Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Husayn Baha al-Din al-Balkhi, known in Persian as Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, lived from 604 to 672 AH, or 1207–1273 CE. He was also known as Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi: a poet and scholar of Hanafi jurisprudence, scholarly disagreement and various sciences, who later became a Sufi and, as Arab historians describe it, left worldly life and scholarly writing.
Others know him as the author of the celebrated Persian Masnavi and as the inspiration for the Mevlevi order, named after Mawlana Jalal al-Din.
He was born in Balkh in Persia and moved with his father to Baghdad at the age of four, growing up at the Mustansiriya school where his father stayed. Their stay was brief, as his father embarked on extensive travels and spent long periods in several countries, accompanied by his son.
They settled in Konya in 623 AH under the Turkish Seljuk state. Jalal al-Din became known for his skill in jurisprudence and other Islamic sciences and taught at four schools in Konya after his father died in 628 AH.
In or around 642 AH, he left teaching, scholarly writing and worldly affairs to pursue Sufism, devoting himself to spiritual exercises, listening to music, composing poetry and reciting it.
His poems and Sufi writings, composed in his native Persian, had a wide influence throughout the Islamic world, especially on Persian, Urdu, Bengali and Turkish culture. In modern times, some works have been translated into many languages and have achieved such a wide reception that the BBC described him in 2007 as the most popular poet in the United States [1].
He died in 1273 and was buried in Konya, where his tomb remains a place of pilgrimage. After his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad established the Mevlevi Sufi order, known for its dervishes and their distinctive circular spiritual dance, or sama.