Plans to make a movie about Rumi, a 13th-century Persian Sufi poet, have once again revived an old quarrel between two currents among Iranian clerics — one that celebrates him as a great mystic and another that opposes his teachings as deviation and heresy.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, known in Iran as Mowlana, was born in 1207 in Balkh, which was situated in Iran’s greater Khorasan then but currently within the borders of Afghanistan. When the Mongols invaded Iran, Rumi’s father, a theologian, jurist and a mystic, fled. He traveled across the region and finally settled in Konya, a city in today’s Turkey. Rumi followed in the footsteps of his father; after attending seminary schools, he also became a highly respected mujtahid — a cleric able to deduce jurisprudential rulings — and had a strong following.