Few people who have heard of Rumi are unfamiliar with the name Shamas-i Tabrizi. Little is known about him for certain. The only thing that completely clear is that his arrival in Konya marked a decisive turning point in Rumi''s life and led to his prodigious output of inspired poetry. Given the importance of Rumi''s poetry for persianate Islam, one can easily conclude that Shams played a providential role in Islamic history. The accounts of Shams in the popular literature on Rumi in the West have tended to emphasize the dramatic sides to the Shams legend. We are given the picture of a wild lover of god who was utterly unconcerned with societal and religious conventions.
