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On 15 November 1244, in Konya, a 37-year-old Islamic scholar and jurist met a wandering dervish called Shams of Tabriz. The friendship that followed turned Jalal al-Din Rumi into a poet. When Shams vanished in 1248, Rumi poured his grief into thousands of ghazals, later gathered as the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, and over the last twelve years of his life he dictated the Masnavi, six books of verse that open with a reed flute crying for the reed bed it was cut from. He died in Konya on 17 December 1273. In October 2025 Oxford published the first English verse translation of the whole of the Masnavi's sixth and longest book. The ten writers below share his ground: longing, devotion, and a love that points beyond the beloved.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Sufi poetry · Mysticism · Love and longing · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
The closest matches to Rumi are Hafez, the fourteenth-century Persian master of the love ghazal; Attar, whose Conference of the Birds tells the Sufi journey as one long allegory; and Kabir, the Indian poet who sang of a God found within. Further down are the poet who doubts where Rumi believes, a novel about Rumi and Shams, and advice on which translations to read.
10 authors like Rumi
Where to start if you loved Rumi
If you loved Rumi's love poems, read Hafez.
In the translations of Dick Davis rather than the popular Ladinsky versions.
If you loved the stories in the Masnavi, read Attar.
The Conference of the Birds: the Sufi path told as the journey of thirty birds.
If you want a counter-voice, read Omar Khayyam.
The Rubáiyát: wine and doubt where Rumi has wine and faith.
If you want Rumi's life as a story, read Elif Shafak.
The Forty Rules of Love, a novel about Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.
If you want to go back to Rumi himself, read the Masnavi in a full translation.
Jawid Mojaddedi's verse translation for Oxford World's Classics, completed with Book Six in 2025, or Coleman Barks's The Essential Rumi (1995) for free versions of the shorter poems.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Rumi
Who writes like Rumi?
Hafez, Attar and Kabir are the closest: all three wrote mystical love poetry in which the beloved and God are hard to separate. John of the Cross, Rabindranath Tagore, Rainer Maria Rilke, Kahlil Gibran and Mary Oliver carry the same longing into other traditions.
Which Rumi translation should I read?
Coleman Barks's The Essential Rumi (1995) is the most popular, but it is a set of free English versions that soften Rumi's Islamic references. For a closer translation, read Jawid Mojaddedi's verse Masnavi for Oxford World's Classics, or Reynold Nicholson's older scholarly translation.
Is Rumi like Hafez?
Yes, more than any other poet. Both wrote Persian ghazals in which wine, love and God blur together; Rumi is more ecstatic, Hafez more ironic and worldly. Many popular English “Hafiz” poems by Daniel Ladinsky are not translations, so choose a scholarly version such as Dick Davis's.
Was Rumi a Muslim?
Yes. Rumi was a Muslim scholar and jurist, and his poetry is full of references to the Qur'an and the Prophet. Some popular English versions leave this out, a point made in Rozina Ali's 2017 New Yorker essay “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi”.
What should I read after Rumi?
Start with Hafez for the love poems and Attar's The Conference of the Birds for the Sufi stories. For a novel, Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love (2009) tells the story of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.
Is there a new Rumi translation?
Yes. In October 2025 Oxford World's Classics published Jawid Mojaddedi's translation of Book Six of the Masnavi, the longest of its six books and the first English verse translation of the whole of it.
Sources
- Rumi — Wikipedia
- The Masnavi, Book Six — Oxford University Press
- Fake Hafez: How a supreme Persian poet of love was erased — Al Jazeera
- Turkish court rules Elif Şafak plagiarized from another novel — Duvar English
List last reviewed 30 October 2026.
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