Rumi in Painting: His Life, the Reed Flute and Five Tales

Updated By VanArtHub Curatorial Team

Rumi was a poet who wrote in Persian and taught in Konya, in present-day Turkey. He was born in 1207 and died in 1273, and he is known for two books of verse, the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and for the whirling ceremony of the Mevlevi dervishes. We are VanArtHub, a Vancouver gallery that sells original paintings, and three of our paintings began with a line or an idea of his. Below are his life in order, the reed flute that opens the Masnavi, five of its tales, and paintings to look up.

Rumi's life in order: from Balkh to Konya

Museum records print his name as Jalal al-Din Rumi. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art explains that "Rumi" means "from Rome", a reference to Byzantium, and that the Islamic world knows him by a title meaning "our master" (Mawlana, in Turkish Mevlana).

He was born in 1207. Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, gives the place as Balkh. The Smithsonian adds that scholars have recently suggested Vakhsh, in present-day Tajikistan. His father, Baha al-Din Walad, was a preacher and mufti in Balkh.

The family moved west, and the sources give different years. Hamid Algar, in the Iranica entry on the father, reports that the scholar Foruzanfar reviewed the evidence and chose 1214. The Smithsonian says father and son fled the Mongol armies in the early 1220s.

Algar gives the route: Baghdad, the pilgrimage to Mecca, then through Syria to Anatolia. The father reached Konya in 1229, a year Algar marks as approximate, and died there on 23 February 1231.

Fouchécour writes that Rumi succeeded his father. In the Smithsonian's account he lived in a madrasa, a religious college, and earned his living as a teacher of Islamic law.

1244: the meeting with Shams of Tabriz

A dervish is a follower of Sufism, the mystical tradition in Islam. In 1244 Rumi met a travelling dervish, Shams of Tabriz (Shams-e Tabrizi; museum titles also write Shams-i Tabrizi). Fouchécour calls him "an errant dervish" who "undertook the re-education of the brilliant Jalal". The Smithsonian calls him "an itinerant scholar and mystic".

By the Smithsonian's account Rumi "stopped teaching and began writing poetry". Jawid Mojaddedi, in the Iranica, words it with more care: the old biographies show Rumi "withdrawing from his students" after he met Shams and appointing deputies to teach in his place.

Shams left Konya for Syria. Rumi's son Sultan Walad (the Smithsonian writes Sultan Valad) brought him back from Aleppo, and then Shams disappeared and never returned. Mohammad Estelami, in the Iranica, dates the disappearance to 1247. The Smithsonian reports, as a claim only, that followers of Rumi killed him out of jealousy.

The poetry Rumi then wrote was collected in a book known as the Great Divan or the Divan of Shams of Tabriz: the Divan-e Shams. UNESCO lists it, with the rest of his works, in its Memory of the World Register.

Harvard Art Museums hold a Persian drawing, dated 1850 to 1900, with the title "The meeting of Shams-i Tabrizi and Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi".

Beyond Rise and Fall by Roshan is an acrylic on canvas, 71.1 x 101.6 cm (28 x 40 in). A woman is shown from the waist up with her eyes closed and a dark, see-through cloth across the lower half of her face. Its product page says the painter began with a verse of Rumi, and that the subject is freedom reached through surrender. It is a contemporary work with a subject of its own. We place it here because surrender is close to Fouchécour's words for where Shams led Rumi: to the place "where the lover loses his identity in the beloved".

Roshan's acrylic and ink on canvas: Stylized woman with closed eyes, face veiled, surrounded by vibrant golden, blue, and b.
Beyond Rise and Fall One-of-a-kind original$1,536.00 Free insured shipping. 14-day returns. See this original

The Masnavi, and the reed flute that opens it

The Masnavi (also written Mathnawi) is Rumi's long poem in rhyming couplets. Mojaddedi puts its length at 26,000 verses, as a round figure, and Fouchécour counts six books.

Rumi dictated it. Estelami tells how it began: a disciple named Hosam al-Din Chalabi (the Smithsonian writes Husam al-Din Chelebi) is credited with suggesting that Rumi follow the example of two earlier poets, Sanai and Attar. Rumi spoke the verses, and Hosam al-Din wrote them down, then corrected them with him. The first book was finished in 1262, again an approximate year.

The poem was unfinished when Rumi died in 1273, Fouchécour writes. An early copy is still in Konya: the Smithsonian shows a page of a Masnavi copied there in 1278 by Muhammad al-Waladi, now number 51 in the Mevlana Museum.

The first verse is about a musical instrument, the ney, a flute cut from a reed. In the English on the Smithsonian's page, which names no translator: "Listen to this reed play out its plaint / Unfold its tale of separations". William C. Chittick, in the Iranica, describes the opening as "the complaint of the reed at having been cut off from its source", the reed bed. The Smithsonian's reading is that Rumi used the flute "as a metaphor for the soul's yearning of unity with the divine". The Mevlevi order treats the ney as a sacred instrument.

Return by Roshan is an acrylic on canvas, 61 x 78.7 cm (24 x 31 in). A dark rectangular form hangs in a light blue sky, and many small dark figures cross a wavy ground toward a lit set of stairs. Its product page quotes one line in English as a thought of Rumi: "Whoever is far from their origin seeks the day of reunion." The page names no poem and no translator. The line is close to what Chittick says of the reed, so we show the painting here. We have found no published translation with these exact words, so we make no claim about its source.

Roshan's acrylic and pen surreal landscape: a luminous gold path to stairs climbing towards a dark, floating cube.
Return One-of-a-kind original$1,446.00 Free insured shipping. 14-day returns. See this original

Five tales from the Masnavi to recognise in a picture

Our guide to Rumi and Hafez paintings retells three tales of the Masnavi and lists the checks to make before you buy. Here are five others.

The elephant in the dark. An elephant is on show in a dark building. Many people go in and feel it with their hands. One touches the trunk and says the animal is like a pipe. One reaches an ear and thinks of a fan, one a leg and thinks of a pillar, one the back and thinks of a throne. So they disagree. A candle in each hand, the poem says, would have ended the disagreement. This telling follows the translation by Ibrahim Gamard on the Dar-al-Masnavi website (Book III, verses 1259 to 1274).

The merchant and the parrot. A merchant keeps a parrot in a cage. Before he leaves for India, she asks him to tell the parrots there that she is a prisoner. In India he gives the message, and one parrot trembles, falls and dies. Back home he tells his own parrot, and she falls in the same way. In his grief he throws her out of the cage. She flies to a high branch. The bird in India, she explains, acted dead to show her how to get free. This is Gamard's translation again, from Book I, verse 1547 onward.

The bear and the sleeping man. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore tells this one. A bear cannot drive the flies away from his sleeping friend, so he "brings a millstone to crush them, not realizing that he will crush his friend's head, too".

The jackal and the jar of paint. A jackal colours his coat in a jar of paint and then claims that he is more beautiful than the peacocks.

The hares and the king of the elephants. The leader of the hares says the moon will be angry if the elephants drink from a pool. The king of the elephants goes to test the story and finds the moon reflected in the water.

In our view the elephant is the hardest of the five to paint. The story depends on darkness, and a picture has to be seen.

A painted Masnavi to look up first

The last three tales come from one book. The Walters Art Museum's manuscript W.626 is a Masnavi finished in India in 1663, with fifty paintings. The museum's list of titles works as a contents page for the tales, with titles such as "A Peasant Carries a Lion".

The elephant page is numbered W.626.117B, and its title tells the tale in one line: "Townspeople, Who have Never Seen an Elephant, Examine its Appearance in the Dark". Two more of the fifty show Majnun, one of them feeding a dog near Layla's house, and our post on Layla and Majnun tells that story.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an older painted copy, a Masnavi dated 1488 to 1489. When we read its page in October 2026, the book was listed as on view in Gallery 455. Our page on Persian poetry in painting covers eight poets whom painters illustrated, Rumi among them.

The whirling ceremony, and how painters show it

The ceremony is called sama (the Smithsonian writes sema). The Met's essay on the art of the Sufis explains it as a ceremony "in which participants attempt to reach an ecstatic state through music and movement". In the Mevlevi form, the Smithsonian says, the participants spin in robes and tall felt hats.

UNESCO lists the Mevlevi Sema ceremony as intangible cultural heritage and describes the movement. The whirlers turn on the left foot in short twists and use the right foot to drive the body around. The music is played by at least one singer, a flute player called a neyzen, a kettledrummer and a cymbal player.

Who founded the order? The sources differ. UNESCO says it was founded in 1273 in Konya, the year Rumi died. Fouchécour calls Sultan Walad "the true founder". The Smithsonian says that Rumi belonged to no order in his lifetime.

An early picture is the Met's "Dancing Dervishes", attributed to Bihzad and dated ca. 1480. It is a page from a Divan of Hafez (the Met writes Hafiz), and the Met calls its dancers "Sufis or mystics", so it names no order. Look for the contrast the Met points out: the whirling figures in the middle, the still figures in meditation around them, and in the foreground the dancers who have been overcome.

The Met's print "The Inside of a Mosque, the Dervishes Dancing", made by William Hogarth in 1723 to 1724, shows Mevlevi dervishes in a hall in Istanbul: "one rising, some in various states of whirling, another crouching to kiss the floor". Musicians at the right play the ney and a drum.

In a picture of Mevlevi dervishes, look for the tall caps and the flute player. Our page on symbols in Persian painting explains other signs.

The lives of Rumi and his circle, in pictures

Aflaki wrote two books on the lives of Rumi and his disciples. Tahsin Yazici writes in the Iranica that he was born between ca. 1286 and 1291 and died on 17 June 1360. The fuller of the two is the Manaqeb al-arefin. Algar calls his manner "hagiographical": these are lives of holy men, written by a follower. We read them as what the order told about its founder.

The Iranica lists several Turkish translations of the book. The Smithsonian reproduces three pages of a painted copy of a translation, made in Baghdad, ca. 1590, now manuscript M.466 in the Morgan Library & Museum. In one, the prophet Khizr attends a sermon by Rumi. In another, two men talk beside a pool under a sun with a human face, and the title names Shams. The third shows a sama: robed men in turbans dance indoors. These descriptions are the Smithsonian's, because the Morgan's own pages did not open for us in October 2026.

Paintings and manuscripts to look up

The linked titles open the museums' own pages.

Rumi's life, his tales and the whirling ceremony in pictures. Sources: Harvard Art Museums, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum, read October 2026.
Subject Work to look up Where it is held
The meeting with Shams The meeting of Shams-i Tabrizi and Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, a drawing on folio 18 of an album, 1850 to 1900 Harvard Art Museums, 1960.161.18
Shams and the sun in a pool Mystical Scene with Shams al-Din Tabrizi and the Reflection of the Sun in a Pool, folio 89 verso, Baghdad, ca. 1590 The Morgan Library & Museum, M.466, as captioned by the Smithsonian
The ceremony, indoors A sema' during the leadership of Rumi's successor Husam al-Din Chelebi, folio 21 verso, Baghdad, ca. 1590 The Morgan Library & Museum, M.466
The ceremony, outdoors "Dancing Dervishes", Folio from a Divan of Hafiz, attributed to Bihzad, Herat, ca. 1480 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.81.4
The ceremony in Istanbul The Inside of a Mosque, the Dervishes Dancing, etching and engraving by William Hogarth, 1723 to 1724 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 32.35(234)
The elephant in the dark Townspeople, Who have Never Seen an Elephant, Examine its Appearance in the Dark, India, 1663 The Walters Art Museum, W.626.117B
The bear, the jackal, the hares and the other tales Collection of Poems (masnavi), fifty paintings, India, 1663 The Walters Art Museum, W.626

Our first choice from this table is the Walters elephant.

After the manuscripts: sculpture, script and English versions

The Met's essay names two later works in its own collection: Parviz Tanavoli's sculpture "Poet Turning into Heech", and Y. Z. Kami's "Endless Prayers XXVIII", which uses spirals and text from Rumi's poetry. For the Aga Khan Museum's Rumi exhibition of 2023, Simin Keramati made The Elephant in the Dark, an installation that visitors touch. Our page on Persian calligraphy in painting explains how script became the subject of modern pictures, and our guide to buying Persian calligraphy art lists the questions to ask.

A note on quotation. The Met's essay says that many 20th-century poetic translations of Sufi texts "dilute the original Islamic religious meanings and detach texts from significant references to God and the Qur'an". The Smithsonian writes that in the 1990s Rumi became the best-selling poet in the United States "through a series of translations and reinterpretations" of the Masnavi. Chittick adds that when Rumi writes of "the religion", he means the Islamic tradition. So when an English line carries his name, ask which poem it comes from and who translated it. If the seller cannot say, treat the line as an English version of unknown origin.

Beyond the Stone by Roshan is an oil on canvas, 101.6 x 101.6 cm (40 x 40 in). On a dark ground, a glowing head and shoulders rise from a cloud at the left, and at the right sits a figure made of broken shapes of blue, green and yellow. Its product page says the painter started from Rumi's idea that old structures must fall so that new ones can rise. We show it as an example of what this section describes: a contemporary work that begins with an idea of the poet and names no verse.

A vibrant, surreal painting features a floating green and yellow woman with flowing hair and a melted
Beyond the Stone One-of-a-kind original$2,801.00 Free insured shipping. 14-day returns. See this original

Key Takeaways

  • Rumi was born in 1207, moved west with his family, and lived and taught in Konya, where he died in 1273.
  • In 1244 he met Shams of Tabriz. After that meeting he wrote the poems collected in the Divan-e Shams.
  • He dictated the Masnavi to Hosam al-Din Chalabi. Its first verse is the complaint of a reed flute cut from the reed bed.
  • The Walters Art Museum's Masnavi of 1663 has fifty paintings of the tales, among them the elephant in the dark.
  • English versions of Rumi include free reinterpretations. Ask for the poem and the translator.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Rumi live, and where?

Rumi was born in 1207 and died in 1273 in Konya, in present-day Turkey. The Encyclopaedia Iranica gives his birthplace as Balkh, and the Smithsonian adds that scholars have recently suggested Vakhsh, in present-day Tajikistan. His family moved west, and his father reached Konya in 1229, a year the Iranica marks as approximate.

Who was Shams of Tabriz?

Shams of Tabriz was the travelling dervish whom Rumi met in 1244. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art calls him an itinerant scholar and mystic who became Rumi's spiritual inspiration. After the meeting Rumi began to write poetry. Shams left Konya for Syria, was brought back from Aleppo, and then disappeared. The Encyclopaedia Iranica dates the disappearance to 1247.

What is the Masnavi?

The Masnavi is Rumi's long poem in rhyming couplets, made of tales and the teaching drawn from them. The Encyclopaedia Iranica counts six books and 26,000 verses, as a round figure. Rumi dictated it to his disciple Hosam al-Din Chalabi, who wrote it down and corrected it with him. The poem was unfinished when Rumi died in 1273.

Why does the Masnavi begin with a reed flute?

The reed flute opens the poem with a complaint about separation. The Encyclopaedia Iranica describes the first verse as the complaint of the reed at having been cut off from its source, the reed bed. The Smithsonian reads the flute as a metaphor for the soul's yearning for unity with the divine. The Mevlevi order treats the instrument, the ney, as sacred.

What happens in the tale of the elephant in the dark?

People who have never seen an elephant go into a dark building and feel one with their hands. One touches the trunk and thinks of a pipe, another an ear and thinks of a fan, another a leg and thinks of a pillar. They disagree, because each knows one part. A candle, the poem says, would have ended the argument.

What is the whirling ceremony of the Mevlevi dervishes?

The whirling ceremony is the sama, or sema, of the Mevlevi order, which formed around Rumi's family in Konya. UNESCO lists it as intangible cultural heritage and describes the whirlers turning on the left foot while the right foot drives the body around. A singer, a flute player, a kettledrummer and a cymbal player perform the music.

Where can I see old paintings of Rumi's tales and of the whirling dervishes?

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore holds a Masnavi of 1663 with fifty paintings of the tales, and its pages are online. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a page of dancing dervishes attributed to Bihzad, dated ca. 1480, and a Masnavi dated 1488 to 1489. Harvard Art Museums hold a 19th-century drawing of Rumi's meeting with Shams.

Is Return an illustration of the Masnavi, and will the canvas I receive be the original?

Return is a contemporary painting by Roshan with a subject of its own, and the canvas you receive is the signed original. Its product page quotes one English line as a thought of Rumi and names no poem. The work is an acrylic on canvas of 61 x 78.7 cm (24 x 31 in), and it arrives with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Do I pay for shipping or insurance on one of these three paintings?

No, shipping is free and the painting is fully insured on the way. Delivery takes 3 to 7 business days in Canada and 5 to 10 business days to the United States, and we send each work from Vancouver. Every painting we ship is an original, signed and one of a kind, with a Certificate of Authenticity.

What can I do if a painting that starts from a poem feels wrong once it hangs at home?

You can send it back within 14 days of delivery for a full refund, and we pay the return shipping. Every work comes with this 14-day trial, so you can hang the painting on your own wall before you decide. The terms are on our Buy with Confidence page, and our guide on how to buy Persian art answers other questions.

Sources

Sources read in October 2026. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will correct this post.

About VanArtHub

VanArtHub is a gallery in Vancouver, Canada. Every painting we ship is an original, signed and one of a kind. Each one arrives with a Certificate of Authenticity, and shipping is free and insured, with a 14-day trial. Persian art is also called Iranian art. To read more, start with our guide to contemporary Persian painting, or browse all the originals we have for sale.

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