Rumi (Mevlana)

In Konya, a green-tiled dome rises above a garden in the old center of the city. Under it lies a 13th-century poet whose verses are now widely read in the United States. Pilgrims of many faiths come to his tomb, and his followers still turn in the white robes of the whirling dervishes. This is Rumi, known in Turkey as Mevlana, “our master”.

Rumi wrote in Persian. However, he lived most of his life in Anatolia. So to understand him, you come to Konya, his home for almost fifty years. Then, in Istanbul, you can watch the ceremony his followers created in an old dervish lodge near Galata Tower.

Who Was Rumi?

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a Sufi mystic, a poet and the inspiration for the Mevlevi order. He was born on 30 September 1207 into a family from Balkh, in today’s Afghanistan. His name, Rumi, means “the Roman”, because he lived in Anatolia, which had long been part of the Eastern Roman Empire.

From Balkh to Konya

When the Mongols invaded Central Asia, Rumi’s father, the scholar Baha ud-Din Walad, led his family west. First, they traveled through Iran, Baghdad and Mecca, and then across Anatolia. Legend has it that the poet Attar met the young Rumi on the way and said: “Here comes a sea followed by an ocean.” In the 1220s, the family finally settled in Konya, the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum.

After his father died, Rumi took over his school. For years, he taught Islamic law and preached in the mosques of Konya, as his family had done for generations.

Rumi and Shams of Tabriz

On 29 November 1244, Rumi met a wandering dervish named Shams of Tabriz. That meeting changed his life completely. Soon the respected teacher became a mystic, and the two men grew inseparable. Then, on a night in December 1247, Shams went out of the back door and was never seen again. Afterward, Rumi searched for him as far as Damascus. Finally, out of that grief came a flood of poems, the Divan of Shams of Tabriz.

The Masnavi

Later, walking in the vineyards of Meram outside Konya, his student Hussam Chalabi asked him to write a long teaching poem. In reply, Rumi took out a page with its first eighteen lines already written. For the next twelve years, he dictated the six books of the Masnavi to Hussam. So many readers today call it one of the greatest poems in the Persian language.

The Death of Rumi

Rumi died in Konya on 17 December 1273. Christians and Jews joined the Muslims of the city in his funeral procession. Then his followers buried him beside his father and built a shrine over the grave, the Green Tomb. After his death, they also founded the Mevlevi order, whose members became known in the West as the whirling dervishes.

Rumi in Turkey Today

The Mevlana Museum in Konya

Today the Green Tomb and its lodge form the Mevlana Museum, with a mosque, a hall for the ceremony and rooms for the dervishes. Even now, it remains a place of pilgrimage for people of every major faith. Each December, a festival of two weeks ends on 17 December, the anniversary of his death. Our Konya Mevlana tour starts at his tomb and visits the tomb of Shams too. On that date, followers call the night Şeb-i Arus, his “wedding night”.

The Galata Mevlevi Lodge in Istanbul

In Istanbul, a Mevlevi lodge near Galata Tower still holds the sema ceremony, and it is open to the public. In its garden, look at the old gravestones topped with stone dervish hats.

Rumi in America

In the United States, he has become one of the most popular poets of recent years, and the English versions by Coleman Barks are especially popular.

Visiting the places of Rumi

• Konya: see the Mevlana Museum, and come in December for the festival.
• Istanbul: watch a sema ceremony at the Galata Mevlevi Lodge.
• Nearby: from Konya, visit the Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük on the plain, or the old Greek village of Sille, linked to Rumi by legend.
• Your entry to the Mevlana Museum in Konya is arranged by us.

A younger poet, Yunus Emre, attended Rumi’s gatherings and later wrote his own poems of love in Anatolian Turkish. In the same age, tradition has it that Nasreddin Hodja told his tales in nearby Akşehir.