Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Who was Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi?

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, Mevlana or Mawlānā, Mevlevi or Mawlawī, and more popularly in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. Iranians, Turks, Afghans, Tajiks, and other Central Asian Muslims as well as the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy in the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. He has been described as the "most popular poet in America" and the "best selling poet in the US".

Rumi's works are written in Persian and his Mathnawi remains one of the purest literary glories of Persia, and one of the crowning glories of the Persian language. His original works are widely read today in their original language across the Persian-speaking world Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States and South Asia.

Famous Quotes:

• I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
• Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; Go is the sun.
• Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
• Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.
• Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.
• Pilgrimage to the place of the wise is to find escape from the flame of separateness.
• Only from the heart Can you touch the sky.
• The Eternal looked upon me for a moment with His eye of power, and annihilated me in His being, and become manifest to me in His essence. I saw I existed through Him.
• Let the beauty we love be what we do.
• You are quaffing drink from a hundred fountains: whenever any of these hundred yields less, your pleasure is diminished. But when the sublime fountain gushes from within you, no longer need you steal from the other fountains.