Jalal al-Din Rumi

Rumi is well known for the over 44,000 verses that appear in a 23-volume collection called the Divan-I Kebir. Yet Rumi also composed 1,700 rubais, short aphorisms and observations, whose depth and message belie their brevity. The form of rubais first became well known through the 11th-century collection The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. But, unlike Khayyam, who, like most poets,...

Here is a companion for life that provides for each day of the year poetry filled with Rumi's wisdom and spiritual insight. The poems in this collection are selected on the basis of the poignancy of their message and their relevance to life in the 21st Century. It is the only Rumi translation designed specifically for daily meditation. Here is...

My verse resembles the bread of Egypt—night passes over it, and you cannot eat it any more. Devour it the moment it is fresh, before the dust settles upon it. Its place is the warm climate of the heart; in this world, it dies of cold. Like a fish it quivered for an instant on dry land, another moment and...

The pen would smoothly write the things it knew But when it came to love it split in two, A donkey stuck in mud is logic's fate - Love's nature only love can demonstrate. Rumi's Masnavi is widely recognised as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, and has been called 'the Koran in Persian'. The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Rumi composed...