review to redress this carelessly inattentive
approach to world literature, which is something far
more serious than a minor faux pas committed by
the Western literary imagination."[121]

See also

General

Blind men and an elephant

Sant Mat
 Symphony No. 3 (Szymanowski)

Poems by Rumi

Rumi ghazal 163

On Persian culture

Iranian philosophy
List of Persian poets and authors
Ferdowsi (c. 940–1020), poet, arguably
the most influential figure in Persian
literature
Hafez, Persian poet
Persian literature
Persian mysticism
Tajik people
Rumi scholars and writers

Hamid Algar
Rahim Arbab
William Chittick
Badiozzaman Forouzanfar
Hossein Elahi Ghomshei
Fatemeh Keshavarz
Majid M. Naini
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Franklin Lewis
François Pétis de la Croix
Annemarie Schimmel
Dariush Shayegan
 Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolhossein Zarinkoob

English translators of Rumi poetry

Arthur John Arberry

William Chittick
Ravan A.G. Farhadi
Nader Khalili
Daniel Ladinsky
Franklin Lewis
Majid M. Naini
Reynold A. Nicholson
James Redhouse
Shahriar Shahriari[122]
 Shahram Shiva

Interpreters of Rumi

Coleman Barks
Shohreh Moavenian
Shahram Shiva

References
1. Ritter, H.; Bausani, A. "ḎJ̲alāl al-Dīn Rūmī b.
Bahāʾ al-Dīn Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ Walad b.
Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad Ḵh̲aṭībī." Encyclopaedia of
Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis,
C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P.
Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. Excerpt:
"known by the sobriquet Mewlānā, persian
 poet and founder of the Mewlewiyya order of
dervishes"
2. "UNESCO: 800th Anniversary of the Birth of
Mawlana Jalal-ud-Din Balkhi-Rumi" . UNESCO.
6 September 2007. Archived from the
original on 29 June 2009. Retrieved 25 June
2014. "The prominent Persian language poet,
thinker and spiritual master, Mevlana
Celaleddin Belhi-Rumi was born in 1207 in
Balkh, presently Afghanistan."
3. William Harmless, Mystics, (Oxford
University Press, 2008), 167.
4. Annemarie Schimmel, "I Am Wind, You Are
Fire," p. 11. She refers to a 1989 article by
Fritz Meier:

Tajiks and Persian admirers

still prefer to call Jalaluddin
'Balkhi' because his family
lived in Balkh, current day
in Afghanistan before
migrating westward.
However, their home was
not in the actual city of
Balkh, since the mid-eighth
century a center of Muslim
culture in (Greater)
Khorasan (Iran and Central
Asia). Rather, as Meier has
shown, it was in the small
town of Wakhsh north of
the Oxus that Baha'uddin
Walad, Jalaluddin's father,
lived and worked as a jurist
and preacher with mystical
inclinations. Franklin
Lewis, Rumi : Past and
Present, East and West: The
Life, Teachings, and Poetry
of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, 2000,
pp. 47–49.
Lewis has devoted two pages of his book to
the topic of Wakhsh, which he states has
been identified with the medieval town of
Lêwkand (or Lâvakand) or Sangtude, which
is about 65 kilometers southeast of
Dushanbe, the capital of present-day
Tajikistan. He says it is on the east bank of
the Vakhshâb river, a major tributary that
joins the Amu Daryâ river (also called Jayhun,
and named the Oxus by the Greeks). He
further states: "Bahâ al-Din may have been
born in Balkh, but at least between June 1204
and 1210 (Shavvâl 600 and 607), during
which time Rumi was born, Bahâ al-Din
resided in a house in Vakhsh (Bah 2:143 [=
Bahâ' uddîn Walad's] book, "Ma`ârif.").
 Vakhsh, rather than Balkh was the
permanent base of Bahâ al-Din and his
family until Rumi was around five years old
(mei 16–35) [= from a book in German by
the scholar Fritz Meier—note inserted here].
At that time, in about the year 1212 (A.H.
608–609), the Valads moved to Samarqand
(Fih 333; Mei 29–30, 36) [= reference to
Rumi's "Discourses" and to Fritz Meier's book
—note inserted here], leaving behind Baâ al-
Din's mother, who must have been at least
seventy-five years old."
5. H. Ritter, 1991, DJALĀL al-DĪN RŪMĪ, The
Encyclopaedia of Islam (Volume II: C–G),
393.
6. C. E. Bosworth, 1988, BALḴ, city and province
in northern Afghanistan, Encyclopaedia
Iranica: Later, suzerainty over it passed to
the Qarā Ḵetāy of Transoxania, until in
594/1198 the Ghurid Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Sām b.
Moḥammad of Bāmīān occupied it when its
Turkish governor, a vassal of the Qarā
Ḵetāy, had died, and incorporated it briefly
into the Ghurid empire. Yet within a decade,
Balḵ and Termeḏ passed to the Ghurids’
rival, the Ḵᵛārazmšāh ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn
Moḥammad, who seized it in 602/1205-06
and appointed as governor there a Turkish
commander, Čaḡri or Jaʿfar. In summer of
617/1220 the Mongols first appeared at
Balḵ.
7. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Rumi
Meditations , Penguin Group, 2008, p. 48,
ISBN 9781592577361
8. Lewis, Franklin D. (2014). Rumi: Past and
Present, East and West: The life, Teaching
and poetry of Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Simon and
Schuster. pp. 15–16, 52, 60, 89.
9. Zarrinkoob, Abdolhossein (2005). Serr-e
Ney. 1. Instisharat-i Ilmi. p. 447.
10. Ramin Jahanbegloo, In Search of the Sacred :
A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on
His Life and Thought, ABC-CLIO (2010), p. 141
11. Yalman, Suzan (7 July 2016). "Badr al-Dīn
Tabrīzī" . Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE.
"Badr al-Dīn Tabrīzī was the architect of the
original tomb built for Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn
Rūmī (d. 672/1273, in Konya), the great
Persian mystic and poet."
12. Lewis, Franklin D. (2008). Rumi: Past and
Present, East and West: The life, Teaching
and poetry of Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Oneworld
Publication. p. 9. "How is that a Persian boy
born almost eight hundred years ago in
Khorasan, the northeastern province of
greater Iran, in a region that we identify
today as in Central Asia, but was considered
in those days as part of the greater Persian
cultural sphere, wound up in central Anatolia
on the receding edge of the Byzantine
cultural sphere, in what is now Turkey, some
1,500 miles to the west?"
13. Schimmel, Annemarie (7 April 1994). The
Mystery of Numbers. Oxford University
Press. p. 51. "These examples are taken from
the Persian mystic Rumi's work, not from
Chinese, but they express the yang-yin [sic]
relationship with perfect lucidity."
14. Seyyed, Hossein Nasr (1987). Islamic Art and
Spirituality. Suny Press. p. 115. "Jalal al-Din
was born in a major center of Persian
culture, Balkh, from Persian speaking
parents, and is the product of that Islamic
Persian culture which in the 7th/13th century
dominated the 'whole of the eastern lands of
Islam and to which present day Persians as
well as Turks, Afghans, Central Asian Muslims
and the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistani
subcontinent are heir. It is precisely in this
world that the sun of his spiritual legacy has
shone most brillianty during the past seven
centuries. The father of Jalal al-Din,
Muhammad ibn Husayn Khatibi, known as
Baha al-Din Walad and entitled Sultan al-
 'ulama', was an outstanding Sufi in Balkh
connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-
Din Kubra."
15. Charles Haviland (30 September 2007).
"The roar of Rumi—800 years on" . BBC
News. Retrieved 30 September 2007.
16. Ciabattari, Jane (21 October 2014). "Why is
Rumi the best-selling poet in the US?" . BBC
News. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
17. Tompkins, Ptolemy (29 October 2002).
"Rumi Rules!" . Time. ISSN 0040-781X .
Retrieved 22 August 2016.
18. Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun: A
Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi, SUNY
Press, 1993, p. 193: "Rumi's mother tongue
was Persian, but he had learned during his
stay in Konya, enough Turkish and Greek to
use it, now and then, in his verse."
19. Franklin Lewis: "On the question of Rumi's
multilingualism (pp. 315–317), we may still
say that he spoke and wrote in Persian as a
native language, wrote and conversed in
Arabic as a learned "foreign" language and
could at least get by at the market in Turkish
and Greek (although some wildly
extravagant claims have been made about
his command of Attic Greek, or his native
tongue being Turkish) (Lewis 2008:xxi).
(Franklin Lewis, "Rumi: Past and Present,
East and West: The Life, Teachings and
Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi," One World
Publication Limited, 2008). Franklin also
points out that: "Living among Turks, Rumi
also picked up some colloquial Turkish."
(Franklin Lewis, "Rumi: Past and Present,
East and West: The Life, Teachings and
Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi," One World
Publication Limited, 2008, p. 315). He also
mentions Rumi composed thirteen lines in
Greek (Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and
Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings
and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, One World
Publication Limited, 2008, p. 316). On Rumi's
son, Sultan Walad, Franklin mentions: "Sultan
Walad elsewhere admits that he has little
knowledge of Turkish" (Sultan Walad):
Franklin Lewis, Rumi, "Past and Present, East
and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of
Jalal al-Din Rumi, One World Publication
Limited, 2008, p. 239) and "Sultan Valad did
 not feel confident about his command of
Turkish" (Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and
Present, East and West, Oneworld
Publications, 2000, p. 240)
20. Δέδες, Δ. 1993. Ποιήματα του Μαυλανά
Ρουμή. Τα Ιστορικά 10.18–19: 3–22.
21. Meyer, G. 1895. Die griechischen Verse in
Rabâbnâma. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 4:
401–411.
22. "Greek Verses of Rumi & Sultan Walad" .
uci.edu. 22 April 2009. Archived from the
original on 5 August 2012.
23. Gardet, Louis (1977). "Religion and Culture". In
Holt, P.M.; Lambton, Ann K.S.; Lewis, Bernard
(eds.). The Cambridge History of Islam, Part
VIII: Islamic Society and Civilization.
Cambridge University Press. p. 586. "It is
sufficient to mention 'Aziz al-Din Nasafi, Farid
al-Din 'Attar and Sa'adi, and above all Jalal al-
Din Rumi, whose Mathnawi remains one of
the purest literary glories of Persia"
24. C.E. Bosworth, "Turkmen Expansion towards
the west" in UNESCO History of Humanity,
Volume IV, titled "From the Seventh to the
Sixteenth Century", UNESCO Publishing /
Routledge, p. 391: "While the Arabic language
retained its primacy in such spheres as law,
theology and science, the culture of the
Seljuk court and secular literature within the
sultanate became largely Persianized; this is
seen in the early adoption of Persian epic
names by the Seljuk rulers (Qubād, Kay
Khusraw and so on) and in the use of
Persian as a literary language (Turkmen
must have been essentially a vehicle for
everyday speech at this time). The process
of Persianization accelerated in the 13th
 century with the presence in Konya of two of
the most distinguished refugees fleeing
before the Mongols, Bahā' al-Dīn Walad and
his son Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose
Mathnawī, composed in Konya, constitutes
one of the crowning glories of classical
Persian literature."
25. "Interview: 'Many Americans Love Rumi...But
They Prefer He Not Be Muslim' " .
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. 9 August
2010. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
26. "Interview: A mystical journey with Rumi" .
Asia Times. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
27. "Dîvân-i Kebîr Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī" . OMI – Old
Manuscripts & Incunabula. Retrieved
22 August 2016.
28. Rahman, Aziz (27 August 2015). "Nazrul: The
rebel and the romantic" . The Daily Sun.
Archived from the original on 17 April 2017.
Retrieved 12 July 2016.
29. Khan, Mahmudur Rahman (30 September
2018). "A tribute to Jalaluddin Rumi" . The
Daily Sun.
30. Rumi (2015). Selected Poems . Penguin
Books. p. 350. ISBN 978-0-14-196911-4.
31. Franklin Lewis (2008). Rumi: Past and
Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings
and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi. One World
Publication Limited. p. 9.
32. "‫ "ﻣﻼی روم‬in Dehkhoda Dictionary
33. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Maulana), Ibrahim Gamard,
Rumi and Islam: Selections from His Stories,
Poems, and Discourses, Annotated &
Explained, SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2004.
34. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and
Spirituality, SUNY Press, 1987. p. 115: "Jalal al-
Din was born in a major center of Persian
culture, Balkh, from Persian speaking
parents, and is the product of that Islamic
Persian culture which in the 7th/13th century
dominated the 'whole of the eastern lands of
Islam and to which present day Persians as
well as Turks, Afghans, Central Asian Muslims
and the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistani and
the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistani
subcontinent are heir. It is precisely in this
world that the sun of his spiritual legacy has
shone most brilliantly during the past seven
centuries. The father of Jalal al-Din,
Muhammad ibn Husayn Khatibi, known as
 Baha al-Din Walad and entitled Sultan al-
'ulama', was an outstanding Sufi in Balkh
connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-
Din Kubra."
35. "UNESCO. Executive Board; 175th; UNESCO
Medal in honour of Mawlana Jalal-ud-Din
Balkhi-Rumi; 2006" (PDF). UNESDOC –
UNESCO Documents and Publications.
October 2006. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
36. Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present,
East and West: The life, Teaching and poetry
of Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Oneworld Publication
Limited, 2008 p. 9: "How is that a Persian
boy born almost eight hundred years ago in
Khorasan, the northeastern province of
greater Iran, in a region that we identify
today as Central Asia, but was considered in
those days as part of the greater Persian
cultural sphere, wound up in central Anatolia
on the receding edge of the Byzantine
cultural sphere"
37. Maqsood Jafrī, The gleam of wisdom, Sigma
Press, 2003. p. 238: "Rumi has influenced a
large number of writers while on the other
hand he himself was under the great
influence of Sanai and Attar.
38. A.J. Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the
Mystics of Islam, Courier Dover Publications,
Nov 9, 2001. p. 141
39. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth:
The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam's
Mystical Tradition HarperCollins, Sep 2,
2008. page 130: "Attar has traversed the
seven cities of Love, We are still at the turn
of one street!"
40. Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes:
A History of Central Asia, (Rutgers
University Press, 2002), 157; "...the Seljuk
court at Konya adopted Persian as its official
language".
41. Aḥmad of Niǧde's "al-Walad al-Shafīq" and
the Seljuk Past, A.C.S. Peacock, Anatolian
Studies, Vol. 54, (2004), 97; With the growth
of Seljuk power in Rum, a more highly
developed Muslim cultural life, based on the
Persianate culture of the Great Seljuk court,
was able to take root in Anatolia
42. Carter Vaughn Findley, The Turks in World
History, Oxford University Press, 11
November 2004. p. 72: Meanwhile, amid the
migratory swarm that Turkified Anatolia, the
dispersion of learned men from the Persian-
speaking east paradoxically made the
Seljuks court at Konya a new center for
Persian court culture, as exemplified by the
great mystical poet Jelaleddin Rumi (1207–
1273).
43. Barks, Coleman, Rumi: The Book of Love:
Poems of Ecstasy and Longing,
HarperCollins, 2005, p. xxv, ISBN 978-0-06-
075050-3
44. Note: Rumi's shrine is now known as the
"Mevlâna Museum" in Turkey.
45. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West, Oneworld Publications, 2000.

How is it that a Persian boy

born almost eight hundred
years ago in Khorasan, the
northeastern province of
greater Iran, in a region
that we identify today as
Central Asia, but was
considered in those days as
part of the Greater Persian
cultural sphere, wound up
in Central Anatolia on the
receding edge of the
Byzantine cultural sphere,
in which is now Turkey
46. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008
(revised edition). pp. 90–92: "Baha al-Din’s
disciples also traced his family lineage to the
first caliph, Abu Bakr (Sep 9; Af 7; JNO 457;
Dow 213). This probably stems from willful
confusion over his paternal great
grandmother, who was the daughter of Abu
Bakr of Sarakhs, a noted jurist (d. 1090). The
most complete genealogy offered for family
stretches back only six or seven generations
and cannot reach to Abu Bakr, the
companion and first caliph of the Prophet,
who died two years after the Prophet, in C.E.
634 (FB 5–6 n.3)."
47. H. Algar, “BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD
WALAD“ , Encyclopedia Iranica. There is no
reference to such descent in the works of
Bahāʾ-e Walad and Mawlānā Jalāl-al-Dīn or in
the inscriptions on their sarcophagi. The
attribution may have arisen from confusion
between the caliph and another Abū Bakr,
Šams-al-Aʾemma Abū Bakr Saraḵsī (d.
483/1090), the well-known Hanafite jurist,
whose daughter, Ferdows Ḵātūn, was the
mother of Aḥmad Ḵaṭīb, Bahāʾ-e Walad's
grandfather (see Forūzānfar, Resāla, p. 6).
Tradition also links Bahāʾ-e Walad's lineage
to the Ḵᵛārazmšāh dynasty. His mother is
said to have been the daughter of ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn
Moḥammad Ḵārazmšāh (d. 596/1200), but
this appears to be excluded for chronological
reasons (Forūzānfar, Resāla, p. 7)
48. (Ritter, H.; Bausani, A. "ḎJalāl al- Dīn Rūmī b.
Bahāʾ al-Dīn Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ Walad b.
Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad Ḵhaṭībī ." Encyclopaedia of
Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis,
C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P.
Heinrichs. Brill, 2009. Brill Online. Excerpt:
"known by the sobriquet Mawlānā (Mevlâna),
Persian poet and founder of the Mawlawiyya
order of dervishes"): "The assertions that his
family tree goes back to Abū Bakr, and that
his mother was a daughter of the
Ḵhwārizmshāh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad (Aflākī,
i, 8–9) do not hold on closer examination (B.
Furūzānfarr, Mawlānā Ḏjalāl Dīn, Tehrān 1315,
7; ʿAlīnaḳī Sharīʿatmadārī, Naḳd-i matn-i
mathnawī, in Yaghmā, xii (1338), 164; Aḥmad
Aflākī, Ariflerin menkibeleri, trans. Tahsin
Yazıcı, Ankara 1953, i, Önsöz, 44).")
49. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008
(revised edition). p. 44:“Baha al-Din’s father,
Hosayn, had been a religious scholar with a
bent for asceticism, occupied like his own
father before him, Ahmad, with the family
profession of preacher (khatib). Of the four
canonical schools of Sunni Islam, the family
adhered to the relatively liberal Hanafi fiqh.
Hosayn-e Khatibi enjoyed such renown in his
youth—so says Aflaki with characteristic
exaggeration—that Razi al-Din Nayshapuri
and other famous scholars came to study
with him (Af 9; for the legend about Baha al-
Din, see below, "The Mythical Baha al-Din").
Another report indicates that Baha al-Din's
 grandfather, Ahmad al-Khatibi, was born to
Ferdows Khatun, a daughter of the reputed
Hanafite jurist and author Shams al-A’emma
Abu Bakr of Sarakhs, who died circa 1088 (Af
75; FB 6 n.4; Mei 74 n. 17). This is far from
implausible and, if true, would tend to suggest
that Ahmad al-Khatabi had studied under
Shams al-A’emma. Prior to that the family
could supposedly trace its roots back to
Isfahan. We do not learn the name of Baha
al-Din's mother in the sources, only that he
referred to her as "Mama" (Mami), and that
she lived to the 1200s." (p. 44)
50. Ahmed, Akbar (2011). Suspended Somewhere
Between: A Book of Verse. PM Press. pp. i.
ISBN 978-1-60486-485-4.
51. El-Fers, Mohamed (2009). Mevlana
Celaleddin Rumi. MokumTV. p. 45. ISBN 978-
1-4092-9291-3.
52. "Hz. Mawlana and Shams" . semazen.net.
53. The Essential Rumi. Translations by Coleman
Barks, p. xx.
54. Helminski, Camille. "Introduction to Rumi:
Daylight" . Archived from the original on 16
July 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
55. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1987). Islamic Art and
Spirituality . SUNY Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-
88706-174-5.
56. Jawid Mojaddedi (2004). "Introduction".
Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One.
Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition).
p. xix.
57. Mevlâna Jalal al-din Rumi
58. H. Crane "Notes on Saldjūq Architectural
Patronage in Thirteenth Century Anatolia,"
Journal of the Economic and Social History of
the Orient, v. 36, n. 1 (1993), p. 18.
59. William C. Chittick (2017). "RUMI, JALĀL-AL-
DIN vii. Philosophy" . Encyclopaedia Iranica.
60. Ibrahim Gamard (with gratitude for R.A.
Nicholson's 1930 British translation). The
Mathnawî-yé Ma'nawî – Rhymed Couplets of
Deep Spiritual Meaning of Jalaluddin Rumi .
61. Naini, Majid. The Mysteries of the Universe
and Rumi's Discoveries on the Majestic Path
of Love.
62. Jawid Mojaddedi (2004). "Introduction".
Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One.
Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition).
p. xix. "Rumi’s Masnavi holds an exalted
status in the rich canon of Persian Sufi
literature as the greatest mystical poem
ever written. It is even referred to commonly
as ‘the Koran in Persian’."
63. Abdul Rahman Jami notes:

— ‫ﻣﻦ ﭼﻪ ﮔﻮﯾﻢ وﺻﻒ آن ﻋﺎﻟﯽﺟﻨﺎب‬

‫ﻧﯿﺴﺖ ﭘﯿﻐﻤﺒﺮ وﻟﯽ دارد ﮐﺘﺎب‬

‫— ﻫﺴﺖ ﻗﺮآن‬ ‫ﻣﺜﻨﻮی ﻣﻌﻨﻮی ﻣﻮﻟﻮی‬

‫در زﺑﺎن ﭘﻬﻠﻮی‬

What can I say in praise of

that great one?
He is not a Prophet but has
come with a book;
The Spiritual Masnavi of
Mowlavi
Is the Qur'an in the
 language of Pahlavi
(Persian).

(Khawaja Abdul Hamid Irfani, "The Sayings of

Rumi and Iqbal", Bazm-e-Rumi, 1976.)

64. Jawid Mojaddedi (2004). "Introduction".

Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One.
Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition).
pp. xii–xiii. "Towards the end of his life he
presented the fruit of his experience of
Sufism in the form of the Masnavi, which has
been judged by many commentators, both
within the Sufi tradition and outside it, to be
the greatest mystical poem ever written."
65. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008
(revised edition). p. 306: "The manuscripts
versions differ greatly in the size of the text
and orthography. Nicholson’s text has 25,577
lines though the average medieval and early
modern manuscripts contained around
27,000 lines, meaning the scribes added
two thousand lines or about eight percent
more to the poem composed by Rumi. Some
manuscripts give as many as 32,000!"
66. Virani, Shafique. “Persian Poetry, Sufism and
Ismailism: The Testimony of Khwajah Qasim
Tushtari's Recognizing God.” Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3 29, no. 1
(2019): 17–
49.https://www.academia.edu/40141803/
67. Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present,
East and West: The Life, Teaching, and
Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, rev. ed. (2008).
p. 314: “The Foruzanfar’s edition of the
Divan-e Shams compromises 3229 ghazals
and qasidas making a total of almost 35000
lines, not including several hundred lines of
stanzaic poems and nearly two thousand
quatrains attributed to him”
68. Dar al-Masnavi Website, accessed
December 2009 : According to the Dar al-
Masnavi website: “In Forûzânfar's edition of
Rumi's Divan, there are 90 ghazals (Vol. 1,
29; Vol. 2, 1; Vol. 3, 6; Vol. 4, 8; Vol. 5, 19, Vol.
6, 0; Vol. 7, 27) and 19 quatrains entirely in
Arabic. In addition, there are ghazals which
are all Arabic except for the final line; many
have one or two lines in Arabic within the
body of the poem; some have as many as
9–13 consecutive lines in Arabic, with
Persian verses preceding and following;
some have alternating lines in Persian, then
Arabic; some have the first half of the verse
in Persian, the second half in Arabic.”
69. Mecdut MensurOghlu: “The Divan of Jalal al-
Din Rumi contains 35 couplets in Turkish and
Turkish-Persian which have recently been
published me” (Celal al-Din Rumi’s turkische
Verse: UJb. XXIV (1952), pp. 106–115)
70. Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present,
East and West: The Life, Teaching, and
Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, rev. ed. (2008):
"“a couple of dozen at most of the 35,000
lines of the Divan-I Shams are in Turkish, and
almost all of these lines occur in poems that
are predominantly in Persian”"
71. Dedes, D. 1993. Ποίηματα του Μαυλανά
Ρουμή [Poems by Rumi]. Ta Istorika 10.18–
19: 3–22.
72. "Untitled Document" .
73. Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present,
East and West: The Life, Teaching, and
Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, rev. ed. (2008):
"Three poems have bits of demotic Greek;
these have been identified and translated
into French, along with some Greek verses of
Sultan Valad. Golpinarli (GM 416–417)
indicates according to Vladimir Mir Mirughli,
the Greek used in some of Rumi's macaronic
poems reflects the demotic Greek of the
inhabitants of Anatolia. Golpinarli then argues
that Rumi knew classical Persian and Arabic
with precision, but typically composes poems
in a more popular or colloquial Persian and
Arabic.".
74. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West — The Life, Teachings, and Poetry
of Jalal al-Din Rumi, Oneworld Publications,
2000, Chapter 7.
75. “As Safa points out (Saf 2:1206) the
Discourse reflect the stylistics of oral speech
and lacks the sophisticated word plays,
Arabic vocabulary and sound patterning that
we would except from a consciously literary
text of this period. Once again, the style of
Rumi as lecturer or orator in these
discourses does not reflect an audience of
great intellectual pretensions, but rather
middle-class men and women, along with
number of statesmen and rulers”” (Franklin
Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and
West, Oneworld Publications, 2008 (revised
edition). p. 292)
76. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008
(revised edition). p. 293
77. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West, Oneworld Publications, 2008
(revised edition). p. 295:“In contrast with
the prose of his Discourses and sermons, the
style of the letters is consciously
sophisticated and epistolary, in conformity
with the expectations of correspondence
directed to nobles, statesmen and kings"
78. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (2000) Transcendent
Theosophy of Mulla Sadra ISBN 964-426-
034-1
79. Rumi: 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love,
trans. by Amin Banani and Anthony A. Lee, p.
3
80. Verse (21:107) – English Translation
81. Ibrahim Gamard (2004), Rumi and Islam ,
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83. Lewis 2000, pp. 407–408
84. Lewis 2000, p. 408
85. Ibrahim Gamard, Rumi and Self Discovery ,
Dar al Masnavi
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SkyLight Paths, p. 169, ISBN 978-1-59473-
002-3
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Mathnawī" in Mawlana Rumi Review, Volume
7, Issue 1 (2016), p. 187
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Further reading

English translations

Ma-Aarif-E-Mathnavi A commentary of the

Mathnavi of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (R.A.), by
Hazrat Maulana Hakim Muhammad Akhtar
Saheb (D.B.), 1997.
The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of
Rumi, by William Chittick, Albany: SUNY Press,
1983.
The Mysteries of the Universe and Rumi's
Discoveries on the Majestic Path of Love, by
Majid M. Naini, Universal Vision & Research,
2002 ISBN 978-0-9714600-0-3 www.naini.net
The Mesnevi of Mevlâna Jelālu'd-dīn er-Rūmī.
Book first, together with some account of the life
and acts of the Author, of his ancestors, and of
his descendants, illustrated by a selection of
characteristic anecdotes, as collected by their
historian, Mevlâna Shemsu'd-dīn Ahmed el-Eflākī
el-'Arifī , translated and the poetry versified by
James W. Redhouse, London: 1881. Contains the
translation of the first book only.
Masnaví-i Ma'naví, the Spiritual Couplets of
Mauláná Jalálu'd-din Muhammad Rúmí,
translated and abridged by E.H. Whinfield,
London: 1887; 1989. Abridged version from the
complete poem. On-line editions at sacred-
texts.com , archive.org and on wikisource.
The Masnavī by Jalālu'd-din Rūmī. Book II,
translated for the first time from the Persian
into prose, with a Commentary, by C.E. Wilson,
London: 1910.
The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, edited from
the oldest manuscripts available, with critical
notes, translation and commentary by Reynold
A. Nicholson, in 8 volumes, London: Messrs Luzac
& Co., 1925–1940. Contains the text in Persian.
First complete English translation of the
Mathnawí.
Rending The Veil: Literal and Poetic Translations
of Rumi, translated by Shahram Shiva Hohm
Press, 1995 ISBN 978-0-934252-46-1. Recipient
of Benjamin Franklin Award.
Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate
Poems of Rumi, translated by Shahram Shiva
Jain Publishing, 1999 ISBN 978-0-87573-084-4.
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman
Barks with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry, Reynold
Nicholson, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996
ISBN 978-0-06-250959-8; Edison (NJ) and New
York: Castle Books, 1997 ISBN 978-0-7858-
0871-8. Selections. Description of 2010
expanded edition. A much-cited poem therein is
"The Guest House found in, for example, Mark
Williams and Danny Penman (2011), Mindfulness,
pp. 165–167. The poem is also at
https://www.thepoetryexchange.co.uk/the-
guest-house-by-rumi .
The Illuminated Rumi, translated by Coleman
Barks, Michael Green contributor, New York:
Broadway Books, 1997 ISBN 978-0-7679-0002-
7.
The Masnavi: Book One, translated by Jawid
Mojaddedi, Oxford World's Classics Series,
Oxford University Press, 2004 ISBN 978-0-19-
280438-9. Translated for the first time from the
Persian edition prepared by Mohammad
Estelami with an introduction and explanatory
notes. Awarded the 2004 Lois Roth Prize for
excellence in translation of Persian literature by
the American Institute of Iranian Studies.
Divani Shamsi Tabriz, translated by Nevit Oguz
Ergin as Divan-i-kebir, published by Echo
Publications, 2003 ISBN 978-1-887991-28-5.
The rubais of Rumi: insane with love, translations
and commentary by Nevit Oguz Ergin and Will
Johnson, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont,
2007, ISBN 978-1-59477-183-5.
The Masnavi: Book Two, translated by Jawid
Mojaddedi, Oxford World's Classics Series,
Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-
921259-0. The first ever verse translation of the
unabridged text of Book Two, with an
introduction and explanatory notes.
The Rubai'yat of Jalal Al-Din Rumi: Select
Translations Into English Verse, Translated by
A.J. Arberry, (Emery Walker, London, 1949)
Mystical Poems of Rumi, Translated by A.J.
Arberry, (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
The quatrains of Rumi: Complete translation with
Persian text, Islamic mystical commentary,
manual of terms, and concordance, translated
by Ibrahim W. Gamard and A.G. Rawan Farhadi,
2008.
The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic
Poems, translations by Coleman Barks, Harper
One, 2002.
The Hundred Tales of Wisdom, a translation by
Idries Shah of the Manāqib ul-Ārefīn of Aflākī,
Octagon Press 1978. Episodes from the life of
Rumi and some of his teaching stories.
 Rumi: 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love:
Poems from the Rubaiyat of Mowlana Rumi,
translated by Amin Banani and Anthony A. Lee
(White Cloud Press, 2014) ISBN 978-1-940468-
00-6.

Life and work

RUMI, JALĀL-AL-DIN. Encyclopædia Iranica,

online edition, 2014.
Dr Khalifa Abdul Hakim, "The metaphysics of
Rumi: A critical and historical sketch", Lahore:
The Institute of Islamic Culture, 1959. ISBN 978-
81-7435-475-4
Afzal Iqbal, The Life and thought of Mohammad
Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, Lahore: Bazm-i-Iqbal, 1959
(latest edition, The life and work of Jalal-ud-Din
Rumi, Kuala Lumpur: The Other Press, 2014).
Endorsed by the famous Rumi scholar, A.J.
Arberry, who penned the foreword.
Abdol Reza Arasteh, Rumi the Persian: Rebirth
in Creativity and Love, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad
Ashraf, 1963 (latest edition, Rumi the Persian,
the Sufi, New York: Routledge, 2013). The author
was a US-trained Iranian psychiatrist influenced
by Erich Fromm and C.G. Jung.
Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun: A
Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi, Albany:
SUNY Press, 1993.
Fatemeh Keshavarz, "Reading Mystical Lyric:
The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi", University of
South Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN 978-1-57003-
180-9.
Mawlana Rumi Review mawlanarumireview.com.
An annual review devoted to Rumi. Archetype,
2010. ISBN 978-1-901383-38-6.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and
Spirituality, Albany: SUNY Press, 1987, chapters
7 and 8.
Majid M. Naini, The Mysteries of the Universe
and Rumi's Discoveries on the Majestic Path of
Love, Universal Vision & Research, 2002,
ISBN 978-0-9714600-0-3
Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East
and West, Oneworld Publications, 2000.
ISBN 978-1-85168-214-0
Leslie Wines, Rumi: A Spiritual Biography, New
York: Crossroads, 2001 ISBN 978-0-8245-
2352-7.
Rumi's Thoughts, edited by Seyed G Safavi,
London: London Academy of Iranian Studies,
2003.
William Chittick, The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi:
Illustrated Edition, Bloomington: World Wisdom,
2005.
Şefik Can, Fundamentals of Rumi's Thought: A
Mevlevi Sufi Perspective, Sommerset (NJ): The
Light Inc., 2004 ISBN 978-1-932099-79-9.
Rumi's Tasawwuf and Vedanta by R.M. Chopra
in Indo Iranica Vol. 60
 Athanasios Sideris, "Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi",
an entry on Rumi's connections to the Greek
element in Asia Minor, in the Encyclopedia of
the Hellenic World – Asia Minor, 2003.
Waley, Muhammad Isa (2017). The Stanzaic
Poems (Tarjī'āt) of Rumi. Critical Edition,
Translation, and Commentary, with Additional
Chapters on Aspects of His Divan. (School of
Oriental and African Studies, London.)

Persian literature

E.G. Browne, History of Persia, four volumes, first

published 1902–1924.
Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, Reidel
Publishing Company; 1968 OCLC 460598 .
ISBN 978-90-277-0143-5
 "RUMI: His Teachings And Philosophy" by R.M.
Chopra, Iran Society, Kolkata (2007).

External links

Rumi
at Wikipedia's sister projects

Media from
Wikimedia
Commons
Quotations
from
Wikiquote
Texts from
Wikisource
 Works by Rumi at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Rumi at Internet Archive
Works by Rumi at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Works by Rumi at Open Library
Dar al Masnavi , several English versions of
selections by different translators.
Poems by Rumi in English at the Academy of
American Poets
Masnavi-e Ma'navi, recited in Persian by
Mohammad Ghanbar

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