Rumi Meeting Shams-i Tabrizi

What it is

This is a manuscript painting from the Cāmiʿü's-siyer of Muhammed Tahir, made by a 16th-century Ottoman artist. It shows a bearded man in a white turban riding a donkey, approached by a figure in a black cloak, with other turbaned men nearby. It is kept in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library in Istanbul.

Why it matters

The painting imagines the meeting between the poet Jalal al-Din Rumi and the mystic Shams-i Tabrizi, an encounter later Sufi tradition saw as the turning point that transformed Rumi into a poet of mystical love. Made centuries after Rumi's life, it shows how Ottoman court artists pictured a story they had only heard or read, not witnessed.

Look closer

• Which figure do you think is meant to be Rumi, and which is Shams? What details tell you?
• Why might an artist centuries later choose to paint this particular meeting?
• What has the artist added from imagination rather than fact?