Americans produce Rumi documentary

American Public Television has shot a documentary film about Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi in the central Anatolian province of Konya.

Kell Kearns and Cynthia Lukas from American Public Television are producing a program centered on the life and philosophy of Rumi, gaining information about the master of Sufi mysticism from experts at the Mevlana Museum.

Kearns said that the duo attended and filmed several events organized in Konya, including the Sixth International Mystic Music Festival. “We also filmed the Mevlana Musuem and other significant locations in the city. In particular, İnce Minare, Karatay Museum and Eşrefoğlu Mosque in the Beyşehir district were documented in detail. All these places are real works of art. The film will be broadcast on TV in the United States," he said.

Rumi was born in 1207 in Balkh in present day Afghanistan. He died in Konya in 1273. He was laid to rest beside his father in a splendid shrine that was erected in Konya.

He devoted himself to the pursuit of Sufi mysticism, a discipline in which he was widely regarded as the supreme master. He was the spiritual founder of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes.

"Come, come again, whoever you are, come! Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times. Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are," is his famous motto, which has been seen as a symbol of tolerance and love for centuries.

Rumi’s Masnavi is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufi and Persian literature. Comprising six books of poems that amount to more than 50,000 lines, it wends its way through 424 stories illustrating humanity’s quest for God.