Jalaloddin Rumi's Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, or 'Spiritual Couplets', composed in the 13th Century, is a monumental work of poetry in the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism. For centuries before his love poetry became a literary phenomenon in the West, Rumi's Masnavi had been revered in the Islamic world as its greatest mystical text. Drawing upon a vast array of characters, stories and fables, and deeply versed in spiritual teaching, it takes us on a profound and playful journey of discovery along the path of divine love, toward its ultimate goal of union with the source of all Truth.

In Book Two of the Masnavi, the second of six volumes, we travel with Rumi toward an understanding of the deeper truth and reality, beyond the limits of the self. Alan Williams's authoritative new translation is rendered in highly readable blank verse and includes the original Persian text for reference. True to the spirit of Rumi's poem, this new translation establishes the Masnavi as one of the world's great literary achievements for a global readership.

Translated with an introduction, notes and analysis by Alan Williams and including the Persian text edited by Mohammad Este'lami.

Mowlana Jalaloddin Balkhi (1207-1273), known to the West as Rumi is a Persian poet comparable to the greatest poets of Europe. In 1244, Rumi began the composition of a body (divan) of lyric poems (ghazals) totalling 35,000 verses. In the early 1260s he turned to the composition of his most mature and final work, the mystical masterpiece in six volumes of Persian verses known as the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi 'The Spiritual Couplets'.

Alan Williams is Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester and the translator of Spiritual Verses (London, 2006).