Rumi composes the Masnavi in Konya

Rumi was born in 1207 at Wakhsh, in present-day Tajikistan, in the cultural orbit of Balkh. Around 1216–1218, on the eve of the Mongol invasion of Central Asia — tradition links the move with the Mongol threat, though some scholars give other reasons — his father, the theologian Baha al-Din Walad, set out west with his family and disciples, and in 1228, most likely at the invitation of Sultan Kayqubad I, they settled in Konya; after his father’s death Rumi succeeded him as head of his madrasa. On 15 November 1244 he met the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz, and the encounter turned the scholar into an ascetic and mystic; the loss of Shams, who vanished in 1248, inspired the lyrics of the Divan-e Shams.

Around 1258, at the request of his disciple Husam al-Din Chalabi, Rumi began to dictate the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi (“Spiritual Couplets”): at their regular meetings Husam al-Din wrote the verses down and read them back. Its six books, some 25,000 couplets in all, retell stories from the Quran, the hadith and everyday life to illustrate spiritual truths. The sixth book was still unfinished when Rumi died in Konya on 17 December 1273. His son Sultan Walad and his followers then founded the Mevlevi order, known as the “whirling dervishes”.