Masnavi: Book One by Rumi Translated by Jawid Mojaddedi

This is the unabridged verse translation of Book One of the Masnavi for more than a hundred years. Skilfully rendered in rhyming couplets, the translation is an attractive and faithful representation of the original. The Masnavi is Rumi’s greatest work, described as ‘the Koran in Persian’. It consists of roughly 26,000 verses, divided into six books, and describes man’s predicament in his search for God. The translation is based on the best critical edition and includes an introduction and invaluable notes, making the edition the ideal introduction to Rumi for the non-specialist reader. The poem draws on sources from sacred history to folklore and fable, is full of stories, and often funny.

'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 his work for the benefit of his disciples in the Sufi order named after him, better known as the whirling dervishes. In order to convey his message of divine love and unity he threaded together entertaining stories and penetrating homilies. Drawing from folk tales as well as sacred history, Rumi’s poem is often funny as well as spiritually profound!

About the Translator
Jawid Mojaddedi is a native of Afghanistan, and read Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester. He has taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Universities of Manchester and Exeter, and served as an editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica at the Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University. He was also made a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow for 2014-2015.