RŪMĪ, JALĀL AL-DĪN (AH 604–672/1207–1273 CE), Muslim mystic and poet. No Ṣūfī poet has exerted a vaster influence on Muslim East and Christian West than Jalāl al-Dīn, called Mawlānā, or Mawlawī, "our master." His Persian works are considered the most eloquent expression of Islamic mystical thought, and his long mystico-didactic poem, the Mathnavī, has been called "the Qurʾān in the Persian tongue" by the great fifteenth-century poet Jāmī of Herat.

Life

Muḥammad Jalāl al-Dīn was born in Balkh, now Afghanistan; the Afghans therefore prefer to call him "Balkhī," not "Rūmī," as he became known after settling in Anatolia, or Rūm. Although the date of his birth seems well established, he may have...