Rumi

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) taught in Konya, in present-day Turkey, and after the loss of his companion Shams of Tabriz turned into one of the most prolific poets who ever lived — the Masnavi alone runs to some 25,000 couplets. He wrote in Persian about love, grief, longing and the soul’s return, and is now among the best-selling poets in English. That popularity comes with a catch worth knowing: most viral “Rumi” lines are modern renderings rather than translations, often made by writers who do not read Persian and stripped of the Islamic frame that saturates the original. We mark which is which, and cite the public-domain translations we quote.