Jami signed poems for Jam the town and Jam the saint
The Timurid-era poet known simply as Jami lived from 7 November 1414 into November 1492. A Sunni Persian Sufi in the Naqshbandi order, he left Kharjerd for Herat, guided Alisher Navoi, and produced about eighty-seven works spanning verse, theology, and practical science.
His father brought the family from Dasht near Isfahan; in Herat the young scholar studied mathematics, Arabic, logic, and Islamic philosophy at the Nizamiyya. Early he used the pen name Dashti, then chose Jami for two reasons he later set in verse: birthplace Jam, and a draught of knowledge from Sheikh-ul-Islam Ahmad Jam. A pilgrimage and study in Samarkand widened his fame across the Persian-speaking world. As Sufi shaykh from 1453 he split seekers into prophetic and mystic spirits, married into the line of Sa'd-alDin Kasgari, and told one loveless pupil to go love first before asking the path.
Haft Awrang, the Seven Thrones, is his major poetic cycle, shaped by Nizami and including Yusuf and Zulaykha from the Quranic Joseph story. Baharestan, written for his surviving son Zia-ol-din Yusef, models Saadi's Gulestan. Around 1485 the Kherad-name retells Alexander romance as wisdom anecdotes. Lyric collections Fatihat al-shabab, Wasitat al-ikd, and Khatimat al-hayat track youth to old age. His Herat irrigation manual still served later engineers; Ottoman madrasas taught Al-Fawaed-Uz-Ziya'iya under the Turkish name Molla Cami.
Jami enriched Ibn Arabi's school yet insisted creatures need God while God does not need them. He argued love for Muhammad starts the journey, and that lover, beloved, and love form one unity. Friend to the Turkic poet Navoi though calling himself Tajik, he died in Herat with a prince conducting the funeral. Later centuries used his verse from Samarqand to Istanbul and the Mughal courts; recent decades have neglected him, a symptom of thin research on Persianate letters.
Source: Jami
