The Masnavi

Introduction

'Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale, complaining of separations: ever since I was cut from the reed bed, men and women have wept at my lament.' The Masnavi opens with this reed flute longing for its home. In six books and more than twenty-five thousand couplets, it has been called 'the Quran in Persian'. Through a profusion of parables, folk tales, anecdotes of saints and scenes from daily life, an elephant felt in the dark by men who have never seen one, a parrot sending a message to its kin in India, a merchant and his servant, Rumi unfolds the heart of Sufi mysticism: the soul longs to return to its source, and through love a human being becomes one with God. This vast work is among the greatest poems of the Islamic world; we publish the complete translation in volumes.