Mawlana Jalal-Uddin Balkhi - Rumi

Mawlana has written and composed most of his works in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, text in his verses. His Masnavi (Mathnawi), composed in Konya, is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia.

According to the UNESCO.ORG The Persian-language poet and philosopher Mawlana Jalal-ud-Din Balkhi-Rumi (Mevlana Celaleddin Belhī Rūmī) was born in 1207 in Balkh, now Afghanistan. He lived most of his life in Konya, in today’s Turkey, where he died in 1273. Author of the renowned Mathnawi or “Rhyming Couplets”, he is considered to be one of the greatest Sufi masters, a peer of the well-known Ibn Arabi and Shams-e Tabrizi. During his lifetime, Mawlana enjoyed especially good relations with people of diverse social, cultural and religious backgrounds. He addressed humanity as a whole: “I do not distinguish between the relative and the stranger.”

Mawlana's poetry has influenced not only Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, as well as the literature of some other Turkish, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Urdu and Pashto.