Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī b. Bahā’ al-Dīn Walad b. Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad Khaṭībī was born on 6 Rabīc I 604/September 30, 1207 in or near the ancient city of Balkh in a region of Khorāsān (now in Afghanistan) and died on 5 Jumāda II 672/December 17, 1273 in Konya (now in Turkey). His birth name was the same as his father’s: Muḥammad. From an early age, his father called him Jalāl al-Dīn
(“The glory of the Religion”). He was also called by the Arabic title, Mawlānā (“our Master”), as was his father. In addition, his disciples called him by the Persian title, Khodāwandgar (“great Master”). He was known as Rūmī (“Roman”)
because he spent most of his life in the region known by Muslims as “Rūm,” the Anatolian peninsula most of which had been conquered by the Saljūq Turks after centuries of rule by the Eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire.
Mawlānā has long been viewed as one of the greatest Persian poets and has been called “surely the greatest mystical poet in the history of mankind” (Arberry, 1949, p. xix). He is the author of the following poetic works: Dīvān-é Kabīr
(“Great Collected Poetic Works”) or Dīvān-é Shams-é Tabrīzī (which contains, in the earliest manuscripts, more than 3,000 ghazaliyāt or lyric poems, 40 tarjīcāt or stanzaic poems, and over 1800 rubācīyāt or quatrains) and Mathnawī-yé Macnawī
(“Couplets of Deep Spiritual Meaning”), considered his greatest work that was composed in his later years, which contains over 25,000 authentic verses). Over the centuries, many verses and poems, as well as “improvements
”within verses, have been added to the manuscript tradition; and more inauthentic verses and poems are claimed as belonging to Mawlānā in contemporary books and articles. His prose works, believed to have been compiled after his death, are Fīhi Mā Fīhi (“Whatever Is In It, Is In It,” also known as the “Discourses of Rumi”), Majālis-é Sabca (“Seven Sessions,” also known as the “Sermons”), and Maktūbāt (“Letters”).
