Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (1207–73,) better known as Rūmī, was a Persian poet and Sūfī mystic. He is often referred to as Mevlānā, meaning “Our Guide.”
Rūmī was born north of the Amu Darya (Oxus) River, in Persian-speaking Tajikistan or Afghanistan, from where Rūmī’s family fled a Mongol annexation. They settled in Konya, then the capital city of the Seljuk Empire, now in Turkey. Rūmī’s father was a practicing mystic who preached to devout disciples in Persian.
Rūmī was sent to study in the highly regarded Arabic-speaking madrasa schools of Damascus and Aleppo and returned to Konya in his thirties to take on his late father’s position as an Islāmic cleric and legal scholar.
Rūmī remained in Konya for the rest of his life. He founded the Mevlevi Sūfī order, which survives to this day. His followers, the whirling dervishes, lose themselves in trance and dance, occasionally spinning like tops for hours on end. Rūmī’s great poetic works are the Masnavi or “spiritual couplets” and the Divan, a compendium of thousands of lyric poems.
Rūmī is respected as an icon not only of the Islāmic civilization (or of Afghan, Iranian, Tajik, or Turkish heritage,) but also of the global culture. Rūmī’s poetry and religious writings are among the most beloved and respected in Islām and elsewhere. The Mevlāna Museum in Konya, consisting of Rūmī’s mausoleum and the dervish lodge (Dergah,) is Turkey’s second most-visited tourist attraction after Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
A road might end at a single house, but it’s not love’s road. Love is a river. Drink from it.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
During sleep the spirit is set free. Behold how it rejoices in the place (of freedom). The wicked is delivered from his wickedness; the prisoner escapes the sorrow of his confinement. The world appears wide, but in truth is very narrow. Its laughter lamentation, its glory shame.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Love
The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Action
You’re water. We’re the millstone. You’re wind. We’re dust blown up into shapes. You’re spirit. We’re the opening and closing of our hands. You’re the clarity. We’re the language that tries to say it. You’re joy. We’re all the different kinds of laughing.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
The same wind that uproots trees
makes the grass shine.
The lordly wind loves the weakness
and the lowness of grasses.
Never brag of being strong.
The axe doesn’t worry how thick the branches are.
It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves.
It leaves the leaves alone.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Listen, open a window to God and begin to delight yourself by gazing upon Him through the opening. The business of love is to make that window in the heart, for the breast is illumined by the beauty of the Beloved. Gaze incessantly on the face of the Beloved! Listen, this is in your power, my friend.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Birdsong brings relief to my longing. I am just as ecstatic as they are, but with nothing to say! Please, universal soul, practice some song, or something, through me.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Don’t let your throat tighten with fear. Take sips of breath all day and night, before death closes your mouth.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Death, Courage, Fear
People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: People, Reflection
At every instant and from every side, resounds the call of Love: We are going to sky, who wants to come with us?
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Feet: To chase after.
Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.
A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Loosen the bonds of avarice from your hands and neck.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Desire, Wisdom
Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Knowledge is light; avarice ice.
Knowledge is water; this world dirt.
A trickle of wisdom appears from beyond
to check the vices of this world.
Should the trickle become abundant,
none would endure, be it virtue or vice.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Wisdom, Desire
My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Action
Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
You have forgotten the One
who doesn’t care about ownership,
who doesn’t try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Give your weakness to one who helps.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue is like an arrow shot from the bow. Son, that arrow won’t turn back on its way; you must damn the torrent at its source.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Love, Communication
Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave ’til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
The beginning of pride and hatred lies in worldly desire, and the strength of your desire if from habit. When an evil tendency becomes confirmed by habit, rage is triggered when anyone restrains you.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Wisdom, Desire, Habit
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Seek self-discipline with all your soul. Devote yourself to worship and save your soul. Be grateful that God gave you the gift of self-discipline, for you had no power over it. He inspired it within you with the command, “Be!”
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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