Rumi

Sufi mystic, poet, and founder of the Mevlevi Order

In English, the name "Rumi" is the most frequent way to refer to him.^[1]

Quick Facts

Era: Mongol conquests
Born: 30 September 1207
Died: 17 December 1273 (aged 66)
Place of death: Konya, Sultanate of Rum (present-day Turkey)
Resting place: Tomb of Mevlana Rumi, Mevlana Museum, Konya, Turkey
Mother: Mo'mena Khatun
Father: Baha al-Din Valad
Spouse: Gevher Khatun, Karra Khatun

Life and work

His father was Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, a theologian, jurist and mystic from Wakhsh.^[2] Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya.^[3] Rumi's parents were Persian, and he was born in the village of Wakhsh, located on the eastern bank of the Wakhsh River in what is now Tajikistan, an area culturally linked to Balkh where his father, Bahâ' uddîn Walad, worked as a preacher and jurist until 1212.^[4] Bahâ ud-Dîn Walad, together with his entire family and a group of followers, departed westward when the Mongols invaded Central Asia between 1215 and 1220.^[5]

On 15 November 1244, Rumi encountered the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi, an event that fundamentally altered his life.^[6] Rumi underwent a transformation from a skilled teacher and jurist into an ascetic.^[6] After Rumi's death, his son Sultan Walad and his followers established the Mevlevi Order, which is also called the Order of the Whirling Dervishes.^[7]

What the cited sources add

A BBC News article reports that Rumi's 800th birth anniversary fell in 2007 and that he was born in Balkh in Central Asia, now part of Afghanistan.^[8] William C. Chittick explains that Rumi's teachings focus on "the roots of the roots of the roots of the religion".^[9] Chittick notes that Rumi describes love as "that flame which, when it blazes up, burns away everything except the Everlasting Beloved".^[9] Gamard also reports that popular versions of Rumi's poetry have been created which avoid or minimize his religious teachings.^[10]

According to the same article, the ney (reed flute) was Rumi's preferred musical instrument.^[8][11]

References

Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Sipahsalar, "Risala-yi Ahwal-i Mawlana", 1946, p. 5 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Annemarie Schimmel, "I Am Wind, You Are Fire," p. 11. She refers to a 1989 article by Fritz Meier: Lewis has devoted two pages of his book to the topic of Wakhs (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mojaddedi, "Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One", Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition), 2004, p. xix (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Yalman, "Badr al-Dīn Tabrīzī", Brill, 7 July 2016; 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 ; Lewis, Franklin: "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 c; 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 sp; Harmless, "Mysti en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ahmed, "Suspended Somewhere Between: A Book of Verse", PM Press, 2011, p. i; El-Fers, "Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi", MokumTV, 2009, p. 45 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Stewart, "Art of the Sufis - The Metropolitan Museum of Art", www.metmuseum.org, 2018-10-01 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: 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 it; 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 mor; Findley, Carter Vaughn, The Turks in World History, Oxford University Press, 11 November 2004. p. 72: Meanwhile, amid the migratory swarm that Turkified Anatoli; Barks, Coleman, Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longin en.wikipedia.org
Haviland, "The roar of Rumi—800 years on", BBC News, 30 September 2007. facts only, no text reused. news.bbc.co.uk
Chittick, "RUMI, JALĀL-AL-DIN vii. Philosophy", 2017. facts only, no text reused. iranicaonline.org
Gamard, "Rumi and Self Discovery", Dar al Masnavi. facts only, no text reused. dar-al-masnavi.org
Wikipedia, "Rumi" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Haviland, "The roar of Rumi—800 years on", BBC News, 30 September 2007 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Rumi (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.