[19][20] His poetry influenced not only Persian literature, but also the literary traditions of the Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu, and Bengali languages.

[48][50][51] 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),[52] and that she was a simple woman who lived to the 1200s.

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.

Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya.

[56] 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.

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.

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?

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.

[60] Rumi's body was interred beside that of his father, and a splendid shrine, the "Green Tomb" (Turkish: Yeşil Türbe, Arabic: قبة الخضراء; today the Mevlâna Museum), was erected over his place of burial.

[60] Like other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, Rumi's poetry speaks of love which infuses the world.

[citation needed] 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.

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.

The Masnavi weaves fables, scenes from everyday life, Qur'anic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics into a vast and intricate tapestry.

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.

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.

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.

[101] Rumi's poetry is displayed on the walls of many cities across Iran, sung in Persian music,[101] and read in school books.

[103][104] 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).

The Mewlewī order issues an invitation to people of all backgrounds: Come, come, whoever you are, Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire, Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again.

With the foundation of the modern, secular Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk removed religion from the sphere of public policy and restricted it exclusively to that of personal morals, behaviour and faith.

[115] 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.

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.

[124][125] 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.

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.

"[129] 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.

47–49.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 Turkeyمن چه گویم وصف آن عالی‌جناب — نیست پیغمبر ولی دارد کتاب مثنویّ معنویّ مولوی — هست قرآن در زبان پهلوی What can I say in praise of that great one?