Mowlana Jalal ad-Din Balkhi-Rumi first honed his understanding of the concept of the divine by immersing himself in the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and law. An industrious student of jurisprudence who devoted his early years to the study of the revelations and traditions of prophets, with apparently little time for poets and their wares, was transformed in his late thirties into one of the most commanding and influential practitioners of poetry, to the extent that his fame is no longer limited to his homeland