Rumi

RUMI
Poet / Philospher / Sufi Mysitc
Born: 1207 Afghanistan (or what is now known as)
Died: 1273

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Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, theologian, and mystic. Rumi is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most of his life in an area called Rūm because it was once ruled by the Byzantine Empire.

According to tradition, Rumi was born in Balkh, Bactria, in contemporary Afghanistan, which at that time was part of the Persian Empire, and was the hometown of his father's family. Scholars, however, believe that he was born in Wakhsh, a small town located at the river Wakhsh in what is now Tajikistan. Wakhsh belonged to the larger province of Balkh, and in the year Rumi was born, his father was an appointed scholar there. Both these cities were at the time included in the Greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorasan, the easternmost province of historical Persia, and were part of the Khwarezmian Empire.

He lived most of his life under the Sultanate of Rum, where he produced his works and died in 1273 CE. He was buried in Konya and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage. Following his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mawlawīyah Sufi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for its Sufi dance known as the samāʿ ceremony.

Rumi's works are written in the New Persian language. A Persian literary renaissance (in the 8th/9th century) started in regions of Sistan, Khorāsān and Transoxiana and by the 10th/11th century, it reinforced the Persian language as the preferred literary and cultural language in the Persian Islamic world. Although Rumi's works were written in Persian, Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. BBC News has described him as the "most popular poet in America".