Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi (selections)

Language: English
Pages: 398

About the Book

Everyone and everything perishes,
but celebration in your state of oneness
is forever, forever, forever."


Today, more than seven hundred years after he composed his
works, Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi - known affectionately
simply as Rumi is the worlds most recognized and revered poet.
Athirteenth-century Sufi mystic, Rumi has become a twenty-first-
century bestselling author. Although misquoted nearly as often
as he is quoted, Rumi is universally considered a poet of love, his
words giving shape to the ache of longing, the pain of separation,
and the ecstasy of union with the beloved. For Rumi, the path
to the divine transcended creed and was accessible to any lover,
regardless of culture or social order. "My religion," he wrote, "is
love."* This message has resounded like a heartbeat through the
centuries, appealing to todays seekers of love from all walks of life,
much as it did in Rumi's own time.

Rumi, a highly educated and respected religious scholar,
Islamic jurist, and Muslim preacher, was in his late thirties before
he ever composed a line of poetry. It was then that he met Shams-e
Tabrizi and verse began to pour from him. The selections in this
book are taken from that fount, the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, where
more than 44,000 lines of poetry, dictated or sung by Rumi, capture
the love between Rumi, the student, and his teacher Shams-e
Tabrizi, the anguish of estrangement, and the journey to union
with the beloved.

Nearly three thousand of those lines were chosen for their elegance,
their imagery, and their focus on the spiritual path, as well as
the inner practice of meditatio