Name-dropping:
Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (pronunciation: juh-LAHL ahd-DINN ahr-ROO-mee) (1207–1273 CE).
Sufi poet whose evocative verse earned him fans the world over during his life, and has kept him in print in dozens of languages ever since. Also, the best-selling poet overall in America in the 1980s and 1990s. (Sorry, Jewel.)

Sufism: (pronunciation: SOO-fizm).
Islamic mysticism in which worshippers seek oneness with God.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Rumi knew his way around the love poem (he composed some 30,000 verses of love poetry), so he can be of vital assistance when trying to woo someone at the tail end of a party. Where Spanish fly and Love Potion #9 will inevitably fail, Rumi will likely succeed.

The Basics
Rumi’s father was a teacher and mystic in present-day Turkey, and when his dad died in 1231, Rumi decided to take up the family business. He was only 24, but he was soon respected for the depth of his study. In fact, Rumi was tutored by some of the greatest Islamic thinkers of the time, including Ibn al-’Arabi, who is Rumi’s only rival for the title of “Greatest Sufi Ever.”

Although Sufism, the mystical sect of Islam that seeks Fana, or annihilation into God, had been around in some form since the very beginnings of Islam, it was coming into its own in the 13th century. Grand philosophies of Qur’anic interpretation, meditative prayer, and trance-inducing rituals were codified, and many people sought out spiritual experiences through Sufi leaders. So Rumi likely would have had a good and quiet life as a Sufi teacher had he not crossed paths with a wandering, unkempt mystic named Shams ad-Din (literally, “the Sun of Religion”).

Shams became Rumi’s spiritual adviser, and Rumi fell for Shams like no one has ever fallen for anybody. Their love—which may or may not have involved a romantic relationship—consumed Rumi, leading him to neglect his duties as a teacher so that he could spend all his time with Shams. In the end, Rumi would write some 30,000 verses about the stages of his love for Shams. And just as Sufis seek unification with the divine, Rumi sought (and found) unification with Shams–so much so that Rumi began using the pen name “Shams.”

The Great strengths of Rumi’s poems are the use of everyday descriptions and a personal, confessional tone rarely before seen in Persian poetry. Poetic technique never overshadows Rumi’s passion, and that is why he remains read today while most of the classic Persian poets do not. Rumi’s poems (at least in their original Persian) are also endearingly rhythmic, lending credence to the legend that he wrote them while listening to goldsmiths’ hammering.

Unfortunately, his love affair with Shams was short-lived. His family had a business to run–albeit a mystical-union-with-God business–and having their best teacher staring dreamily into the eyes of some unkempt dervish all day was not good. So members of Rumi’s family had Shams killed in 1247.

Rumi’s next and final love was for an illiterate goldsmith, Salah ad-Din Zarkub, who had long been Rumi’s disciple, and who inspired Rumi to write his great pilosopho-religio-poetic (we just made that up) work, the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi. The six-volume poem is considered by many Muslims to be more important than any book save the Qur’an. Full of lengthy tangents and twisting narratives, the Masnavi is both a guide to divine love and a story of experiencing that love.

The Quotable Rumi
If only he’d lived to be about 800, Rumi would be stinking rich. The poet Coleman Barks’s translations of Rumi have sold more than 600,000 copies (poet laureate and general poetry superstar Billy Collins, by contrast, sold 55,000 copies of his last book). As Barks himself sheepishly admits in the preface to one of his translations, “I have sold too many books.”

On Love:
“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”

On Love:
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

On Love:
“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”

On Making Waterwheel Metaphors Sexy:
“I become a waterwheel, turning and tasting you as long as water moves.”

Conversation Starters
◆Although Rumi is often viewed in the West as a mystical-poet-who-transcended-religion type, he was in fact quite religious and played an important role in spreading Islam into Asia Minor.

◆ Rumi’s funeral was one of the more impressive interfaith gatherings of antiquity. It’s said that Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists were all in attendance.

◆ The Ellen DeGeneres of his day, Rumi brought dance to the forefront of Islamic ritual. He is said to have danced all night after meeting Shams, and the Sufi order he founded, the Mawlawiyah, was famous for the dance they did as part of prayer. European observers called them “whirling dervishes,” a term that continues to be a popular (if somewhat inaccurate) description of Sufis.

◆ The phrase “whirling dervishes” may have lasted, but the Mevleviyah themselves have struggled. The radically secularist Turkish government disbanded all Sufi orders in 1925, and the Mevleviyah had no real presence outside of Turkey.