Muhammad bin Muhammad bin al-Husayn al-Khatibi al-Balkhi al-Bakri

We call him Rumi. He probably wasn’t called that in his life.

Quick outline of his life(1207-1273): He was born in what is present day Afghanistan in Balkh or maybe Sangtuda Tajikistan, which is a 6 day walk or 350 km distance. It was part of greater Iran at the time in the 13th century. At age 5 the family moved to Samarkand. Like his contemporary Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), they founded the Mevlevi Order after his death. When the mongols invaded, the family moved to Nishapur, Baghdad, to Hejaz and a pilgrimage to Mecca. Then Damascus, Malatya, Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri and Nigde. They finally settled in Karaman for seven years. Rumi married Gowhar Khatun in Karaman and had 2 sons when he was 18. His wife died and he remarried and he a son and a daughter. 

He moved to Konya in Turkey in 1228 where he lived until 1273, with a 4 year soujourn in Damascus. When he was 25 his father died, and he inherited his position as head of a school. His friendship with Shams is pivotal, whom he met in 1244. His bereavement at losing Shams is some good poetry. One book I read about him was about his friendship with Shams. I'm currently reading Rumi's Secret by Brad Gooch. 

The most important influences upon Rumi, besides his father, were the Persian poets Attar and Sanai.

His father Baha Valad journal survives:

"Sometimes I feel as if I'm a king without a kingdom, a judge without authority, a man of position without a position, and a wealthy man without any money." (p. 18 Gooch).

Poems:

Unfold Your Own Myth by Rumi

Who gets up early

to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?

Who comes to a spring thirsty

and sees the moon reflected in it?

Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,

smells the shirt of his lost son

and can see again?

Who lets a bucket down and brings up

a flowing prophet?

Or like Moses goes for fire

and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,

and opens a door to the other world.

Soloman cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.

Omar storms in to kill the prophet

and leaves with blessings.

Chase a deer and end up everywhere!

An oyster opens his mouth to swallow on drop.

Now there’s a pearl.

A vagrant wanders empty ruins.

Suddenly he’s wealthy.

But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things

have gone with others. Unfold

your own myth, without complicated explanation,

so everyone will understand the passage,

We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy

and tired. Then comes a moment

of feeling the wings you’ve grown,

lifting.

Listen to A Great Wagon

with the line "Let the beauty we love be what we do."

Like this quote too:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.