The Spiritual Verses: Masnavi-ye Ma'navi Series, Book 1

Rumi's Spiritual Verses, is the greatest mystical poem in Islamic culture and of all time. Rumi tells of our human separation from reality, from love and from truth. He shows how love– neither erotic nor sentimental but divine, by which the universe is held together– enlightens ignorance and dissolves suffering. The first book of the Masnavi is the key to the whole work: it takes off from simple, amusing tales into realms unimaginable, but wholly familiar to the human heart.

The great Sufi poet– perhaps the greatest Sufi poet– Jalaloddin Rumi (1207–1273) was born in Balkh, Afghanistan 800 years ago. It is timely reminder, with all turmoil now existing in a country seemingly embedded in a medieval existence of strife and prejudice, that it produced one of the outstanding world figures of poetry.

Ironically, Rumi himself left Afghanistan as a young man when his family fled before the invasion of Ghengis Khan and the Mongol hordes who devastated Balkh and Samarkand in the early 1200s. Rumi settled in the province of Rum in Turkey (the origin of the name by which he came to be known > Rum > Rome > Byzantium).

Rumi wrote in Persian, and thus he is claimed by three countries: Afghanistan because he was born there; Turkey because he lived there for most of his life; and Iran because he wrote in Persian.

Rumi became famous in his lifetime and has never been forgotten: UNESCO has designated this year as The Year of Rumi.

To mark this special anniversary, Naxos AudioBooks presents this recording of part of The Spiritual Verses, the pinnacle of Rumi's achievement. Anton Lesser reads a new translation by Dr Alan Williams, a leading Persian and Rumi scholar.