Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn

Muḥammad al-Balkhī l-Rūmī
Date of Birth 30 September, 1207
Place of Birth Vakhsh, modern-day Tajikistan
Date of Death 17 December, 1273
Place of Death Konya, modern-day Turkey

Biography
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad, known to posterity as Mawlānā (‘Our master’)
and Rūmī (the Anatolian), was born in Tajikistan in the city of Vakhsh,
which is about 250 kilometers southwest of Balkh in present-day Afghani-
stan. His father, Bahā l-Dīn Valad (1150-1231), was an eminent jurist, famous
preacher, and Suiji teacher. In 1212, when Rūmī was around ijive years of
age, the Valad family moved to Balkh; a year or so later they moved to
Samarqand in (modern-day) Uzbekistan; and sometime around 1216 they
left the region for good, just before the Mongol invasion of Khurāsān in
1221. They ijirst visited Nishapur in northern Iran, then went to Baghdad,
from where they proceeded to Kufa and then on to Arabia, where they
performed the pilgrimage. Thence they travelled north-west to Damas-
cus in Syria, before ijinally settling in Malatya in 1217.
In 1218, Bahā l-Dīn Valad, who made his living as a Sunnī preacher and
teacher of the Ḥanifī juridical sect, persuaded the princess who ruled
Erzincan (in eastern Anatolia) to build him a Suiji khānaqāh in the nearby
town of Āqshahr, where the family now settled and where he taught gen-
eral law for four years. Bahā l-Dīn and family then moved to Lārende
(modern-day Karaman) in southern Turkey, where he now obtained
another teaching position. In Lārende in 1224, his son Jalāl al-Dīn, aged
17, married Gawhar Khātun, by whom he had two sons, Sulṭān Valad, and
ʿAlā l-Dīn. The Seljuk prince ʿAlā l-Dīn Kayqubād (r. 1219-37) then invited
Bahā l-Dīn Valad to come north to the city of Konya, where in 1229 the
family settled and he was appointed professor in a local madrasa. Bahā
l-Dīn Valad quickly became known as one of the chief learned men in
the city, and when he died in 1231, seven days of public mourning were
decreed. Rūmī’s father left to posterity a diary entitled Maʿārif (‘Mystical

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 487

intimations’), which reveals the rapturous, ecstatic nature of his Suiji

mysticism.
Jalāl al-Dīn, aged 24, immediately succeeded to his father’s position
in the same madrasa, where he taught general classes on religion, litera-
ture and theology. In the following year (1232), Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq,
who hailed from the city of Tirmidh on the Oxus near Vakhsh, where
he had been one of Bahā l-Dīn Valad’s chief disciples, arrived in Konya
and initiated the young professor into the mysteries of Suijism, becom-
ing his spiritual guide for the next eight years until his death in 1240.
Jalāl al-Dīn, who had already become his father’s successor in the exo-
teric ‘husk’ of Islamic law, through the esoteric education vouchsafed
by Muḥaqqiq thereby received the ‘kernal’ of the esoteric teachings of
Islamic spirituality. During his tutelage under Muḥaqqiq, Jalāl al-Dīn also
spent a number of years in Damascus and Aleppo studying the Islamic
sciences in the best colleges of the day; it is following this that he became
renowned as Mawlānā.
Sometime during the next four years, his wife Gawhar Khātun passed
away and the widowed professor married Kerrā Khātun, herself a widow,
by whom he had a son and a daughter. Biographers recount that during
these years he held four different professorial positions at four different
colleges in Konya, where he taught religious sciences.
On 2 November 1244, another spiritual master, Shams-i Tabrīzī,
appeared in Konya and soon became Rūmī’s inseparable companion.
Shams was a qur’anic scholar, a theologian of intense passion and learn-
ing, an ascetic and highly advanced adept in Suiji mysteries. Rūmī soon
became infatuated by Shams’ ecstatic Suiji teachings and abandoned his
duties as a professor of Islamic law and religion. Although he was in his
early sixties, Shams was an enfant terrible whose bohemian wildness and
ecstatic utterances none but the most sophisticated and wisest adepts
could fathom. Eventually, Shams’ presence in Konya provoked both the
wrath of conventional Muslims in the city and the rancor and jealousy
of Rūmī’s alienated disciples. He was forced to flee, disappearing forever
(some say he was murdered) in 1248.
Although his entry into and exit from Mawlānā’s life lasted only four
years, Shams’ effect on Rūmī’s being – and Islamic mystical literature – was
incalculable. Mostly inspired by this association, Rūmī began to compose
long lyrical poems. Eventually, these lyrics (known as ghazals) turned
into a collection totalling some 36,360 verses (3,229 ghazals) that became
known as Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī (‘Shams’ book of verse’) because many

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of its ghazals contained his name in the ijinal signature line of the poem.
Absorbed in love for Shams, whom he extolled with many encomia,
Rūmī adopted his master’s name as his own nom de plume.
Stoically shaking off his grief at the loss of Shams, Rūmī next trans-
ferred his attachment to an illiterate but spiritually advanced goldsmith
named Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Zarkūb, who had been the successor of his ijirst
teacher Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq. For the next ten years (1248-58), dur-
ing the decade of his devotion to Zarkūb, Rūmī perfected the whirling
dance ceremony of the Suijis called samāʿ (the movements of which had
originally been choreographed by Shams) that later caused his Order,
the Mawlawiyya, to be dubbed by Westerners ‘the Whirling Dervishes’.
During this period, Rūmī betrothed his son Sulṭān Valad to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s
daughter and appointed Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn as his deputy, and in his honor
composed for him over 70 ghazals. In around 1256, Rūmī began to com-
pose the Mathnawī, his long epic mystical poem – the longest poem in
world literature – in rhyming couplets.
Upon Zarkūb’s demise in 1258, Rūmī devoted his attention to Ḥusām
al-Dīn Chalabī, a man from the middle classes of Konya, an ascetic and a
Suiji shaykh in his own right, who was also the director of a Suiji futuwwa
organization. Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī had been a close friend of Shams
and also a long-time disciple of Rūmī. The Mathnawī, which eventually
came to consist of some 26,000 verses of didactic poetry, was largely dedi-
cated and dictated to Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī, whose spiritual eminence is
lauded all through this immense poem. After the Qur’an, the Mathnawī
is probably the most frequently commented upon work in all of Islamic
literature, being known as the Qur’an in Persian. At the same time, Rūmī
preached numerous sermons that were noted down in his collected Dis-
courses (Fīhi mā fīhi). When ijinally he died on 17 December 1273, it is
said that the Suiji philosopher Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī (d. 1274), the mystical
poet Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIraqī (d. 1282) and some other great Suijis were sitting
together, remembering Mawlānā. Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī remarked:
If Bayazid and Junayd had been alive at this time, they would have
seized the hem of this victorious man and would have considered this
a boon: he is the major domo of Muḥammadan poverty, and we taste it
through his mediation.
The funeral prayers were led by Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī, and Christians
and Jews participated in them, each according to their own rite, for Rūmī
had been on good terms with all religions.
In Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad-i Aflākī’s (d. 1360) hagiographical account of
Rūmī, known as the Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, one ijinds a number of symbols

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 489

and images relating to Jesus and Christianity in which emphasis is often

laid on the ecumenical aspect of Rūmī’s encounter with Christians (for
a wide-ranging discussion of which see Grierson, ‘We believe in your
Prophet’, pp. 99-105). Aflākī thus relates how once some of Rūmī’s dis-
ciples tried to persuade a Greek Christian workman to become a Mus-
lim, but the workman replied that he was too afraid of Jesus to abandon
his faith, prompting Rūmī to comment, ‘The secret of faith is fear (tars).
Whoever is fearful (tarsā) of God, even if he is a Christian (tarsā), he has
religion and is not without religion’ (O’Kane, Feats, iii, p. 329, § 450). In
this statement it is clear that Rūmī understood ‘religiosity’ and ‘piety’ to
constitute a kind of ecumenical essence of spirituality above and beyond
sectarian divisions.
Jesus is treated with veneration and has an extremely high proijile in
all of Rūmī’s poetry. In the Mathnawī in particular, the various virtues
of Jesus are frequently lauded, and his character traits, such as his trust
in God, forbearance, breath of inspiration, perpetual cheer and sense of
humor, often celebrated. There are a number of stock images concern-
ing Jesus that Rūmī uses in his poetry and which also pervade classical
Persian poetry (Nurbakhsh, Jesus, pp. 51-57; Schimmel, ‘Jesus and Mary’;
Lewisohn, ‘Esoteric Christianity’, pp. 137-51).
The plethora of Christian imagery and symbolism in Rūmī’s poetry,
which also appears in other poets of the Mongol period such as Shabistarī
and Awḥādī (see Lewisohn, Beyond faith, pp. 84-92), is partly a reflection
of the huge numbers of Greek Christians in the area of Anatolia in which
he lived (Grierson, ‘We believe in your Prophet’, pp. 99-105). There were
apparently Christians even among Rūmī’s followers. In the ruling elite,
Tamar, the wife of the powerful minister of state Mu‘īn al-Dīn Parvāna,
who counted herself among his disciples, was Christian, being the daugh-
ter of the Christian Queen Rosudan of Georgia (r. 1223-47) (Lewis, Rumi.
Past and present, p. 126). He also managed to convert a number of Greek
and Armenian Christians to Islam by his preaching (Lewis, Rumi. Past
and present, p. 127). From both Aflākī’s account (O’Kane, Feats, iii, p. 405,
§ 580) and Rūmī’s own statements in the Fīhi mā fīhi (p. 97), it is clear that
the outward Islamic form of his teachings never hindered his discourses
from being enthusiastically welcomed and appreciated by the non-
Muslim ‘inijidels’ in his environs. Rūmī’s anti-sectarian inclusivism (Rid-
geon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 120-21), tolerance and open-minded religious
pluralism (Hick, ‘Religious pluralism’, p. 332) were thus the product of out-
ward socio-political conditions as much as inward spiritual principles.

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 490 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī

Universalism continued to characterize his order after his death, and

from the mid-15th century onwards the tolerance and ecumenical teach-
ings and the spiritual practices of the ‘Whirling Dervishes’ of Rūmī’s
Mevlevi Order began to attract the attention of Christian scholars and
travellers to Turkey (Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, ch. 12; Ambrosio, Vie,
ch. 2). In fact, this Mevlevi ecumenical outlook on other religions is one
of the main things that continue to captivate admirers of his poetry both
in the East and the West today.
For further analysis and study of the symbolism of Jesus, Christian
imagery and Rūmī’s attitude towards Christians in his Mathnawī, Fīhi
mā fīhi, Dīwān-i Shams and other works, see in the bibliography below
Nurbakhsh, Jesus, passim; Dihqāni-Taftī, Masīḥ va Masīḥiyyat nazd-
i Īrāniyān ii, pp. 116-36; Renard, All the king’s falcons, ch. 6; Ridgeon,
‘Christianity’.

MAIN SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Primary
The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmi, edited from the oldest manuscripts available
with critical notes, translation, and commentary, ed. R.A. Nicholson. 8 vols,
London, 1925-40 (repr. Mathnawī-yi ma⁠ʾnawī, Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1363
AHsh [1984]; the edition cited here)
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Mathnawī. Muqaddimah wa taḥlīl, taṣḥīḥ-i matn
bar asās-i nuskhahhā-yi muʿtabar-i Mathnawī, muqāyasah bā chāphā-yi
maʿrūf-i Mathnawī, tawḍiḥāt wa taʿlīqāt-i jāmiʿ wa ijihristhā, ed. Muḥammad
Istiʿlamī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zawwār, 13847 AHsh [2005]
Kulliyāt-i Shams yā Dīwān-i kabīraz guftār-i Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad
mashhūr bi Mawlavī, ba tasḥīḥāt wa ḥawwashī, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān
Furūzānfar, 10 vols in 9, Tehran: Sipihr, 13633 AHsh [1984]
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Tehran: Amīr
Kabīr, 1358 AHsh [1979]
Shams-i Tabrīzī, Maqālāt-i Shams-i Tabrīzī, ed. M. ʿAlī Muvaḥḥid, Tehran:
Intisharat-i Khwarazmi, 13772 AHsh [1998]
Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad-i Aflākī, Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, ed. Tahsin Yazıcı, 2 vols,
Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1959; trans. J. O’Kane, The feats of
the knowers of God (Manāqeb al-ʿārefīn), Leiden, 2002
Farīdūn ibn Aḥmad Sipahsālār, Zindigīnāma-yi Mawlānā Jalāl al-Din-i Mawlawi,
ed. Saʿīd Nafīsī, Tehran: Chāp u Intishārāt-i Iqbāl, 13805 AHsh [2001]
Secondary
The literature on Rumi is vast. Some of the most important works dealing with
his relations with Christians are:

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 491

A.F. Ambrosio, ‘Rûmî, les derviches tourneurs et les chrétiens de Konya’, Rivista
di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 67 (2011) forthcoming
R. Grierson, ‘ “We believe in your Prophet”. Rumi, Palamas, and the conversion
of Anatolia’, Mawlana Rumi Review 2 (2011) 96-124
A.F. Ambrosio, Vie d’un derviche tourneur. Doctrine et rituels du souijisme au
XVIIe siècle, Paris, 2010
A.F. Ambrosio, ‘Vizir anti-cristiano o falso profeta? Rûmî, il Mathnâwî e s. Paolo’,
in C. Monge (ed.), Paolo di Tarso. Testimone del Vangelo in missione ‘fuori
le mura’, Florence, 2009, 137-56
M. Rustom, ‘The metaphysics of the heart in the Suiji doctrine of Rumi’, Studies
in Religion: Canadian Journal / Sciences Religieuses. Revue Canadienne 37
(2008) 3-14
R. Algan and C.A. Helminski (trans.), Rumi’s sun. The teachings of Shams of
Tabriz, Sandpoint ID, 2008
A.J. Arberry (trans.), Mystical poems of Rūmī, ed. E. Yarshater, with a new fore-
word by F. Lewis, Chicago IL, 2008
G.-R. Avani (ed.), The legacy of Rumi. Collected papers, 6 vols, Tehran: Iranian
Institute of Philosophy, 1386 AHsh [2007] (Persian)
İsmail Güleç, ‘ “Mesnevî” de Geçen Taassp Yüzünden Hıristyanları Öldüren
Yahudi Padişahın Hikayesi’ndeki Vezir, Aziz Pavlus mudur?’ [‘Can the
vizier in the tale of the Jewish sultan who murdered Christians because of
his fanaticism, recounted in the Mesnevi, be identiijied as Saint Paul?’], in
İ.E. Erünsal, C. Ferrard and H. Kandur (eds), Essays in memory of Hazel E.
Heughan, Edinburgh: Hazel E. Heughan Educational Trust, 2007, 113-34
Mahdi Mohabati (ed.), Mowlavi studies at Iranian universities. M.A. and Ph.D
level dissertations, Tehran: Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, 2007
(a bibliography in English of over 500 MA and PhD theses written in Per-
sian on Rumi in Iran since the early 1970s)
Q. Āryān, art. ‘Christianity, vi. Christian influences in Persian poetry’, in EIr
F.D. Lewis, Rumi. Swallowing the sun. Poems translated from the Persian, Oxford,
2007
A.F. Ambrosio, È. Feuillebois and T. Zarcone (eds), Les derviches tourneurs. Doc-
trine, histoire et pratiques, Paris, 2006
Jalāl al-Dīn Huma’ī, Mawlawī-nāma. Mawlawī chi migūyad?, Tehran: Nashr-i
Humā, 1385 AHsh [2006]
C. Barks and J. Moyne (trans.), The drowned book. Ecstatic and earthy reflections
of Bahauddin, the Father of Rumi, San Francisco CA, 2004
S. Filiz and T. Uluc, ‘Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (1207-1273): a Suiji representative
of Turkish urban religiosity (a philosophical and sociological inquiry)’,
Islamic Quarterly 48 (2004) 67-79
W. Chittick (trans.), Me and Rumi. The autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi, Louis-
ville KY, 2004

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W.C. Chittick, ‘The pluralistic vision of Persian Suiji poetry’, Islam and Christian-
Muslim Relations 14 (2003) 423-28
M. Estelami, ‘Rumi and the universality of his message’, Islam and Christian-
Muslim Relations 14 (2003) 429-524
L. Lewisohn, ‘The esoteric Christianity of Islam. Interiorisation of Christian
imagery in medieval Persian Suiji poetry’, in L. Ridgeon (ed.), Islamic inter-
pretations of Christianity, Richmond UK, 2001, 127-56
L. Ridgeon, ‘Christianity as portrayed by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’, in L. Ridgeon (ed.),
Islamic interpretations of Christianity, Richmond UK, 2001, 99-126
F. Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, East and West, Oxford, 2000
Vaḥīd Ākhirat-dūst (ed.), Majmūʿa-yi maqālāt-i himāyish-i buzurgdāsht-i Shams-i
Tabrīzī, Tehran: Anjuman-i āthār va mafākhir-i farhangī, 1378 AHsh
[1999] (a large volume of Persian papers given at a conference on Shams-i
Tabrīzī in Iran)
V.R. Holbrook, ‘Diverse tastes in the spiritual life. Textual play in the diffusion
of Rumi’s order’, in L. Lewisohn (ed.), The heritage of Suijism, vol. 1. The
legacy of mediæval Persian Suijism, Oxford, 1999, 99-120
L. Lewisohn, art. ‘Awhadi Maragha’i’, in EI3
J. Hick, art. ‘Religious pluralism’, in M. Eliade (ed.), The encyclopedia of religion,
New York, 1995, xii, 331-33
L. Lewisohn, Beyond faith and inijidelity. The Suiji poetry and teachings of Mahmud
Shabistari, London, 1995
A. Rigo, ‘Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī et l’abate di S. Caritone’, in Östliches – Westliches.
Studien zur vergleichenden Geistes – und Religionsgeschichte. Hommage
an Cyrill J.C. von Korvin-Krasinski, ed. M. Sladek, Heidelberg, 1995, 173-94
A. Schimmel, ‘Jesus and Mary as poetical images in Rumi’s verse’, in Y.Y. Haddad
and W.Z. Haddad (eds), Christian-Muslim encounters, Miami FL, 1995,
143-57
H. Dabashi, ‘Rūmī and the problems of theodicy. Moral imagination and nar-
rative discourse in a story of the Masnavī’, in A. Banani, R. Hovannisian
and G. Sabagh (eds), Poetry and mysticism in Islam. The heritage of Rūmī,
Cambridge, 1994, 112-35
J. Renard, All the king’s falcons. Rumi on prophets and prophetology, Albany NY,
1994, ch. 6 (on ‘Jesus and other Gospel ijigures’)
Rūmī, Signs of the unseen. The discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, trans. W.M. Thack-
ston, Putney VT, 1994
G.H.B. Dihqāni-Taftī, Masīḥ va Masīḥiyyat nazd-i Īrāniyān [‘Christ and Christian-
ity among the Persians’], 3 vols, London: Suhrāb, 1992-94 (vol. ii, pp. 116-38,
brings together many of Rūmī’s verse references to Jesus, Christians, the
Gospels and Christianity, followed by a brief discussion of the meaning
of relevant individual verses)
A. Schimmel, The triumphal sun. A study of the works of Jalaloddin Rumi, Albany
NY, 1993

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 493

A. Schimmel, I am wind, you are ijire. The life and works of Rumi, Boston MA,
1992
Q. Āryān, Chihrah-yi Masīḥ dar adabiyāt-i fārsī [‘The image of Jesus in Persian
literature’], Tehran: Intishārāt-i Muʿīn, 1369 AHsh [1990] (Persian)
J.-P. Roux, ‘La tolérance religieuse dans les empires Turco-Mongols’, Revue de
l’Histoire des Religions 202 (1986) 131-68
W. Chittick, The Suiji path of love. The spiritual teachings of Rumi, Albany NY,
1983
J. Nurbakhsh, Jesus in the eyes of the Suijis, trans. T. Graham and L. Lewisohn,
London, 1983
Nasīr al-Dīn Sāḥib al-Zamānī, Khaṭṭ-i sivvum. Darbāra-yi shakshṣiyat, sukhanan
va andīsha-yi Shams-i Tabrīzī, Tehran: ‘Ata’i, 1351 AHsh. [1972] (a study of
the Discourses of Shams-Tabrīzī)
A.J. Arberry (trans.), The discourses of Rumi, London, 1961
R.A. Nicholson (trans.), Rumi, poet and mystic, 1207-1273. Selections from his writ-
ings, London, 1950

Works on Christian-Muslim Relations

Mathnawī-i maʿnawī, ‘Rhyming couplets of
spiritual signiijicance’
Date 1256-73 (not completed)
Original Language Persian
Description
Numerous references to Jesus, Christians, monks, priests, and Christian-
ity can be found in the Mathnawī. The poem paraphrases or provides
stories that parallel various Gospel tales and sayings, including the
raising of Lazarus, Jesus’ miracle of increasing the loaves of bread (ed.
Nicholson, I: 83-85); his walking on water; curing the deaf and blind,
and his healing the sick (Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 101-3; Renard, King’s
falcons, pp. 89-93), as well as versiijied extracts of sentences from the Sermon
on the Mount. Jesus is also portrayed, for instance, as a divine physician
(I: 46-47); Jesus’ multi-colored robe that he changed into a robe of a
single color, symbolic of his understanding of divine unity, is praised
(I: 500-2); a story is adapted from the apocryphal Gospel of Philip (Rid-
geon, ‘Christianity’, p. 105). Rūmī also professes a deeply interiorized
‘Spirit of Jesus’ doctrine, a kind of esoteric Christology where Jesus
comes to symbolize inner aspects of the soul (Renard, King’s falcons,
pp. 95-96)

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Nonetheless, in the Mathnawī (as well as in Fīhi mā fīhi and Dīwān-i

Shams), we still ijind many of the traditional Islamic ‘orthodox’ dividing
lines between Christian and Islamic theological doctrines and religion
left intact. These lines of theological and doctrinal distinction include
the opposition of Islam to monasticism and ascetic seclusion versus their
advocation in Christianity (Renard, King’s falcons, p. 95; Ridgeon, ‘Chris-
tianity’, pp. 111-12); the purely spiritual wine of al-Ḥallāj in Islam versus
the physical wine in the Christian rite of communion (Ridgeon, ‘Chris-
tianity’, p. 113; Renard, King’s falcons, p. 95); the advocation of celibacy
in Christianity versus its emphatic rejection in Islam (Renard, King’s
falcons, p. 90; Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, p. 112); the acceptance in Christian-
ity of the doctrine of the cruciijixion versus its rejection in Islam (Renard,
King’s falcons, p. 93; Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, p. 104); the acceptance of
the divinity of Jesus (i.e. the doctrine of the Incarnation) in Christianity
versus its rejection in Islam (Renard, King’s falcons, pp. 93-94; Ridgeon,
‘Christianity’, pp. 111, 121), and so on. Rūmī also endorses the traditional
Islamic doctrine that the Christian scriptures have been falsiijied (taḥrīf ),
devoting an entire section of the Mathnawī to explaining why and how
this happened (Dabashi, ‘Rūmī and the problems of theodicy’; Ridgeon,
‘Christianity’, pp. 114-15). In his comparisons in the Mathnawī between
the Prophet Muḥammad and Jesus, the former is nearly always consid-
ered to be the superior (Ridgeon, ‘Christianity’, pp. 107-9).
In the Mathnawī, Rūmī’s own hermeneutical approach to religious
diversity, and by extension his attitude towards Christianity, generally
eschews sectarian partisanship. His view of Christian priests and monks
in the poem wavers between semi-parochial exclusivism and ecumeni-
cal understanding, on the one hand considering the committed Chris-
tian believer to be a ‘miscreant and astray’ (IV: 2378), and on the other
apprehending full well that ultimately all differences between Christians,
Muslims and Jews ecumenically dissolve when they turn to face the one
God (IV: 2417-20). Indeed, since the Deity who is praised during prayer
is always the One, in the end all religions turn out to be just one faith
(III: 1222-25). In one place, he even seems to accept the validity of the
Catholic doctrine of confession and forgiveness of sins, maintaining that
through the power of love and imagination the Christian priest may gen-
uinely serve as an intercessor between God and the Christian believer
(IV: 3282-83).
Significance
Popularly known as the ‘Qur’an in Persian’, the Mathnawī is the longest
poem in the Persian language and ‘possibly the longest single-authored

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 495

“mystical” poem ever written’ (Rumi, spiritual verses, trans. Williams,

p. xvi). Not only is there nothing like it in Western spirituality, but the
poem also far excels its antecedents in Persian poetry (i.e. the similar
mathnawī poems composed by Sanāʾī, d. 1131, Niẓāmī, d. 1202, and ʿAṭṭār,
d. 1221) in scope, scale and conception (Safavi and Weightman, Rumi’s
mystical design, p. 3). The macro-compositional structure of the work
conveys the structure and symbolism of the spiritual world through
three hidden levels of ring composition (the level of the discourse, the
book, and the work as a whole), every part of the poem being connected
by mirroring parallelism and chiasmus (Safavi and Weightman, pp. 8-9).
Inimitable in its poetic art, in the mathnawī genre at least, no subsequent
poet in Persian has produced anything comparable and of equivalent
depth of hermeneutical sophistication, theosophical insight or breadth
of subject matter.
The profound theosophical resonances secreted within many of the
Mathnawī ’s verses and the multiple levels of meaning found in the
poem’s tales make it still the most frequently commented-on Suiji poem
in Persian, its verses being cited by Islamic philosophers and metaphysi-
cians more than those of any other poet as bon mots, or used as pithy
summations of mystical insights to illustrate their doctrines. In Turkey,
for instance, between the 16th and 20th centuries, some ten important
commentaries on it were written. In each of the lodges (tekkes) of the
Mevlevi Suiji Order founded by Rūmī’s son Sulṭān Valad (there were
14 large Mevlevi lodges in major cities throughout the Ottoman Turkey,
with 76 minor lodges in smaller towns: Safavi and Weightman, p. 25),
a qualiijied instructor in the Mathnawī (called Mathnawī-khwān) held a
professorial chair.
Insofar as Persian maintained its position as the sacred liturgical lan-
guage of the Order for several centuries (the Mathnawī was not trans-
lated into Turkish until the late 18th century: Holbrook, ‘Diverse tastes in
the spiritual life’, p. 100), by the mid-16th century Mevlevi centers where
the Mathnawī was taught in Persian could be found as far aijield as Nico-
sia in Cyprus, Tripoli in Libya, Jerusalem in Palestine, Beirut in Lebanon,
Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, Cairo in Egypt, and Athens in Greece. For
eight centuries from the northernmost borders of Central Asia down to
Calcutta in India, and from Ottoman-ruled Sarajevo in Western Europe
east to Isfahan in Persia, the Mathnawī served as a vehicle to convey
Suijism’s ecumenical teachings, in this respect being unrivalled by any
other Islamic work. It is said that even the Brahmins of Bengal used
to dress like Suijis and recited Rūmī’s Mathnawī up until the mid-19th

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 496 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī

century. Today, largely thanks to the popular poetic renditions of selec-

tions from the Mathnawī into American English by Coleman Barks, since
the early 1990s Rūmī has been the best-selling poet in English in the
United States.
Manuscripts
Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, pp. 305-9, discusses the particulars of most
of the important MSS, and see also Muḥammad Istiʿlamī’s introduction
to his edition of the text, pp. 86-89, for a comprehensive and detailed dis-
cussion of the provenance and signiijicance of all the extant MSS. Nich-
olson’s detailed account of the MSS used in his edition (Tehran, 1984,
pp. xiv-xviii) is also useful.
Editions & Translations
There are numerous editions and translations of this work, including:
Rumi, spiritual verses. The ijirst book of the Masnavi-ye maʿnavi, trans.
A. Williams, London, 2006
Rumi, the Masnavi. Book One, trans. J. Mojaddedi, Oxford, 2004
Rumi, the Masnavi. Book Two, trans. J. Mojaddedi, Oxford, 2007
Rumi, the Masnavi. Book Three, trans. J. Mojaddedi, Oxford, [forth-
coming 2012]
Mathnawi-i manawi, tr. C. Oxenstierna, Chicago, 3 vols, 1992-2002
(German trans.)
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Mathnawī. Muqaddimah wa taḥlīl,
taṣḥīḥ-i matn bar asās-i nuskhahhā-yi muʿtabar-i Mathnawī,
muqāyasah bā chāphā-yi maʿrūf-i Mathnawī, tawḍīḥāt wa taʿlīqāt-i
jāmiʿ wa ijihristhā, ed. Muḥammad Istiʿlamī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Zawwār, 13847 AHsh [2005]
Mathnawî. La quête de l’absolu, ed. E. Vitray-Meyerovitch and D. Mor-
tazavi, Paris, 2000 (French trans.)
R.A. Nicholson, Tales of mystic meaning. Being selections from the
Mathnawī of Jalāl-ud-Dīn Rūmī, Oxford, 1995
A. Schimmel, Das Mathnawi. Ausgewählte Geschichten, Basle, 1994
(German trans.)
Maulana Rumi’s Mathnawi, tr. M.G. Gupta, Agra, 1990
The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmi, edited from the oldest manuscripts
available with critical notes, translation, and commentary, ed.
R.A. Nicholson, 8 vols, London, 1925-40 (repr. Mathnawī-yi maʿnawī,
Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1363 AHsh [1984]; the edition cited here)
The Mathnawí -i-Maǹawi of Jalāl al-Dĭn Rūmĭ, s.l., s.n., 1865

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 497

studies
S.G. Safavi and S. Weightman, Rumi’s mystical design. Reading the
Mathnawī, Book One, Albany NY, 2009
Ḥusayn Muḥyī al-Dīn Ilāhī Qumsha’ī, 365 rūz dar suḥbat-i Mawlānā,
Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1386 AHsh [2007] (a day by day year-
book of quotations from the Mathnawī with commentary by a
famous contemporary Iranian mystical thinker)
Jalāl al-Dīn Huma⁠ʾī, Mawlawī-nāma. Mawlawī chi migūyad?, 2 vols,
Tehran: Nashr-i Humā 1385 AHsh [2006] (a wide-ranging study of
the theological views, Suiji doctrines and philosophical thought of
the Mathnawī)
M. Tourage, ‘Phallocentric esotericism in a tale from Jalal al-Din Rumi
Masnavi-yi maʿnawi’, Iranian Studies 39 (2006) 47-70
Bahā’ al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, Siyāmak Mukhtārī, Qurʾān va Mathnawī.
Farhangvāra-yi ta⁠ʾthīr-i āȳāt-i Qurʾān dar adabiyāt-i Mathnawī,
Tehran: Nashr-i Qaṭra, 13842 AHsh [2005] (an analytical survey and
concordance illustrated verse-by-verse of all qur’anic references in
the Mathnawī)
Walī Muḥammad Akbarābādī, Sharḥ-i Mathnawī-yi Mawlawī, ed.
N. Māyil Haravī, 7 vols, Tehran: Nashr-i Qaṭra, 2004 (an important
17th-century Persian commentary on the Mathnawī composed in
India)
Karīm Zamānī, Mīnāgar-i ʿishq. Sharḥ- mawḍūʿī-yi Mathnawī-yi
maʿnawī, Tehran: Nashr-i Nay, 13832 AHsh [2004] (verses from the
Mathnawī arranged according to key religious, mystical and philo-
sophical themes)
J. Eshots, ‘Why is the “Mathnawi” called “the shop of Oneness”? Reflec-
tions on Rumi’s methodology’, in S.G. Safavi (ed.), Rumi’s thoughts,
London, 2003, 71-84
S.G. Safavi, ‘The structure of Book One of the Mathnawī as a whole’,
in S.G. Safavi (ed.), Rumi’s thoughts, London, 2003, 5-64
A. Esmailpour, ‘Rûmî’s prologue to the Mathnawî and gnostic hymns.
A comparative analysis’, Islamic Culture 77 (2003) 47-71
Karīm Zamānī, Bar lab-i daryā-yi Mathnawī-yi maʿnawī. Biyān-i
maqāṣad-i abyāt, 2 vols, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Qaṭra, 1382 AHsh
[2003] (the entire Mathnawī arranged for students with thematic
subtitles for each topic)
J.A. Mojaddedi, ‘The Suiji master in Rumi’s Mathnawi’, Suiji 58 (2003)
32-9

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M. Alavi, ‘An analysis of Discourse One in Book II of the Mathnawī’,

in S.G. Safavi (ed.), Rumi’s thoughts, London, 2003, 27-50
D. Davis, ‘Narrative and doctrine in the ijirst story of Rūmī’s Mathnawī’,
in G.R. Hawting, J.A. Mojaddedi and A. Samely (eds), Studies in
Islamic and Middle Eastern texts and traditions in memory of Nor-
man Calder, Oxford, 2000, 93-104
M. Estelami, ‘The concept of knowledge in Rūmī’s Mathnawī ’, in
L. Lewisohn (ed.), The heritage of Suijism. Vol. I: Classical Persian
Suijism from its origins to Rumi (700-1300), Oxford, 1999, 400-8
A. Schimmel, ‘Yūsuf in Mawlānā Rumi’s poetry’, in L. Lewisohn (ed.),
The heritage of Suijism. Vol II: The legacy of medieval Persian Suijism
(1150-1500), Oxford, 1999, 45-59
ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Zarrīnkūb, Baḥr dar kūza. Naqd va tafsīr-i qissahā va
tamthīlāt-i Mathnawī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī, 1376 AHsh [1997]
(a critical analysis of the tales and symbolism of the Mathnawī)
M. Este’lami, ‘The gnosis of self in Rumi’s Mathnawi’, Suiji 20 (1994)
5-9
N. Faghih, ‘Some scientiijic doctrines in the Mathnawī of Mawlana
Jalal al-Din Mawlawī Rūmī’, Hamdard Islamicus 16 (1993) 79-96
C. Barks, Delicious laughter. Rambunctious teaching stories from the
Mathnawi of Jelaluddin Rumi, Athens GA, 1990
J.A. King, ‘Jesus and Joseph in Rūmī’s Mathnawī’, Muslim World 80
(1990) 81-95
Ismāʿīl Anqaravī, Sharḥ-i kabīr-i Anqaravī bar Mathnawī-yi Mawlawī,
trans. (Persian) ʿIṣmat Satārzādah, 15 vols, Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Zarrīn, 1374 AHsh [1995] (a Persian trans. of Anqaravī’s (d. 1631)
famous Ottoman Turkish commentary on the Mathnawī)
ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Zarrīnkūb, Sirr-i nay. Naqd va sharḥ-i taḥlīlī va taṭbīqī-yi
Mathnawī, 2 vols, Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī, 13683 AHsh [1989]
(a comparative analytical study of the Mathnawī)
A.L. Herman, ‘Ṣūfīsm, fatalism and evil in the Mathnawī of Jalāl al-Din
Rūmi’, Iqbal Review 12 (1971) 1-15
Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Mākhaz-i qiṣaṣ wa tamthīlāt-i Mathnawī,
Tehran: Majlis, 1955 (repr. Amīr Kabīr, 1983) (a dictionary of the
historical sources of the stories and symbolism used by Rūmī in
the Mathnawī)
Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Aḥādīth-i Mathnawī, Tehran: Dānishgāh-i
Tihrān, 1335 AHsh [1956] (repr. Amir Kabir, 13613 AHsh [1982])
(an annotated collection of all Traditions of the Prophet in the
Mathnawī)

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 499

S. Hillelson, ‘The source of a story in the Mathnawī, and a Persian

parallel to Grimm’s fairy tales’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
(1937) 474-77
E.G. Browne, ‘A parallel to the story in the Mathnawī of Jalálu’d Dín
Rúmí, of the Jewish king who persecuted the Christians’, Islamica
2 (1926) 129-34

Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī, ‘Shams-i Tabrīzī’s

book of verse’
Date Begun in 1244 and continued until Rūmī’s death in 1273
Original Language Persian
Description
The Dīvān-i Shams is the most celebrated collection of ecstatic lyrical
love poetry in Persian literature, which in metaphysical insight, expres-
sion of spiritual realities, deep wisdom and philosophical subtleties,
remains unrivalled by any other book of verse in the world’s mystical
poetic literature. From the standpoint of quantity, at over 35,000 couplets
the Dīvān-i Shams is the largest collection of mystical lyrics, containing
the widest, most diverse pattern of meters ever composed by any Persian
poet. It features 3,229 ghazals varying in length (anywhere between 6 to
60 couplets), along with 44 strophe poems (tarjīʿāt) totalling 1,700 verses,
and 1,983 quatrains (rubāʿiyyāt).
Composition of the lyrics in the Dīvān, mainly in Persian with a few
Arabic ghazals, only began after Rūmī’s encounter in 1244 with Shams-i
Tabrīzī, but following the latter’s disappearance in 1248 he continued to
compose poems for it down to his own death in 1273. There are 156 refer-
ences to Jesus in the Dīwān-i Shams, many if not most of which relate to
Christological imagery and symbolism of qur’anic derivation that were
the stock-in-trade of every classical Persian poet. For reasons of space,
only a few of these can be mentioned here. They include the idea that
Jesus’s lip (lab-iʿĪsā) revives the sick and ailing (780: 8142; 1250: 13242);
the miracle of Jesus’s ascent to heaven from Q 4:158 (631: 6576); and the
miracle of Jesus’ discourse as a two-year-old infant in the cradle from
Q 3:46 (619: 6477). Just as Jesus was able to raise the dead (Q 3:49), Rūmī
declares that ‘Love is the Jesus of the age. Love seeks one who’s dead.
Like me die – utterly – before his beauty, and fear not’ (1214: 12918).
In another ghazal, he also compares his own spiritual realization with

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 500 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī

that of Jesus and Mary: ‘At times, I became entirely speech like Jesus; at
times I became a heart as silent as Mary. If you will believe me, I also
became all that was manifested through Jesus and Mary’ (1661: 17402-3).
In a tarjīʿband, he writes ‘I am the Jesus of that moon which surpasses
the ijirmament. I am drunken as Moses, with God within these tattered
robes’ (Tarjīʿ I, 9: 34941).
Despite these many positive references to Jesus throughout the Dīwān-i
Shams, the Prophet Muḥammad always retains his superiority in Rūmī’s
prophetology over all other prophets, whether Jesus, Moses, or Zoroaster:
‘There are a million tendrils of the light of Muḥammad, each of which ijills
the rims and cornices of both the worlds. Were just one tendril of that
light disclosed, a thousand Christian monks and priests would rend the
thread [of their faith]’ (1137: 12051-52); ‘The light of Muḥammad leaves no
place for any Jew or Zoroastrian in the world. May the protective shadow
of his kingdom illumine all!’ (792: 8288). In another ghazal, he teasingly
reproaches Christians using a Christian image, asking where the inspir-
ing power of the lovely discourse of the Messiah (Masīḥ-i khwush-damī)
has gone, which ‘could rouse the heart of the Christian (tarsā) to cut the
thread [of his Christian faith]’ (24: 284).
Significance
It is clear that in Rūmī’s lyrical poetry as in his Mathnawī, poetic imag-
ery and references to Christ and Christianity mostly belong within an
Islamic and qur’anic context and that terms such as ‘Jesus’, the ‘Messiah’
and ‘Christ’ in his mystical lexicon are nominally Muslim rather than
denominationally Christian.
Manuscripts
See Furūzānfar’s deijinitive edition of the text, i, introduction, pp. vav-
yav, for a comprehensive and detailed discussion of the provenance and
signiijicance of all the extant MSS, as well as Lewis’ survey of all the key
MSS (Rumi. Past and present, pp. 297-99).
Editions & Translations
There are dozens of partial or full editions and translations of this work.
The include:
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Dīwān-i kabīr. Kulliyāt-i Shams-i Mawlānā Jalāl
al-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥusayn Balkhī Rūmī maʿrūf bi Mawlavī, ed.
Tawfīq Subḥānī, 2 vols, Tehran: Anjumān-i āthār u mafākhir-i
farhangī, 1386 AHsh [2007] (edition of the Konya Museum MS)
N. Rastegar, Nie ist wer liebt allein. Mystische Liebeslieder aus dem
Diwan-i Šams von Maulana Ğalaluddin Rumi, Graz, 1994

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 501

Kulliyāt-i Shams yā Dīwān-i kabīraz guftār-i Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn

Muḥammad mashhūr bi Mawlavī, ba tasḥīḥāt wa ḥawāshī, ed. Badīʿ
al-Zamān Furūzānfar, 10 vols in 9, Tehran: Sipihr, 13633 AH [1984]
R.A. Nicholson (ed. and trans.), Selected poems from the Dīvāni Shamsī
Tabrīz, Cambridge, 1898
Arberry, Mystical poems of Rūmī
studies
Bahāʾ al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, Insānam ārizūʾst. Bar-guzīda u sharḥ-i
ghazaliyyāt-i Mawlānā [Anthology and commentary on the ghaz-
als of Rūmī], Tehran: Intishārāt-i Nigāh, 1386 AHsh [2007]
Mihdī Sitāyishgar, Rubāb-i Rūmī. Gashtī dar raftār u āthār mūsīqāʾī-yi
jamāl-āfarīn-i Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Mawlawī), 2 vols,
Tehran: Intishārāt-i Shirkat- taʿāvanī-yi kār-āfarīnān-i farhang u
hunar, 1385 AHsh [2006] (a study of music and musical imagery in
the Dīwān-i Shams, and the Mathnawī to a lesser extent)
M.A. al-Qāsimī, Iṣṭilāḥāt va mafāhīm-i ʿirfānī-i Dīvān-i Shams = Gnostic
expressions and meaning of Divan-e Shams by Rumi, Tehran
2004/5
A. Dashti and S. Dahsti, A voyage through Divan-e Shams. Celebrating
Rumi by ʿAlī Dashtī, Tehran, 2003
Taqī Pūrnāmdāriyān, Dar sāyih-i āftāb. Shiʿr-i fārsī va sākht-shikanī
dar shiʿr-i Mawlawī, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1380 AHsh [2001]
(a study of Rūmī’s poetic originality and form-shattering innova-
tions in the Dīvān-i Shams)
Asadu’llāh Īzad-Gushasb, Jadhbāt-i ilāhī. Muntakhāb-i kulliyāt-i
Shams-i Tabrīz [Anthology of the ghazals of Rūmī with a useful
introduction], Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ḥaqīqat 13782 AHsh. [2000]
ʿAlī Riḍā Mukhtārpūr Qahrūdī, ʿIshq dar manẓūma-yi Shams. Vāzha-
yābī-yi ʿishq dar Dīvān-i kabīr-i Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad
mashhūr bi-Mawlavī, Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1378 AHsh [1999] (study
of all references to the word ‘love’ in the Dīwān-iShams-i Tabrīz)

Fīhi mā fīhi, ‘What is in it is in it’, ‘Discourses’

Date Before 1273
Original Language Arabic

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Description
In Rūmī’s Discourses, or Fīhi mā fīhi, a miscellany of 71 of his lectures or
extemporaneous talks gathered together by an unknown compiler after
his death, several well-known anecdotes about Jesus from the Qur’an are
related that expound a sort of Suiji esoteric Christianity (cf. Lewisohn,
‘The esoteric Christianity of Islam’). One ijinds this, for instance, in Rūmī’s
belief in the existence of an interior Jesus within each person, who must
be born again (Fīhi mā fīhi, p. 21). In one fascinating passage, he contrasts
the conjugal way of Muḥammad with the celibate path of Jesus. It is
required that one marry women, he writes, just so one can endure ‘pain,
ridding oneself of jealousy and manly pride, pain over extravagance and
clothing one’s wife, and a thousand other pains beyond bounds, so that
the Muḥammadan world may come into being. The way of Jesus, upon
him be peace, was wrestling with solitude and not gratifying lust; the
way of Muḥammad, God bless him and give him peace, is to endure the
oppression and agonies inflicted by men and women. If you cannot go
the Muḥammadan way, at least go by the way of Jesus, that you may not
remain altogether outside the pale’ (Fīhi mā fīhi, p. 87, trans. Arberry,
p. 99).
Significance
The work has been described aptly as ‘an indispensable source for both
the thought of Rumi and his relations with the political ijigures of his day’
(Lewis, Rumi. Past and present, p. 292).
Manuscripts
See Furūzānfar’s edition of the text, introduction, pp. j-ya, for a compre-
hensive and detailed discussion of the provenance and signiijicance of
all the extant MSS.
Editions & Translations
There are numerous editions and translations of this work. The major
ones are:
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Barneko liburua. Fihi ma ijihi, trans. J. Arregui, Viz-
caya, 2009 (Basque trans.)
Ğalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. Z. Yazdānī, Tehran, 2002
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, tr. J.G. Muro, Madrid, 2001 (Spanish
trans.)
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, L’essenza del reale. Fîhi-mâ-fîhi (C’è quel che c’è), tr.
S. Foti, Turin, 1995 (Italian trans.)
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Maqālāt-i Mawlānā. Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. J.M. Ṣādiqī,
Tehran, 1994

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 mawlānā jalāl al-dīn rūmī 503

Jalāloddin Rumi, Von allem und vom Einen, trans. A. Schimmel,

Munich, 1988 (repr. 2008) (German trans.)
Djalal al-Dîn Rûmi, Le livre du dedans. Fîhi-mâ-fîhi, trans. E. de
Vitray-Meyerovitch, Paris, 1982 (repr. 1997 and Arles, 2010) (French
trans.)
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Tehran,
1358 AH [1979]
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Het is wat het is, trans. R. Hartzema, Amsterdam,
1978 (Dutch trans.)
Ğalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, ed. W. von Blücher, Garmisch-
Partenkirchen, 1962.
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Fīhi mā fīhi, s.n., Istanbul, 1958
studies
F. Keshavarz, ‘Pregnant with God. The poetic art of mothering the
sacred in Rumi’s Fihi ma ijihi ’, Comparative Studies of South Asia,
Africa and the Middle East 22 (2002) 90-9
W.M. Thackston (trans.), Signs of the unseen. The discourses of Jalalud-
din Rumi, Putney VT, 1994
Ḥusayn Ilāhī Qumsha⁠ʾī, Guzīda-yi Fīhi mā fīhi, Tehran: Intishārāt-i
ʿIlmī va farhangī, 13666 AHsh [1987] (a selection from Rūmī’s Dis-
courses and commentary by one of Iran’s most eminent thinkers)
A.J. Arberry (trans.), The discourses of Rumi, London, 1961

Leonard Lewisohn

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