The Richard Stevens Masnavi Group

Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), respectfully called Mawlana (or Our Master) was the greatest mystical poet of Islam. Born in Vakhsh in northern Afghanistan to an accomplished Islamic scholar and shaykh, Bahauddin, Jalaluddin himself reached the highest levels of attainment in Islamic theology and jurisprudence. His family settled in Konya in central Turkey when he was 10.

In his 40th year he encountered the wandering dervish Shamsuddin of Tabriz, an encounter that was to transform his life from earnest theologian to ecstatic poet and besotted lover. In the last 26 years of his life he produced 60,000 couplets in the form of his 3,200 ecstatic poems (ghazals) and his more didactic work, the six-volume Masnavi e Maanavi. He also produced 2,000 quatrains (rubai) and his prose teachings are summarised in Fihi ma fihi.

The Masnavi is a veritable ocean of his teaching, full of colourful stories, rich allusions and deep meaning. What makes it and all of Rumi’s poetry extraordinary is not just its poetic worth, it lucidity or its luminosity but that almost 800 years after its ecstatic utterance, it is still of the greatest relevance and meaning to countless people across the world.

Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1868-1945), was the greatest Rumi scholar in the English language. He was a professor for many years at Cambridge where he dedicated his life to the study of Islamic mysticism in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish. His monumental achievement was his work on Rumi’s Masnavi (done in eight volumes, published between 1925-1940). Although couched in late Victorian English (and sometimes in Latin in its more explicit passages), his Masnavi has never been surpassed either for the faithfulness to the original or his ability to sense the true intent of often obscure and archaic Persian. Indeed, it and the accompanying commentary is used as a reference amongst native Persian speakers.

Although Nicholson was neither a Muslim nor a Sufi, his works exhibit a spiritual understanding and an empathy that has not been surpassed. It is almost as if he stood naked of his preconceptions and his own sensibilities in the light of the Master when he translated the Masnavi. We are blessed indeed to have this great work.