Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207–1273) Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī was a Persian-language poet, Sunni Muslim, Hanafi jurist, preacher, teacher, and Sufi master whose adult life unfolded in thirteenth-century Anatolia. He was born into the Persianate religious culture of Greater Khurasan or Transoxiana, migrated west as a child, and spent most of his career in Konya, the capital of the Seljuk sultanate of Rum. His poetry joined Qurʾānic exegesis, prophetic tradition, law, ethical instruction, story, music, humor, erotic imagery, and the technical vocabulary of Sufism. The vast lyric collection associated with Shams al-Dīn of Tabriz and the six-book Masnavi made him one of the most influential writers in the history of Persian literature and one of the most widely read Muslim teachers from Bosnia to Bengal. The popular Rumi is often assembled from late miracle stories, modern national claims, and free English adaptations that detach his words from their Islamic setting. The ...
Awliya ul-Lah, Mystics and Saints