Rumi has been much appreciated as a Sufi poet throughout the Persianate World, from Bukhara and India to Iran itself. But today it is much less widely understood that Rumi’s legacy had no institutional basis in any of these countries. Through the Mevlevi Order of Dervishes this legacy had its center in the Seljuq and Karamanid states, and then the Ottoman Empire. Likewise, important elements of...