It can be said of the 19th century Kashmiri poet, Mahmud Ga ̄mi that he was a pioneer in introducing the Persian genres of the ghazal, nazm, masnavi and na ̄t into Kashmiri. Mahmud Gami's contribution to Kashmiri poetry is unique in both scope and depth. Not only is he the first truly prolific poet who has written entirely in the Kashmiri language, but much of his poetry also stands out for its beauty of expression and depth of thought, such as in the lyrical romance of Shireen Khusrau, Yusuf Zulaikha, and Layla Majnun. Yusuf's Fragrance is both a celebration as well as an homage to Gami's oeuvre. Through these beautiful verses, we explore themes of love, both physical and metaphysical, philosophy, folklore, and tradition through different narrative devices, such as nazms, masnavis, and vatsuns.

'The most beautiful of stories...'A new translation of Jami's celebrated allegorical romance. Selected by Doris Lessing as one of the 'Observer Books of the Year', 1981.

Annemarie Schimmel, one of the world's foremost authorities on Persian literature, provides a comprehensive introduction to the complicated and highly sophisticated system of rhetoric and imagery used by the poets of Iran, Ottoman Turkey, and Muslim India. She shows that these images have been used and refined over the centuries and reflect the changing conditions in the Muslim world. According to Schimmel, Persian poetry does not aim to be spontaneous in spirit or highly personal in form. Instead it is rooted in conventions and rules of prosody, rhymes, and verbal instrumentation. Ideally, every verse should be like a precious stone--perfectly formed and multifaceted--and convey the dynamic relationship between everyday reality and the transcendental. Persian poetry, Schimmel explains, is more similar to medieval European verse than Western poetry as it has been written since the Romantic period. The characteristic verse form is the ghazal--a set of rhyming couplets--which serves as a vehicle for shrouding in conventional tropes the poet's real intentions. Because Persian poetry is neither narrative nor dramatic in its overall form, its strength lies in an "architectonic" design; each precisely expressed image is carefully fitted into a pattern of linked figures of speech. Schimmel shows that at its heart Persian poetry transforms the world into a web of symbols embedded in Islamic culture.

Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi was one of the greatest poets and mystics of the Islamic world. He was born in Balkh (Korasan) in AD 1207 and died in Konya (Turkey) in AD 1273. This book is an examination of his spiritual and literary heritage. As Annemarie Schimmel, the recipient of the Eleventh Giorgio Della Vida Award in Islamic Studies, has written, 'no other mystic and poet from the Islamic world is as well known in the West as Rumi', and she, more than any Western scholar, is his most celebrated and eloquent interpreter. The scholars who Professor Schimmel has invited to share in her tribute have all added new dimensions to an understanding of Rumi and to his impact on the Islamic world.

This collection examines the roots of the artistic renaissance of Sufism from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.

Farid al-Din Attar (d. 1221) was the principal Muslim religious poet of the second half of the twelfth century. Best known for his masterpiece "Mantiq al-tayr", or "The Conference of Birds", his verse is still considered to be the finest example of Sufi love poetry in the Persian language after that of Rumi. Distinguished by their provocative and radical theology of love, many lines of Attar's epics and lyrics are cited independently of their poems as maxims in their own right. These pithy, paradoxical statements are still known by heart and sung by minstrels throughout Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and wherever Persian is spoken or understood, such as in the lands of the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent. Designed to take its place alongside "The Ocean of the Soul", the classic study of Attar by Hellmut Ritter, this volume offers the most comprehensive survey of Attar's literary works to date, and situates his poetry and prose within the wider context of the Persian Sufi tradition. The essays in the volume are grouped in three sections, and feature contributions by sixteen scholars from North America, Europe and Iran, which illustrate, from a variety of critical prespectives, the full range of Attar's monumental achievement. They show how and why Attar's poetical work, as well as his mystical doctrines, came to wield such tremendous and formative influence over the whole of Persian Sufism.

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Description The mention of Yūsuf Alayhis Salaam normally makes one recall the story of the great Prophet of Allāh SWT, Yūsuf Alayhis Salaam. His detailed mention in the Qur’ān, in a chapter under the same name, holds host to a whole range of lessons, meanings and emotions waiting to be embraced by the keen of mind. This is Sūrah Yūsuf, a mark for all mankind. This book attempts to bring the meanings and deeper interpretations of this sūrah to the doorstep of the reader. While maintaining the authenticity of sources, this commentary unveils the story of Yūsuf Alayhis Salaam as well as opens the door to many sub-topics buried within the sūrah. Dreams and interpretations, slavery, kinship and forbearance are some of the insights brought to light for the benefit of the reader This book is an enlightening and educational reading for one seeking a comprehensive understanding of an aspect revealed in the Islamic scripture, the Holy Qur’ān. Shaykh Abdul Raheem hafizahullah is a graduate of Darul Uloom Bury. After graduating, he pursued further study at Mazāhir ul Uloom, Saharanpur (India). He also studied the science of Iftā (Islamic Jurisprudence and delivering verdicts on the rulings of Sharī’ah). Shaykh has spent the last 30 years teaching and lecturing on the various texts which form the Dars Nizami Curriculum. He currently teaches at Darul Uloom Bury. Shaykh travels tirelessly around the country and around the world delivering talks in order to educate and rectify the Muslim community. He has also authored many books, articles and delivered many lectures. For trade, bulk orders, international or more information, please contact: +44 (0) 7825 345 836 (call/text/whatsapp) [email protected]

Every moment it seeks to slip from the mind’s nook Fresh poetic meaning is a gazelle to be captured The Captured Gazelle is an elegant and lucent translation of the poems of the seventeenth-century Persian poet Mulla Tahir Ghani, better known as Ghani Kashmiri. Eulogized by poets such as Mir and Iqbal, Ghani is an outstanding representative of sabk-e-Hindi or the ‘Indian style’ in Persian poetry, which became a hallmark of the Mughal–Safavid literary culture. The introduction situates Ghani against his unique background in which Iranian and Indian poetic cultures came together to create a glorious literary age in Kashmir, while the translations capture Ghani in his wide spectrum of moods—satirical, playful, self-pitying, pessimistic, mystically resigned—bringing alive his wit and ingenuity in a modern idiom without losing hold on the tone.

On a secluded island, homicide detective Jessica Niemi must investigate a drowning that is tied to a frightening ghostly legend in this riveting new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of THE WITCH HUNTER. Jessica Niemi is put on leave after a violent altercation between her and a belligerent man makes headlines. To escape the unwanted scrutiny, Jessica travels to a remote island in the Åland archipelago and rents a room at a small seaside inn. She is hoping to be left alone as she faces the possibility that she is losing what is left of her sanity but three elderly visitors have arrived at the inn for their yearly sojourn. Jessica learns that they are the remaining ‘birds of spring’, former refugees who fled Finland as children during World War II and lived together for a few months in an orphanage on the island. The orphanage no longer exists but the local legend about one of its inhabitants, a girl named Maija, still haunts the surviving orphans. Every evening Maija would put on her blue coat and stand on the pier, looking out at the dark water until one night, she disappeared and was never seen again. When one of the ‘birds of spring’ is found dead, drowned alongside the same pier, and Jessica learns about two other deaths from the past, also connected to the orphanage, she has no choice but to try and put the pieces of this terrifying mystery together. Jessica can’t be sure whether she’s facing a killer or—just like the legend says—the ghost of Maija, the girl in the blue coat. Uncertain what is real and what is not, Jessica desperately searches for answers that she hopes will stop the murders and finally silence her own demons once and for all…