Divan Shams of Rumi: Volume 1 of 9

The first of nine volumes presenting the complete Divan-e Shams of Rumi in a bilingual, line-by-line edition. This volume holds ghazals 1 to 358, the poems whose rhymes run from the letter Alef to the letter Te, 358 poems in 3,844 couplets.

Each Persian couplet appears in the original, followed immediately by its English translation, so a reader of either language can follow the verse in the other. The Persian is set in a clear modern typeface and reads right to left as it should; the English is plain and faithful rather than ornamental, keeping Rumi's images and turns of thought in his own order.

Written in the years after the disappearance of his teacher Shams of Tabriz, these ghazals are Rumi's most personal poetry: songs of longing, ecstasy and loss addressed to the friend who changed his life. The volume opens with a short preface on the Divan and on this bilingual method, and a contents list of every ghazal by number and first line.

Translated by Yahya Nazer, whose bilingual editions of Rumi, Saadi, Hafez, Attar, Khayyam and Ferdowsi number more than sixty volumes.