Omar Samad, a former Afghan presidential aide and ambassador, told RFE/RL the government made a "mistake" last year by downgrading Afghanistan's representation at UNESCO.
It never recovered from the Mongol invasion that destroyed much of the town. The ancient walls of Balkh, which was once a major city in the Persia of antiquity. Sayed Zafar Hashemi, a deputy spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, has called on prominent Afghan writers to "please lobby & spread the word" to help reclaim Rumi's heritage, adding via Twitter: "Rumi was born in Balkh, Afghanistan not Turkey or Iran." Patricia McPhillips, UNESCO's representative to Afghanistan, has said she will report back to the agency's headquarters in Paris on the topic. (The Iranian government has yet to comment publicly on the issue.) The perceived appropriation of Rumi by Iran and Turkey before UNESCO infuriated Kabul, which promptly raised the issue with UNESCO and the Turkish government.
But they are also revered in many other cultures and, in recent decades, have proliferated in scores more languages and societies, including in the United States, where he has been described as that country's "best-selling poet." His works are seminal in Persian-speaking countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan. Rumi is widely revered for incorporating poetry, music, and dance into religious practice. He died in 1273 in the then-Seljuk city of Konya.
Rumi's final stop was Turkey, where he spent most of his life.
He fled the area as a child after the brutal Mongol conquest of the region, and traveled through what is now Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, where he settled long enough to study in Damascus in his 20s. Rumi was born 1207 in what might be described as the greater Balkh region - either in modern-day Afghanistan or, as some scholars have suggested more recently, in the village of Wakhsh in today's Tajikistan. The ruins of the house in Balkh where Rumi is thought to have been born in the thirteenth century.
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