Rumi

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), or simply Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. Rumi's works were written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic and Greek in his verse. His Masnavi (Mathnawi), composed in Konya, is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. Rumi's influence has transcended national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Kurds, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, as well as Muslims of the Indian subcontinent have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poetry influenced not only Persian literature, but also the literary traditions of the Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Kurdish, Urdu, Bengali and Pashto languages. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. His poems have subsequently been translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet", is very popular in Türkiye, Azerbaijan and South Asia, and has become the "best selling poet" in the United States. He is most commonly called Rumi in English. His full name is given by his contemporary Sipahsalar as Muhammad bin Muhammad bin al-Husayn al-Khatibi al-Balkhi al-Bakri ( محمد بن محمد بن الحسين الخطيبي البلخي البكري). He is more commonly known as Molānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (مولانا جلال‌الدین محمد رومی). Jalal ad-Din is an Arabic name meaning "Glory of the Faith". Balkhī and Rūmī are his nisbas, meaning, respectively, "from Balkh" and "from Rûm" ('Roman,' what European history now calls Byzantine Anatolia). According to the authoritative Rumi biographer Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago, "[t]he Anatolian peninsula which had belonged to the Byzantine, or eastern Roman empire, had only relatively recently been conquered by Muslims and even when it came to be controlled by Turkish Muslim rulers, it was still known to Arabs, Persians and Turks as the geographical area of Rum.