A Treasury of Rumi's Wisdom

There are many sides to Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī - scholar, preacher, saint, mystic, love poet, didactic poet, and spiritual master - but the version of him that became the best-selling poet in North America lacks authenticity.

'Everyone has, in their view, become my close friend; 

but they have not sought out the secrets within me.' 

-- From Rūmī's Masnavī

This new anthology is freshly translated and supplemented with commentaries, and also includes selected texts in Persian. The aim is to bring readers a full appreciation of the true, traditional nature of his work- and to the man himself as a great Muslim teacher and spiritual guide. 

Besides illustrating the traditional basis of Jalāl al-Dīn's teachings, this Treasury displays his unique literary genius as well as his profundity as one of the world's greatest religious writers, whose voice speaks as clearly and compellingly today as it did in the 7th/13th century. 

A Treasury of Rumi has been used as teaching material in courses and lectures by at least four university professors and/or leading imams in North America.

Dr Muhammad Isa Waley is an editor, researcher, and translator. He worked for 45 years as curator of Persian and Turkish manuscripts and books, first at the British Museum and then at the British Library. His main fields of research are the verse and prose literature of Muslim spirituality, and Islamic manuscripts. The subject of his Ph.D. thesis was the Dīvān or lyric poems of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī. His other published translations include Al-Arba‘īn (Forty Hadiths) of Jāmī; Mawlid al-Barzanjī, a paean on the Blessed Prophet’s Birth; and The Book of Contemplation (Kitaāb al-Tafakkur), Book 39 of Imam al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn.