Rumi: Poet of the Heart
Jelaluddin Rumi was born in 1207 in Afghanistan and later moved to Turkey so that his father could lead a Sufi learning community. By the age of 37, he had become a famous scholar and popular teacher in Konya, Turkey. But his life changed forever when he met the powerful wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz. Rumi said, “What I had thought of before as God, I met today in a human being.”
An extraordinary esoteric friendship between the two men unfolded, and when Shams mysteriously disappeared, Rumi experienced a transformation from scholar to mystic poet. More than seven hundred years later, Rumi poetry is the bestselling poetry in America.
How did a Persian mystic poet of the 13th century become the bestselling poet in America? Rumi: Poet of the Heart explores how Rumi was discovered in the West and features two of the individuals responsible – Coleman Barks and Robert Bly.
Directed by Haydn Reiss.