The Tomb of Rumi

Rumi's story began in Balkh, in present-day Afghanistan, where he was born in 1207. But made into a refugee by the Mongol invasions, Rumi later compared his life to the ‘ney’ reed instrument.

Like the ney, he had been separated from his homeland and pierced with holes, and yet like the ney, the suffering he had experienced made him capable of producing the poetry and melodies for which he became famous.

By the 1240s, Rumi was an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya.

But on 15 November 1244, a meeting with the travelling mystic Shams-i-Tabriz changed his life forever.

Shams offered obliteration and under his influence, Rumi abandoned the law courts and began composing verse, not in service of doctrine, but in pursuit of ecstasy.

Shams transformed Rumi into a “mature lover of God by melting him into a pot of divine love.”

The love shared between Rumi and Shams would become the stuff of legend.

But on 5 December 1248, Shams was called to the back door of their house and never seen from again.

Rumi was heartbroken. He refused to believe stories of Shams’ death and only after forty days did he finally adopt the black shrouds of mourning.

He then began composing poems for Shams, collected in the Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabrizi.

It was only after a trip to Damascus that he finally stopped mourning. As he later wrote,

"Why should I seek? I am the same as He. His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself!”

Rumi writing would use separation from one's lover as a metaphor for the Sufi's separation from God. His magnu opus - the Masnavi - was a storm of parables, riddles, theology, erotic longing and silence.

For Rumi, to love was to be torn apart. The soul was not on a journey toward perfection. It was caught in the agony of separation from the divine.