Rumi composed in Persian, Arabic, and at times Turkish and Greek, and within a single ghazal he could shift among these languages without preface—a sign of a life lived at the crossroads of Iranian, Arab, Turkic, and Greek cultures in Seljuk Anatolia. He usually spoke his poems improvisationally, in the midst of sama or while walking through the markets of Konya, while his scribes hurried after him to catch the lines. That mode of composition gave his speech an ecstasy and immediacy rarer in the more formal poetry of his age. The Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, sometimes called the "Persian Quran" for its place in Persian literature and mysticism, speaks through continuous story, parable, and sermon about the relation of the self to the Real. The Divan-e Shams, by contrast, is fiercer and more personal: ghazals that sometimes, in the intensity of ecstasy, overflow ordinary meter and rhyme, as if language can barely keep pace with experience. After Rumi's death, his son Sultan Walad formally organized the Mevlevi path, and the practice of sama—the rhythmic turning that in Rumi's lifetime was improvisational and personal—became an institutionalized ceremony with fixed rules and dress; today it is one of the most recognizable symbols of Islamic mysticism in the world.

Contribution: Rumi raised one of the highest peaks of Persian mystical literature and shaped the Sufi poetic tradition for centuries. The Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams influenced not only Persian literature but also Ottoman poetry and the literatures of the Indian subcontinent. In recent centuries, translations—especially into English—have made him one of the most widely read poets in the West, an embrace sometimes accompanied by criticism, because many of these translations set aside the Islamic and juridical dimensions of his thought and lean only on the romantic and universal face of his verse.

Style & themes: Rumi's poetry weaves metaphor, apparent paradox, and ecstatic address. A clear example is the Masnavi's opening image—the reed cut from the reed-bed and lamenting—a figure that returns throughout the work: every longing and exile mirrors that first separation. His central themes are divine love, the burning and annihilation of the self, humility before the Beloved, and transformation through pain and desire. Unlike many mystics of his time, he often used a frank and at times unruly language, so much so that he himself once spoke of composing poetry with hesitation, treating it as the unintended fruit of a state he did not control.