Al-Masnavī

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) was born in the region of Balkh, in today's Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and as a boy fled the Mongol invasions with his family, who settled in Konya in Anatolia. He became a respected teacher of religious law, until in 1244 he met a wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz, and the friendship transformed him into a poet.

His Persian lyric poems and his long Masnavi, a sea of stories and teachings sometimes called the Quran in Persian, are among the most loved works of Sufi literature, and his followers founded the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes. Today he is one of the most widely read poets in the world, in Arabic, English and many other languages.