"Neither Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian or Moslem am I; I am not an Easterner or a Westerner, or of land or sea..." - Rumi. In this classic work, the Persian scholar Edward Henry Whinfield translates and comments upon the Masnavi - Rumi's greatest work and one of the most important texts in the study of Sufusm. Jalaluddin Rumi led the quiet life of an Islamic teacher in central Anatolia until the age of 37, when he met a wandering dervish named Shams Tabriz - through whom he encountered the Divine Presence in a way that utterly transformed him. The result of this epiphany was the greatest body of mystical poetry the world has ever seen, and the establishment of a spiritual movement - Sufism - that would eventually stretch from Africa to China, enduring to our present day.
"Neither Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian or Moslem am I; I am not an Easterner or a Westerner, or of land or sea..." - Rumi. In this classic work, the Persian scholar Edward Henry Whinfield translates and comments upon the Masnavi - Rumi's greatest work and one of the most important texts in the study of Sufusm. Jalaluddin Rumi led the quiet life of an Islamic teacher in central Anatolia until the age of 37, when he met a wandering dervish named Shams Tabriz - through whom he encountered the Divine Presence in a way that utterly transformed him. The result of this epiphany was the greatest body of mystical poetry the world has ever seen, and the establishment of a spiritual movement - Sufism - that would eventually stretch from Africa to China, enduring to our present day.