Rumi was born in what is now Afghanistan, in the thirteenth century.

Eventually Rumi ended up in Konya, now Turkey. In this tempestuous world, he gave faith an investigative, mystical and, according to many, humanistic interpretation. This is evident, for example, in his Masnavi, an enormous teaching poem with more than 25,000 verses, also called the 'Persian Quran'.

What is striking about this work is that it hardly deals with all political and religious conflicts. Rumi wanted to confront his chaotic world with the spiritual journey that people can make within themselves. "The universe is not outside of you," he writes. "You already are everything you're looking for." He beckons people inwards, to their inner world – to find there a source of love and inspiration that also transcends the individual.

Although many people now see him as an inspiration, Rumi's ideas are rooted in a liberal, mystical movement within Islam, Sufism (derived from 'sūf', wool, after the modest dress of the first Sufis). It is not the theoretical dogma that is central to this, but the personal search. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Rumi is not about drawing boundaries, but about transcending them: boundaries of one's own identity, boundaries between you and the world around you, boundaries between yourself and the other. If you transcend those boundaries, you find yourself, says Rumi, in a "state of bewilderingly clear confusion"; a mystical experience of all-encompassing harmony and unity.

That experience is indeed confusing, because familiar dividing lines disappear and words fail. 'I don't know who I am. I am not a Christian, not a Jew, not a Zoroastrian. And I'm not even a Muslim.' At the same time, a clear realization dawns in that confusion: a sense of unity and connectedness. “I am the life of life,” he continues. "I am that cat, this stone, not a separate entity." It is about the experience of being one with everything that exists."You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop."