THE MATHNAWÍ OF JALÁLU'DDÍN RÚMÍ

EDITED FROM THE OLDEST MANUSCRIPTS AVAILABLE: WITH CRITICAL NOTES, TRANSLATION & COMMENTARY BY REYNOLD A. NICHOLSON LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A.

Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic and sometime Lecturer in Persian in the University of Cambridge

VOLUME V & VI

CONTAINING THE TRANSLATION OF THE THIRD & FOURTH BOOKS

INTRODUCTION

With the publication of the sixth volume this work has reached a turning-point, and I should have liked to call a halt for refreshment, especially as the next stages, though perhaps less tedious, are more difficult and hazardous than those already traversed. It would be pleasant to employ a sabbatical year in studies unconnected with the Mathnawí; for example, in making a catalogue of a small but interesting collection of Oriental manuscripts which I hope will go to the University Library after I have done with them. But such diversions, while they might help to relieve the apragmosyne inactivity/detachment from public affairs statutorily prescribed for persons of my age, cannot be allowed to interrupt the progress of the work in hand. Now that text and translation are complete, a commentary is needed to give substance to the translation, which by itself is often little more than a shadow; and the commentary must be reasonably full. At present I can only guess how far it may spread: in any case it will not exceed three volumes, and if two suffice, so much the better. Economy of space is comparatively unimportant, but one has to save time.

The Fifth and Sixth Books of the Mathnawí, composed when the author was approaching his seventieth year, show signs, I think, of failing power. An abnormally large number of anecdotes belong to the class which booksellers term “facetiae” humorous or witty stories; certain motifs, such as that of “the hidden treasure,” are overworked; sometimes the poet lets his habitual bias towards prolixity carry him beyond all bounds; and we seldom meet with passages that lay hold of our imagination like the memorable verses (Book IV, 3637 foll.), where the Mathnawí seems to attain its climax. If so, the descent is very gradual, though the latter half of the Sixth Book “drags its slow length along” till it breaks off in the course of an allegory depicting the quest for union with God, which probably was intended to conclude both the Book and the Poem. In the Búláq edition the unfinished Sixth Book is followed not only by two short epilogues ascribed to the poet's son Sultán Walad, but also by a Seventh Book containing 1751 verses. This is a patent forgery and has been generally recognised as such. It was first brought to light in A.H. 1035/ A.D. 1626 in Constantinople by Ismá‘íl Dedeh of Angora, whose Turkish commentary on the Mathnawí is a work of great merit. He professed to have found it in a manuscript of the poem, dated A.H. 814; but even if that were true, it would merely prove that he himself was not the fabricator. The so-called “Seventh Book” is wanting in all MSS. of the Mathnawí known to me. Style and matter alike stamp it as the production either of Ismá‘íl