Rumi Illustrated

Wealth has no permanence: it comes in the morning,
and at night it is scattered to the winds.
Physical beauty too has no importance,
for a rosy face is made pale by the scratch of a single thorn.
– extract from the Masnavi by Rumi

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207–73) was a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Iran. This Chinese-bound volume offers a selection of his many poems with a variety of themes, including love, marriage, life and death, passion and mysticism, from his collection, Divani Shamsi Tabriz, and his long poem, Masnavi, one of the most influential works of Sufism, an Islamic form of mysticism.

Rumi’s reach transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: his poetry has influenced not only Persian literature, but also the literary traditions of the Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Urdu, Bengali and Pashto languages.