It’s Valentines day: Do you Know Rumi?

If you’re studying Islam, this week might be a good time to study Rumi, the Sufi mystic and poet. That’s because Valentine’s Day is on Saturday and much of Rumi’s popular poetry is about love.

Rumi lived in the 13th century and wrote a “massive collection of verse called the mathnawi, an Arabic term referring to a rhymed verse couplet.” Coleman Barks translated much of Rumi’s work into a book called The Essential Rumi.

You can read a short biography of Rumi and a review of Sufism here on this professor’s assignment page.   You can also read some of  his poetry on Krista Tippett’s page   And you can read some of his  poems of love here and some of his poems of passion here.

In 2007, Krista Tippett talked about Rumi’s legacy with Fatemeh Keshavarz, professor of Persian & Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis.

Here’s a good documentary about Rumi and Sufism.