section_path: Life/Later life and death
section_name: Later life and death
paragraph_text: Later life and death
  
  Mewlana had been spontaneously composing ghazals (Persian poems), and these had been collected in the Divan-i Kabir or Diwan Shams Tabrizi. Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. One day, the two of them were wandering through the Meram vineyards outside Konya when Hussam described to Rumi an idea he had had: "If you were to write a book like the Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq ut-Tayr of 'Attar, it would become the companion of many troubadours. They would fill their hearts from your work and compose music to accompany it." Rumi smiled and took out a piece of paper on which were written the opening eighteen lines of his Masnavi, beginning with:
  
  Listen to the reed and the tale it tells, How it sings of separation...
  
  Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.
  
  In December 1273, Rumi fell ill; he predicted his own death and composed the well-known ghazal, which begins with the verse:
  
  How doest thou know what sort of king I have within me as companion? Do not cast thy glance upon my golden face, for I have iron legs.
  
  Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya. His death was mourned by the diverse community of Konya, with local Christians and Jews joining the crowd that converged to bid farewell as his body was carried through the city. Rumi's body was interred beside that of his father, and a splendid shrine, the "Green Tomb" (Turkish: Yeşil Türbe, Arabic: قبة الخضراء; today the Mevlâna Museum), was erected over his place of burial. His epitaph reads:
  
  When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth,but find it in the hearts of men.
  
  Georgian princess and Seljuq queen Gurju Khatun was a close friend of Rumi. She was the one who sponsored the construction of his tomb in Konya. The 13th-century Mevlâna Mausoleum, with its mosque, dance hall, schools and living quarters for dervishes, remains a destination of pilgrimage to this day, and is probably the most popular pilgrimage site to be regularly visited by adherents of every major religion.