The 13th century mystic and poet Rumi is a best-selling author in the modern West.

He's long-influenced Islamic thought in spirituality, though his Muslim identity is often lost

in translation.

We enter the exuberant world of Rumi, with an Iranian-American poet and scholar, and

we explore why he matters in our time.

Rumi understood searching and restlessness as a kind of arrival.

He saw every form of human love as a mirror of the divine.

Whatever you are, whatever you do, be in love.

The ecstatic faith of Rumi.

I'm Christa Tippett.

This is on being from APM, American Public Media.

In his lifetime, the poet known in the West as Rumi was called Muhammad Jalal Al-Din Al-Balki

Al-Rumi.

He was born in 1207, near the city of Balk, in what is now Afghanistan.

When he was a child, his family fled Mongol invaders and settled in Konya in present

day Turkey.

Rumi wrote in Persian, the literary and spiritual language of a civilization that stretched from

the Mediterranean Sea to India.

To most of the people who read him today from Tajikistan to Iran, he is known as Mevlana

or Molana, our master.

Rumi left behind a vast body of lyric poetry, metaphysical writings, lectures and letters

which have influenced Persian, Urdu and Turkish literature across the centuries.

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