Masnavi I Ma'navi

Rumi (trans. E. H. Whinfield) · 1887

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About the book

The great Persian poem of divine love, abridged by Whinfield into English a reader can actually finish: six books of stories — the reed flute, the merchant's parrot, the lion and the beasts — each folding open into Sufi teaching. Rumi before the greeting cards, with his difficulty intact.

Try the short course

Part 1 · The reed flute torn from its bed. The first six slides, free.

The reed flute torn from its bed

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The Masnavi is a vast poem, and it opens with neither God nor doctrine. It opens with an order to listen: "Hearken to the reed-flute, how it complains."

The flute is the ney, the reed pipe still played at Sufi gatherings. Before it was an instrument it was a living reed, standing in wet ground among thousands of others. Someone cut it, dried it and bored holes through it. In Whinfield's line it says, "Ever since they tore me from my osier bed, my plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears."

Keep that order of events in mind. The music does not come before the wound, and it does not come in spite of it. The song is the sound of the cutting, carried out on breath.

Inside the course

20 parts

The song of the reed flute, cut from its bedFree above
The prince and the handmaid: the first story's lesson
The oilman's parrot, and the confusion of saints with hypocrites
The Jewish king and his vazir: the deceit that split a people
The lion and the beasts: trust in God versus exertion
The merchant and the parrot
The harper's prayer: grace in old age
The man who knocked, and answered «it is thou»
Book by book: how the Masnavi teaches by digression
Book Two: the king and the two slaves — how a heart is read
Moses and the shepherd — the prayer God defended
The thirsty man on the wall: how the sound of water pulls
Book Three: the travellers who ate the elephant's calf
The elephant in the dark house
Book Four: the three fish — the wise, the half-wise, and the fool
Book Five: Ayaz, and the old shoes he kept in a locked room
Book Six: the man who dreamed of treasure in Cairo, and found it at home
Whinfield's abridgement, and what it keeps
The grammar of longing: separation and return
Why Sufis call this «the Koran in Persian»

Questions

Is Masnavi I Ma'navi free to read in Astra Trainer?

Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, and Russian.

What is the short course?

20 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.

Where do I get the app?

Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. Masnavi I Ma'navi is waiting in the app’s library.