Intl. Conference on Persian Poet Rumi Kicks off in Tehran

Tehran, Dec. 18, 2011: An international conference on the Persian poet and mystic Jalal ad-Din Rumi entitled From Balkh to Konya opened Saturday at Iran’s Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia.

The conference opened with a short speech delivered by Iranian Academy of Persian Language and Literature Director Gholamali Haddad-Adel, in which he emphasized the message of Rumi to the world.

The world is in dire need of Rumi’s message. Rumi invites every individual to avoid jealousy, hypocrisy, lies and many other more flaws and replace them with virtues and honesty.

The next speaker was director of the center Kazem Musavi Bojnurdi, the Persian service of IRNA reported on Saturday.

Experts on Rumi including Seyyed Hossein Nasr from the George WashingtonUniversity, Turkish Masnavi translator Adnan Karaismailoglu and Jawid Mojaddedi from the Rutgers University are among the foreign guests invited to the two-day conference.

Iranian literati Mohammad-Ali Eslami Nodushan, Mohammad-Ali Movahhed, Fat’hollah Mojtabaii, Medi Nurian, Sadeq Sajjadi are also participating in the event to discuss Rumi and his contributions to Persian literature.

The influence of Rumi and his lyrics in music, culture, cinema and literature will also be discussed.

Rumi was born in 1207 in Balkh, now in Afghanistan and died in Konya, Turkey. He wrote the Masnavi-ye Manavi (“Spiritual Couplets”), which widely influenced Muslim mystical thought and literature.