Customer Reviews

The Illustrated Rumi: A Treasury of Wisdom from the Poet of the Soul

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For those who know Rumi, here at last is a translation and presentation whose majesty match the wisdom of the message. For those who do not yet know Rumi, this exquisite book opens a window to insights that will always be treasured.

This is a great book. It is professionally translated and the words flow naturally. The introduction is powerful and it has a lot of useful information about the book content and the spiritual life of Rumi. The illustrations are carefully chosen and relevantly placed giving you a persian medeivial aura. Rumi was a great sufi poet who lived in the golden age of the Islamic civilization. His poetry is a guide to spirituality and wisdom. It is deep,simply-written and interesting. Anyone who reads this book will enjoy it.

The ultimate source of Rumi`s work is the original work of Mathnawi, in Persian, it has a delicate taste of poetic dimension too, but even without the poetic contribution, Richard A. Nicholson has translated all the 6 volumes of Mathnawi with an excellent translation, eloquent, lovely and elegant. Rumi is an ocean, "The illustrated Rumi" is a very nice sampling taken from these six volumes. The illustrations are taken from the early islamic art, most of which, one has to remind himself, were performed bofore the Renaissance. It has a taste of Arabic Nights in the pictures, what is more important though is the quality of the samples. Nicholson has the best work accomplished, and I recommend it to anybody, to me that book deserves to be written with gold and silver. Still Illustrated Rumi will give an idea of Rumi, especially with the wonderful introduction of Huston Smith, who himself is a leader in religious studies, this book is like cream de la cream of Matnawi as an introduction. The book is worthy of being read carefully at least once. I would recommend reading this book to those people left undecided between a foot long sandwich and a glimpse of the soul.

The Sufis understand the human heart to be the macrocosm, not just the microcosm, of the universe. Whatever is in your heart is everywhere. If you have anger in your heart, you will experience anger from others, if hate, you shall be hated; if love, you shall be loved. By knowing the mystery of your own heart, you begin to resonate with the mysteries of existence.

A beautiful book of word, image and revelation.

This book is beautiful if only for the artwork, but couple that with the unique parables of Rumi and this is a rich treasury to be enjoyed and savored.

a masterpiece!!!