Rumi Extended Biography
RumiExtended BiographyYou may wish to share this biography with students, or just to read it for your own information. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī—known more commonly in the West as “Rumi” and by the honorific “Mevlana” (our master)—was a Sufi1 mystic, legal scholar, and poet. His writings and teachings were spread around the world after his death by his disciples, and his words have been translated into many languages. Rumi himself wrote in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Greek, and several different cultures claim him as their own. Rumi was born in 1207 in Central Asia, most likely near the border of what are today Afghanistan and Tajikistan. His father was a mystic and teacher, a leader in his community. When Rumi was about nine or ten, his family and his father’s followers were forced to flee their homes at the approach of the Mongol invasions. They spent the next ten years wandering across Central and Southwest Asia before finally finding safety and stability in Anatolia. At the invitation of the Seljuk Sultan, who ruled Anatolia, Rumi and his family settled in the Seljuk capital city of Konya. It was in Konya that Rumi met someone who would forever change his life. In 1231, Rumi had taken over his father’s role at a religious school in Konya. He became a respected Islamic jurist, teacher, and mystic religious leader. In 1244, he met a wandering holy man (called a dervish), Shams Al-Dīn of Tabriz. Shams and Rumi developed a deep, personal relationship. In their brief time together, Shams introduced Rumi to new ideas and urged Rumi to abandon his scholarship and turn to a path of mysticism and divine love. It was Shams who encouraged Rumi to pursue his poetry. But Rumi’s family and students soon grew upset at how much of Rumi’s attention Shams was consuming, and they forced Shams to leave Konya. Rumi’s son eventually convinced Shams to return, but in 1247, Shams disappeared forever. We don’t know exactly what happened, although some historians now believe that Shams was murdered, perhaps with the knowledge of Rumi’s sons. Whatever the case, after the disappearance of Shams, Rumi’s life changed again. His love for Shams and the pain at his loss shaped Rumi’s poetry and teachings. Themes of love and loss and longing pervade his texts. Rumi wrote prolifically for the rest of his life. One of his favored forms of poetry was the ghazal, which are short love poems. After Shams disappeared, Rumi devoted himself to his writing and to the idea that through love, dance, poetry, and song, a person might realize a closer connection to the divine. Later accounts of Rumi’s life claim that one day, while walking through the bazaar in Konya, the rhythmic hammering of the goldsmiths sent him into a divine trance, and he spent two hours spinning in the bazaar, lost in the rhythm. From this story was born the tradition of meditative spinning performed by the Sufi Mevlevi order, also known as whirling dervishes. In his poetry, Rumi rejected notions of division and difference based on religion and ethnicity. He wrote in many languages and urged his followers to treat all people with love. At his funeral, by Rumi’s own request, speakers of several different faiths read excerpts of their religious texts. The epitaph on his tomb in Konya reads, “When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.” Rumi’s teaching spread widely across the Islamic world and beyond, helped in part by his sons and followers who established the Mevlevi order. His most influential work is the Masnavi, an epic poem composed of six volumes. This work is so revered that it is sometimes called “the Quran in Persian.” The first quotation in this graphic biography comes from the opening lines of the Masnavi. The “reed” in this quotation refers to the reed flute instrument. Rumi’s poetry remains influential today, and he is often cited as the best-selling poet in the United States.1 Sufism is an Islamic mystic tradition. Sufis believe in divine love and in experiencing their belief through a direct relationship with God.
Rumi - Extended Biography2Sources: Gooch, Brad. Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love. New York, NY: Harper, 2017. Masroori, Cyrus. “An Islamic Language of Toleration: Rumi’s Criticism of Religious Persecution.” Political Research Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2010): 243–56. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī and Coleman Barks. The Essential Rumi. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1995. Safi, Omid. Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.