Mystical systems
Rumi
Direct answer
Rumi: Rumi, in full Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207 to 1273), was a Muslim scholar, Sufi teacher and Persian poet of Konya whose followers founded the Mevlevi order.
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At a glance
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- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Sufism, Sama, Tariqa, Fana
Rumi, in full Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207 to 1273), was a Muslim scholar, Sufi teacher and Persian poet of Konya whose followers founded the Mevlevi order.
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Who was Rumi?
Rumi was a preacher and jurist in Konya, in what is now Turkey, who became one of the great poets of the Persian language. His followers call him Mawlana, in Turkish Mevlana, meaning our master. The name Rumi means of Rum, the old name for Anatolia. His two main works are the Masnavi, a long teaching poem in six books of rhyming couplets, and the Divan named for Shams of Tabriz, a collection of lyric poems.
His subject is the love of God and the soul's longing to return to its source, told through stories, jokes and verses of the Quran. He was an observant Muslim and a teacher of Islamic law all his life. Many popular English versions were made from older translations by writers who did not read Persian, and they often leave the religion out.
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What sets Rumi apart
Rumi was a scholar first and a poet late: he was nearly forty and an established teacher of law when the meeting with Shams turned him to verse. The Masnavi was dictated over his last years to his pupil Husam al-Din, who wrote it down as Rumi spoke. It has no plan a reader can summarise. A story begins, breaks off for another, and returns, and the tradition reads the wandering itself as the method. Later Persian readers called it the Quran in the Persian tongue.
- Lived: 1207 to 17 December 1273; buried at Konya, where his tomb is a place of visitation
- Language: Persian, with some Arabic, Turkish and Greek lines
- Masnavi: six books, about 25,000 rhyming couplets
- Turning point: meeting Shams of Tabriz at Konya in 1244
- Order: the Mevlevi, organised after his death by his son Sultan Walad
- Anniversary: 17 December, kept at Konya as the wedding night, the night of his death
Often mistaken for something else: The Rumi of the scholarly translations is a Muslim preacher steeped in the Quran; the Rumi of many gift books is a free paraphrase with that setting removed.
The story behind Rumi
He was born in 1207 in the region of Balkh, and his family moved west to Anatolia while he was a boy, settling at Konya, where he succeeded his father as a teacher. In 1244 he met the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz, and the friendship turned him toward poetry. Shams vanished a few years later. Rumi died at Konya on 17 December 1273, and his son Sultan Walad shaped his circle into the Mevlevi order, known for the turning ceremony called the sema.
Why Rumi matters
He is the door through which most Western readers first meet Sufism, so knowing who he was keeps the poetry tied to the faith it came from.
How to read Rumi
Readers come to him for poems on love, loss and longing; students of Sufism read the Masnavi as a manual of the path taught through stories.
Rumi in practice: an example
A reader who knows a line of Rumi from a greetings card might look it up in a scholarly translation and find a verse of the Quran standing beside it.
Where readings of Rumi go wrong
Many lines passed round under his name are loose paraphrases or not his at all, so a quotation is worth checking in a translation made from the Persian.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- who was rumi, jalal al-din rumi, mevlana rumi, rumi sufi poet, rumi and shams
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Who was Rumi?
He was Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, a thirteenth-century Muslim scholar and Sufi teacher who lived most of his life at Konya and wrote in Persian. He is best known for the Masnavi and for the lyric poems of the Divan.
Was Rumi a Muslim?
Yes. He was a trained jurist and preacher who prayed, fasted and taught Islamic law, and his poems quote the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet throughout. Versions that present him without Islam cut out much of what he wrote.
Who was Shams of Tabriz?
Shams was a wandering dervish who met Rumi at Konya in 1244 and became his closest companion. After Shams disappeared, Rumi poured his grief and love into the poems of the Divan, which bears the name of Shams.
