Rumi and Shams of Tabriz: The Mystic Poet of Konya (1244)

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) was a Persian-speaking scholar, mystic and poet who lived most of his life in Konya, capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia. In November 1244 he met a wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz, and the friendship transformed him from a respected teacher of religious law into one of the greatest poets of the Islamic world. His works, especially the Masnavi, and the Mevlevi order founded by his followers have influenced Muslim spirituality for centuries and made him one of the most widely read poets in the West today.

Early life and migration

Rumi was born on about 30 September 1207 in the region of Balkh, in present-day Afghanistan; some scholars argue for the nearby town of Vakhsh, in modern Tajikistan. His father, Baha al-Din Walad, was a preacher and theologian. Around 1216–1220, shortly before the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan overran the region, as described in the article on the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire, the family left for the west.

They travelled by way of Baghdad and Mecca and spent several years in eastern Anatolia, including at Karaman (Laranda), where Rumi married and where his mother died. In about 1228 they settled in Konya at the invitation of the Seljuk sultan Kayqubad I. Konya was then a prosperous city, the capital of a Turkish dynasty whose ancestors had entered Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.

When Baha al-Din died in 1231, Rumi took over his teaching role. He studied Sufi practice under his father’s former pupil Burhan al-Din Muhaqqiq and continued his studies in Aleppo and Damascus. By the early 1240s he was a respected scholar of Islamic law and a preacher with many students.

The meeting with Shams

On 29 November 1244, according to the traditional date, Shams al-Din of Tabriz arrived in Konya. He was a dervish of about sixty, independent, sharp-tongued and unattached to any order. Later Mevlevi biographies tell dramatic stories of their first meeting, but the details are legendary.

What is clear is that Rumi and Shams became inseparable. For months they spent most of their time together in conversation and spiritual practice. Rumi neglected his students and turned to music, dance and poetry. His disciples and family resented the newcomer, and in 1246 Shams left for Damascus. Rumi sent his son Sultan Walad to bring him back, but tension resumed, and around 1247 Shams disappeared for good.

A later tradition says Shams was murdered with the involvement of Rumi’s son Ala al-Din. There is no contemporary evidence for this, and many scholars think Shams may simply have left. Rumi himself searched for him, travelling twice to Damascus, before concluding that Shams lived on within him.

Konya in Rumi’s time

Rumi’s Konya was a cosmopolitan city. The Seljuk court used Persian as its language of culture, while the population included Turks, Persians, Greeks, Armenians and Jews. Scholars, mystics and refugees from Central Asia and Iran gathered there, many of them fleeing the Mongols, and the city was adorned with mosques, madrasas and caravanserais built by the sultans and their officials.

This prosperity was shaken during Rumi’s lifetime. In 1243 a Mongol army defeated the Seljuks at the Battle of Köse Dağ, and the sultanate became a vassal of the Mongols. Rumi’s mature work was written against this background of political weakness and uncertainty, and he kept relations with several powerful figures of the Seljuk and Mongol administration, including the vizier Mu’in al-Din Parvana, to whom some of his recorded talks were addressed.

The poetry

Rumi’s grief and longing poured out in lyric poems. His collection of ghazals and quatrains, usually called the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, includes more than 3,000 ghazals and many quatrains. In many poems he used the name of Shams as his own signature, a sign of how fully he identified with his friend.

Later, Rumi formed close spiritual bonds with the goldsmith Salah al-Din Zarkub and then with his disciple Husam al-Din Chelebi. At Husam al-Din’s request, probably from the late 1250s or early 1260s, Rumi began the Masnavi-yi Ma’navi, or Spiritual Couplets. Rumi recited the verses and Husam al-Din wrote them down. The Masnavi runs to six books and roughly 25,000 couplets, mixing folk tales, Qur’anic stories, jokes and reflections to teach the soul’s journey back to God. It opens with the image of a reed flute lamenting its separation from the reed bed, a symbol of the soul’s longing.

His other works include Fihi ma fihi, a prose collection of his talks, as well as sermons and letters. His poetry is mostly in Persian, with some Arabic and a few lines in Greek and Turkish, reflecting Konya’s mixed society.

Rumi’s teaching

At the centre of Rumi’s thought is love, both human and divine, as the force that draws the soul back to its source in God. He used everyday images such as the reed flute, the moth and the candle, and the lover seeking the beloved to describe this longing. He remained a practising Muslim scholar; his poetry is full of references to the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and he taught that outward religious duties and inner spiritual experience belonged together.

Death and the Mevlevi order

Rumi died in Konya on 17 December 1273. His funeral reportedly drew Muslims, Christians and Jews. Mevlevis call the anniversary of his death Şeb-i Arus, the wedding night, because they see death as the soul’s union with God. It is still commemorated each December in Konya.

After his death his followers organised the Mevlevi order, named after his title Mevlana, our master. His son Sultan Walad and grandson Ulu Arif Chelebi shaped its rituals, above all the sama ceremony, in which dervishes in white robes turn to music. Mevlevi lodges spread across the later Ottoman Empire and had close ties to its elite.

In 1925 the Turkish Republic closed all Sufi lodges. The lodge and tomb in Konya, under the turquoise Green Dome, reopened as a museum in 1927 and is now one of Turkey’s most visited sites. UNESCO proclaimed the Mevlevi sama ceremony a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005, and inscribed it on its Representative List in 2008.

Rumi in the modern world

In the twentieth century scholars such as Reynold Nicholson, who translated the full Masnavi into English, and Annemarie Schimmel made Rumi’s work known in the West. Popular English versions from the 1970s onward, especially by Coleman Barks, made him a best-selling poet in the United States. Critics note that these versions often soften or remove the Islamic context of his thought. Many quotations circulating online are not found in his works at all.

Timeline

• 1207, about 30 September: Rumi is born in the Balkh region.
• c. 1216–1220: His family leaves Central Asia ahead of the Mongol invasion.
• c. 1228: The family settles in Konya.
• 1231: Baha al-Din Walad dies; Rumi succeeds him as teacher.
• 1244, 29 November: Shams of Tabriz arrives in Konya (traditional date).
• c. 1247: Shams disappears.
• c. 1258–1262: Rumi begins the Masnavi.
• 1273, 17 December: Rumi dies in Konya.

Why it matters

The meeting of Rumi and Shams is one of the most famous friendships in religious history and produced poetry that is still recited from Turkey and Iran to South Asia. Rumi’s work remains central to Persian literature and Sufi thought, and his tomb in Konya continues to draw pilgrims and visitors from around the world.