Rumi's World: The Life and Works of the Greatest Sufi Poet

This book (previously published as I Am Wind, You Are Fire ) celebrates the extraordinary career of Persia's great mystical poet, Rumi (1207-1273), through the story of his life, along with an enlightening examination of his ecstatic verse. Rumi lived the quiet life of a religious teacher in Anatolia until the age of thirty-seven, when he came under the influence of a whirling dervish, Shams Tabriz, and was moved to a state of mystical ecstasy. One of the results of this ecstasy was a prodigious output of poems about the search for the lost Divine Beloved, whom Rumi identified with Shams. To symbolize this search, Rumi also invented the famous whirling dance of the Melevi dervishes, which are performed accompanied by the chanting of Rumi's poems. Professor Schimmel illuminates the symbolism and significance of Rumi's vast output and offers her own translations of some of his most famous poems.

Author: Annemarie Schimmel
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 05/22/2001
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 8.86h x 6.12w x 0.64d
ISBN13: 9780877736110
ISBN10: 0877736111
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Religion | Islam | Sufi

About the Author
Annemarie Schimmel is an international authority on Islamic religion and literature and especially the works of Rumi. The author of over seventy books, she is now retired from Harvard University and the University of Bonn but continues to lecture worldwide.