Book Two of Rumi's Masnavi is concerned with the challenges facing the follower of Sufi enlightenment. It interweaves stories and homilies in order to instruct followers of Rumi, the great thirteenth-century Muslim mystic. Jawid Mojaddedi's sparkling new verse translation follow…
by Mojaddedi, Jawid, Mojaddedi, Jawid A., Ǧalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī, Ǧalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī, Mawlānā
Abū ʿAlī Shaqīq b. Ibrāhīm al-Azdī al-Balkhī (d. 194/810) was a renunciant, a student of the frontier ascetic Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. c.165/782), and the teacher of Ḥātim al-Aṣamm (d. 237/851–2). His nisba associates him with the region of Balkh, in northern Khurāsān, where he live…
Dhū l-Nūn Abū l-Fayḍ Thawbān b. Ibrāhīm al-Miṣrī (d. Giza, in 245/859 or 248/862) was an early mystic leader of Nubian origin, who is celebrated for his knowledge of a wide range of disciplines, including medicine and alchemy. He was most commonly known by his laqab (honorific t…
Abū Yazīd Ṭayfūr b. ʿĪsā b. Surūshān al-Bisṭāmī (al-Basṭāmī) (d. 261/874–5 or 234/848–9), commonly known in the Iranian world as Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī , was an early ecstatic Ṣūfī from north-central Iran. His grandfather Surūshān was born a Zoroastrian, -an indication that al-Bisṭāmī …
Annihilation and abiding in God , fanāʾ wa-baqāʾ in Arabic, are two terms used to describe the final stages of the mystical path of the Ṣūfīs. Cognates of both terms are found in the Qurʾānic passage “Everyone that is thereon is passing away (fānin) , but the face of your Lord, …