JAMI

Illustration from Jami's ''Rose Garden of the Pious'', dated 1553. The image blends Persian poetry and Persian miniature into one, as is the norm for many works of Persian literature.

'Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami' () (August 18, 1414November 19, 1492) was one of the greatest Persian poets in the 15th century and one of the last great Sufi poets. His fame rests even more on his mystical authority than on his talents as a poet and writer.

Contents
Biography
Teachings
Works
Divan of Jami
See also
Notes
References
External links

Biography


He was born in a village near Jam, then Khorasan, now located in Ghor Province of Afghanistan, but a few years after his birth, his family migrated to the cultural city of Herat in present-day Afghanistan where he was able to study Peripateticism, mathematics, Arabic literature, natural sciences, and Islamic philosophy at the Nizamiyyah University of Herat.
Afterwards he went to Samarqand, the most important centre of scientific studies in the Islamic World and completed his studies there. He was a famous Sufi, and a follower of the Naqshbandiyyah Sufi Order. At the end of his life he was living in Herat.
Conversation on Love between father and son'

From the ''Haft Awrang'' of Jami, in the story "A Father Advises his Son About Love."
''See Nazar ill'al-murd'' Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Teachings


In his role as Sufi shaykh, Jami expounded a number of teachings regarding following the Sufi path. In his view, love was the fundamental stepping stone for starting on the spiritual journey. To a student who claimed never to have loved, he said, "Go and love first, then come to me and I will show you the way."[1]

Works


'Youth conversing with elders about love and women'
Another illustration from the Haft Awrang

Jami wrote approximately eighty-seven books and letters, some of which have been translated into English. His works range from prose to poetry, and from the mundane to the religious. He has also written works of history. His poetry has been inspired by the ghazals of Hafez, and his ''Haft Awrang'' is, by his own admission, influenced by the works of Nezami.

Divan of Jami


Among his works are:

★ ''Baharistan (Abode of Spring)'' Modeled upon the ''Gulistan'' of Saadi

★ ''Nafahat al-Uns (Breaths of Fellowship)'' Biographies of the Sufi saints

★ ''Haft Awrang (Seven Thrones)'' His major poetical work. The fifth of the seven stories is his acclaimed "Yusuf and Zulaykha" which tells the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife based on the Holy Quran.

★ ''Lawa'ih'' A treatise on Sufism

★ ''Diwanha-i Sehganeh (Triplet Divans)

★ ''Tajnīs ’al-luġāt (Homonymy/Punning of Languages)'' A lexicographical work containing homonymous Persian and Arabic lemmata.[1]

See also



Ghazal

Persian literature

List of Persian poets and authors

Nazar ill'al-murd

Notes


1. Shīrānī, 6.

References



★ E.G. Browne. ''Literary History of Persia''. (Four volumes, 2,256 pages, and twenty-five years in the writing). 1998. ISBN 0-7007-0406-X

★ Jan Rypka, ''History of Iranian Literature''. Reidel Publishing Company. 1968 ISBN 90-277-0143-1

★ Ḥāfiż Mahmūd Shīrānī. “Dībācha-ye awwal [First Preface].” In ''Ḥifż ul-Lisān [a.k.a. Ḳhāliq Bārī]'', edited by Ḥāfiż Mahmūd Shīrānī. Delhi: Anjumman-e Taraqqi-e Urdū, 1944.

External links



Jami on PoetryPortal

Jami on Iran Chamber Society Website

Jami's Yusuf and Zulaikha: A Study in the Method of Appropriation of Sacred Text

Jami's Salaman and Absal as Translated by Edward Fitzgerald. 1904

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