The Mathnawí of Jaláluʾddín Rúmí, Volume III
Regular price
€62.99
A01=Reynold A Nicholson
Author_Reynold A Nicholson
Category=DCA
Category=DCF
Category=DSC
Comparative literature
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Islamic literature
Islamic mysticism
Jalal al-Din Rumi
Mathnawi
Medieval Persian literature
Persian poetry
Reynold A. Nicholson
Product details
- ISBN 9781399560030
- Dimensions: 158 x 230mm
- Publication Date: 31 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Volume 3 of Reynold A. Nicholson’s authoritative translation and edition of Rúmí’s magnum opus – reissued with a new foreword by Alan Williams – provides the Persian edition of books III and IV of the Mathnawí.
The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmí is his greatest work in every sense. As well as being his longest single composition, it is his most mature, as it was his last work, written from 1261 until his death in 1273 CE. It comprises six books, which amount to over 25,600 rhymed couplets in Nicholson’s edition, plus six brief prose prefaces, variously in Arabic and Persian. The Mathnawí relates a range of folk stories, from traditional Iranian and Muslim lore, as well as from pre-Islamic, Western Classical and Indian Sanskritic traditions. It also includes moral and mystically contemplative discourse, exegesis and meditation on the Qur’ān and Hadith, and stories not recorded before Rúmí’s writing, which may have been composed for the work.
This volume is part of an eight-volume set by Nicholson. Three volumes present his edition of the Persian text, three volumes provide his English translations, and two volumes offer his commentary.
Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1868–1945) was one of the foremost European scholars of Islamic mysticism. His pioneering translations and editions of major Sufi texts—including Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz (1898), The Mystics of Islam (1914), and the monumental eight-volume edition and translation of Rumi’s Mathnawí (1925–1940)—remain foundational works in the field. He also authored the influential Literary History of the Arabs (1907) and several studies on Islamic poetry and personality in Sufism. Nicholson's literary sensitivity and rigorous scholarship transformed Western understanding of Sufi thought and literature. Alan Williams is Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester. He is the author of several books on Zoroastrian and Islamic literature in Iranian languages and is one of the few scholars of ancient Iranian languages who also works on Classical Persian texts of the medieval period. He also translates modern Persian poetry.
