Rumi developed his career as an Islamic scholar, teacher, and Sufi poet in Konya, in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. After his father Baha al-Din's death in 1231, he inherited a position of religious authority and continued study and spiritual training. Teaching law and theology, preaching, and guiding disciples formed the setting for his later poetry. His writings cannot be understood fully apart from Islamic scripture, ritual, and the earlier Persian literary and mystical traditions with which he engaged.

His meeting with Shams of Tabriz in 1244 transformed his spiritual life. Their intense association drew Rumi into a new mode of mystical expression and troubled some around him. Shams left Konya, returned, and finally disappeared in the late 1240s; accounts of his fate differ and a murder narrative cannot be treated as securely established. Rumi's longing and response to this relationship informed the lyrics collected in the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. The collection includes many ghazals and quatrains, using love, separation, music, and intoxication as languages for spiritual experience.

Rumi continued to teach and gathered a community of followers. Other companions, notably Salah al-Din Zarkub and Husam al-Din Chalabi, became important to his later work. At Husam al-Din's encouragement he composed the Masnavi, a large Persian poem in six books. Husam al-Din recorded the dictation and worked with him to review the text. Its stories range across scripture, everyday life, earlier poetry, and religious teaching, often interrupting or nesting narratives to expose the limits of literal understanding. The work presents spiritual instruction through encounters, paradoxes, and interpretation rather than through a single continuous argument.

Rumi's prose teachings survive in Fihi ma Fihi, while sermons and letters reveal aspects of his intellectual and social world. These records show interaction with patrons and officials as well as students, alongside the pastoral and practical concerns of a religious leader. He died in Konya in December 1273. Husam al-Din first succeeded him, and Rumi's son Sultan Walad later helped shape the community into the Mevlevi tradition. The order's institutions and formal ceremonies developed over time, so later practice should not all be attributed directly to Rumi. His poetry reached audiences across languages and centuries, but modern adaptations sometimes detach it from its Islamic and Persian context.