Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian: جلال الدین محمد بلخى), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (Persian: جلالالدین محمد رومی), and popularly known as Mowlānā (Persian: مولانا) but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and mystic. Rūmī is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most of his life in an area called Rūm bec...
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Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian: جلال الدین محمد بلخى), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (Persian: جلالالدین محمد رومی), and popularly known as Mowlānā (Persian: مولانا) but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and mystic. Rūmī is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most of his life in an area called Rūm because it was once ruled by the Byzantine Empire.
According to tradition, Rumi was born in Balkh, Khorasan (now in Afghanistan), the hometown of his father's family. Some scholars, however, argue that he may have been born in Wakhsh, a small town located at the river Wakhsh in what is now Tajikistan. Wakhsh belonged to the larger province of Balkh, and in the year Rumi was born, his father was an appointed scholar there. Both these cities were at the time included in the Greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorasan, the easternmost province of...
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