Author Guide · Persian Poetry · Sufism
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On 15 November 1244, in the Anatolian city of Konya, a respected 37-year-old teacher of Islamic law met a wandering dervish called Shams of Tabriz, and stopped being a conventional scholar. Jalal al-Din Rumi, born in 1207 in the eastern Persian world and brought west by his family ahead of the Mongol invasions, spent the rest of his life writing poetry in Persian: more than 3,000 lyric poems, many signed with Shams’s name, and the Masnavi, more than 25,000 couplets in six books, which he dictated to a disciple until his death in 1273. Seven and a half centuries later he is often described as the bestselling poet in the United States, mostly in English versions made by people who do not read Persian. This guide covers his 12 key works and translations, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key works and translations · 1244–2022 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Rumi wrote three main works, all in Persian: the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi (lyric poems, from 1244), the Masnavi (begun around 1258) and the prose talks Fihi Ma Fihi. In English, the key translations run from R. A. Nicholson (1898 and 1925–1940) and A. J. Arberry (1961, 1968) to Coleman Barks’s The Essential Rumi (1995) and Jawid Mojaddedi’s Masnavi (from 2004). Start with The Essential Rumi, the most widely read, then set a closer translation beside it: Barks’s versions are free and leave out much of the Islamic context.
Where to Start with Rumi
If you want the Rumi most readers know
→ The Essential Rumi (1995) — free versions in modern English.
If you want the Masnavi as Rumi wrote it
→ The Masnavi, Book One (2004) — a verse translation that keeps the Islamic references.
If you want the lyric poems, translated closely
→ Mystical Poems of Rumi (1968) — 400 poems from the Divan.
If you want a new poet’s translation from the Persian
→ Gold (2022).
12 Rumi Works and Translations, in Order
Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi
Rumi’s collected lyric poetry, written from his meeting with Shams of Tabriz in 1244 until his death: more than 3,000 ghazals and nearly 2,000 quatrains (rubaiyat). Many poems end with Shams’s name where the poet’s own would normally stand, which is why the collection is named after him. Much of it was composed to be recited aloud, often with music.
Masnavi
His masterpiece, sometimes called “the Qur’an in Persian”: more than 25,000 rhyming couplets in six books, which Rumi dictated to his disciple Husam al-Din Chalabi from around 1258 until his death. It opens with the lament of a reed cut from its reed-bed and moves through hundreds of stories, fables and Qur’anic commentaries on the soul’s longing for God. The sixth book breaks off unfinished.
Fihi Ma Fihi
A prose record of Rumi’s talks to his circle, compiled from notes by his disciples; the title is usually translated as “In it is what is in it”. The talks are informal, answering questions from visitors and officials, and they show the teacher behind the poetry. Two smaller prose works also survive: Majalis-e Sab’a (seven sermons) and his letters (Maktubat).
R. A. Nicholson: Selected Poems from the Divani Shamsi Tabriz
The Cambridge orientalist Reynold A. Nicholson published this selection of 48 lyric poems, with the Persian text, an English prose translation and notes, at Cambridge University Press in 1898. It was the first scholarly English book of Rumi and is still in print.
R. A. Nicholson: The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmí
Nicholson’s life’s work: a critical edition of the Persian text, a complete literal English prose translation and a commentary, in eight volumes in the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series, 1925–1940. It remains the only complete English Masnavi by one translator, and most later English versions, including Coleman Barks’s, draw on it.
A. J. Arberry: Discourses of Rumi
Nicholson’s student A. J. Arberry, also at Cambridge, made the first English translation of Fihi Ma Fihi, published in 1961. It is still the most widely available English version of Rumi’s prose.
A. J. Arberry: Mystical Poems of Rumi
Arberry’s close prose translations of 400 poems from the Divan-e Shams, published in two volumes, the second after his death in 1969. Coleman Barks later used Arberry’s literal versions as the raw material for many of his own.
Camille and Kabir Helminski: Rumi: Daylight
A daily reader of short passages from the Masnavi, from Camille and Kabir Helminski, Americans trained in the Mevlevi order that grew out of Rumi’s circle. Their Threshold Books also published Coleman Barks and John Moyne’s first Rumi versions, Open Secret, in 1984.
Coleman Barks: The Essential Rumi
The book that made Rumi a bestseller in English. Coleman Barks, an American poet who does not read Persian, recast existing literal translations, mostly Nicholson’s and Arberry’s and some made with John Moyne, into loose free verse grouped by theme. Barks calls them versions rather than translations; critics say they smooth away much of the Islamic and Qur’anic content.
Jawid Mojaddedi: The Masnavi, Book One
Jawid Mojaddedi, a scholar of Sufism at Rutgers University, began a complete verse translation of the Masnavi for Oxford World’s Classics with Book One in 2004, in rhyming couplets with an introduction and notes, and has continued it book by book. Book One won the Lois Roth Award for translation from Persian.
Alan Williams: Spiritual Verses
Alan Williams, a scholar of Persian at the University of Manchester, translated the first book of the Masnavi for Penguin Classics in 2006, line by line from a newly checked Persian text, with an introduction on Rumi’s life and Sufism.
Haleh Liza Gafori: Gold
A selection of short lyric poems from the Divan, translated from the Persian by the Iranian-American poet and performer Haleh Liza Gafori and published by NYRB Poets in 2022. It is a poet’s translation, free in form but made from the original language.
In What Order to Read Rumi
Rumi’s own works do not depend on one another, and almost nobody reads them in Persian order. In English the real choice is between kinds of translation: free versions by poets working from other translations (Barks), poets translating from the Persian (Gafori), and scholars translating closely (Nicholson, Arberry, Mojaddedi, Williams).
A practical route is to read one free version and one close translation side by side. Where they differ, you see what the free version added or left out. For the Masnavi, begin at the start of Book One, with the song of the reed; the stories are easier to follow in order than in anthologies.
A reading path
1. The Essential Rumi (1995), Barks’s versions
2. Mystical Poems of Rumi (1968), Arberry’s close Divan
3. The Masnavi, Book One (2004), Mojaddedi
4. Discourses of Rumi (1961), the prose talks
5. Franklin Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (2000), the life
More Rumi Translations, and Books About Him
Beyond the 12 key works and translations: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other English translations
2
2 books · 1984–1994
- 1984Open Secretthe first Barks versions, made with John Moyne
- 1994Signs of the Unseena later translation of Fihi Ma Fihi
Books about Rumi
3
3 books · 1978–2000
- 1978The Triumphal Suna study of his life and work
- 1983The Sufi Path of Lovehis teachings, arranged by theme from his works
- 2000Rumi: Past and Present, East and Westthe standard modern biography and reception history
The years · 1207–2007
Quick facts about Rumi
- Known for
- Rumi is known as the Persian Sufi poet of longing for God, whose Masnavi is one of the central works of Persian literature and whose followers founded the Mevlevi order of “whirling dervishes”.
- 1207
- Born in the eastern Persian world
- 1258
- Masnavi begun
- 1925
- Nicholson’s complete Mathnawi begins
- 2007
- 800th anniversary of his birth
- Full name
- Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi; in Turkey, Mevlana; in Iran and Afghanistan, Mawlana or Balkhi
- Born
- 30 September 1207, Balkh or Wakhsh, in present-day Afghanistan or Tajikistan
- Died
- 17 December 1273, Konya, in present-day Turkey
- Language
- Persian, with some lines in Arabic, Turkish and Greek
- Turning point
- His meeting with the dervish Shams of Tabriz in 1244
- Legacy
- The Mevlevi order, founded after his death by his son Sultan Walad; his tomb in Konya is now a museum
The red mark is 1258: Rumi begins dictating the Masnavi, the six-book poem he was still composing when he died.
How Rumi Wrote: Spoken, Sung and Dictated
Rumi did not sit down to write books. Much of the Divan was improvised aloud, often during the music and turning of the sama, and taken down by listeners; the Masnavi was dictated to Husam al-Din, who read it back for correction. Both forms rely on strict Persian metre and rhyme, which is the first thing lost in English free verse.
His great subject is separation and return: the reed cut from its bed, the lover parted from the beloved, the soul away from God. He teaches through stories, often comic or crude, borrowed from folk tales, earlier Sufi poets such as Attar and Sanai, and the Qur’an and hadith, and the Masnavi moves from one story into another before returning, sometimes many pages later.
That Islamic grounding is the centre of the debate over Rumi in English. Close translators such as Nicholson, Arberry, Mojaddedi and Williams keep the Qur’anic references and explain them in notes; the popular versions mostly drop them, which makes the poems read as universal love poetry. Reading one of each shows how much of Rumi depends on the tradition he wrote in.
Frequently asked questions about Rumi’s books
How many books has Rumi written?
Five works survive: three main ones, the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, the Masnavi and the prose talks Fihi Ma Fihi, plus seven sermons (Majalis-e Sab’a) and his letters. This page lists his three main works and nine key English translations, 12 in all.
What are Rumi’s books in order?
The Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi (lyric poems, written from 1244), the Masnavi (begun around 1258 and unfinished at his death in 1273) and Fihi Ma Fihi, his talks, compiled from his disciples’ notes. None was published as a book in his lifetime in the modern sense.
Where should I start with Rumi?
With The Essential Rumi (1995), Coleman Barks’s free versions, the most widely read Rumi in English. Then read a close translation beside it: Jawid Mojaddedi’s Masnavi, Book One (2004) or A. J. Arberry’s Mystical Poems of Rumi (1968).
What is Rumi’s most famous book?
The Masnavi, more than 25,000 couplets in six books, one of the central works of Persian literature. In English, the best-known Rumi book is The Essential Rumi (1995).
Which Rumi translation is best?
It depends on what you want. For readability, Coleman Barks; for the complete Masnavi in literal prose, R. A. Nicholson (1925–1940); for a modern verse translation from the Persian, Jawid Mojaddedi (from 2004) or Alan Williams (2006); for the lyric poems, Arberry (1968) or Haleh Liza Gafori (2022).
Are Coleman Barks’s Rumi books real translations, and are Rumi quotes online genuine?
Barks does not read Persian. He rewrites earlier literal English translations and calls the results versions. In The New Yorker in January 2017, Rozina Ali argued that such versions remove much of Rumi’s Islamic and Qur’anic content. Separately, many lines shared online as Rumi quotes cannot be found in his works at all. To check a quotation, look for it in a scholarly translation such as Nicholson’s or Arberry’s.
Was Rumi Persian, Afghan or Turkish?
He wrote in Persian and was born in 1207 in the eastern Persian world, in Balkh (now Afghanistan) or the nearby town of Wakhsh (now Tajikistan). He spent most of his life in Konya, in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, now Turkey; “Rumi” means “from Rum”, the Muslim name for Anatolia. Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey all claim him.
Who was Shams of Tabriz?
A wandering dervish whom Rumi met in Konya in 1244. Their intense friendship turned Rumi from a teacher of law into a poet. Shams left, returned and then disappeared for good around 1248; Rumi named his collection of lyric poems after him.
What is the Mevlevi order?
The Sufi order founded after Rumi’s death by his son Sultan Walad, known in the West as the whirling dervishes for the turning ceremony, the sama. Its centre is Rumi’s tomb in Konya.
Was Rumi a Muslim?
Yes. He was a Muslim jurist and preacher, from a family of religious scholars, and his poetry is steeped in the Qur’an and the hadith. He is read as a Sufi, a mystic within Islam.
Footnotes
- Rumi — Wikipedia
- Masnavi — Wikipedia
- Jawid Mojaddedi — Wikipedia
- The New Yorker looks at rejoining Rumi and Islam — Poetry Foundation
- Spiritual Verses — Penguin
- Gold — NYRB
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the poems are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Listen to the reed how it tells a tale, complaining of separations.”
— Rumi, Masnavi, Book One, line 1, in R. A. Nicholson’s translation (1926)
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