Rumi

Jalal al-Din Mohammad, called Mowlana, was born in Balkh and settled in Konya. After meeting the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz, his poetry became an ecstatic outpouring — the vast Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams. He is, improbably, among the best-selling poets in the modern West.

The opening of the Masnavi — “Listen to the reed” — is the most famous first line in Persian mysticism: the soul’s complaint of separation, and the whole tradition’s longing to return.