His father raised him well. He raised his sons well. Rumi had Shams to show him about transcendent love and joy. He had Salah another friend and guide. He had Hosam who was a handsome bookkeeper and comproler so he didn't have to worry about money, who suggested people really like to read and listen to poetry.
He had traveling the first 15 years of his life. He had education and teachers and mentors. He had enough wealth and frugality. He had wives and slaves and family and a household of support.
He disliked fame and challenged people, worked to be authentic, went places people said he shouldn't, taught people they said he shouldn't. He was kind to animals, taught others to be kind to animals. Love breaks down barriers.
He wrote his poems with Hosam, who was his scribe, amenuesis and encourager, agent and publisher. He was grateful for his support and enshrined his gratitude in his poems. Hosam called him Mowlana. Rumi sometimes would have him dictate and read back to him the poems, and then he'd throw them all on the fire. He wrote his first book of poems in the 1260's.
He said he was from Balkh Afghanistan, but here is another view:
"Tajiks and Persian admirers still prefer to call Jalaluddin 'Balkhi' because his family lived in Balkh, current day in Afghanistan before migrating westward. However, their home was not in the actual city of Balkh, since the mid-eighth century a center of Muslim culture in (Greater) Khorasan (Iran and Central Asia). Rather, as Meier has shown, it was in the small town of Wakhsh north of the Oxus that Baha'uddin Walad, Jalaluddin's father, lived and worked as a jurist and preacher with mystical inclinations. Lewis, Rumi : Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, 2000, pp. 47–49."
If anyone transcends place and time, it's Rumi, and you can place him in Greater Iran, or Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia. He wrote in Persian and Arabic.
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