Introduction

Greetings of peace! Welcome to Blogging the Masnavi,

The aim of this blog is to explore the Masnavi-yi Ma`navi, or Spiritual Couplets, of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, one day at a time.

With God’s permission, this blog is due to begin on 1st January 2016.

The inspiration for this blog came from both David Plotz’s Blogging the Bible, and Ziauddin Sardar’s Blogging the Quran.

The Aims of this Blog

This project has several aims. Firstly, it hopes to explore the beautiful, life-changing poetry of Mevlana Rumi, as a worthwhile thing in itself. Secondly, it hopes to share useful information and perspectives on the Masnavi with the wider world. Thirdly, on a more personal level, I hope this blog will help me on my own spiritual journey through life. In other words, this is not primarily an academic treatment of the Masnavi, although I will certainly make use of relevant academic insights. Rather, our aim here is to engage with the material itself as part of a wider spiritual praxis.

Method

The central aim of this blog is to act as a record of my ongoing attempt to live with the Masnavi. As such, and after some careful reflection, I think the best way forward is for me to post each passage at the beginning of the week and then offer my own responses to it over the course of two or three days. I hope to share the personal experiences, ideas, concepts and understandings that each passage evokes. Sometimes I will offer written notes, and at other times video logs.

My main source will be Kabir Helminski’s Rumi Daybook, supplemented by other relevant sources. See the Sources and Further Reading page for more information on helpful materials.

The Masnavi-yi Ma`navi

Mevlana was a prolific author. His poetry includes several hundred quatrains, a broadly similar number of ghazals, and his masterwork, the Masnavi. The Masnavi consists of six books, of approximately 25,000 couplets. By any understanding, it is therefore a truly epic poem. According to Mevlevi tradition, each book deals with a different theme of the spiritual journey, and is opened by a prose introduction.

Dar al-Masnavi is an excellent online resource for further reading.

About Me

I am a Muslim and a member of the Mevlevi Sufi Order (through the Threshold Society), founded by Mevlana Rumi. I also maintain another blog, Abdur Rahman’s Corner. You can find out more about me there.