Masnavi (Rumi)
Rumi's six-book Persian poem, the most quoted and most loosely translated source of Sufi wisdom.
The Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, composed by Jalal al-Din Rumi in thirteenth-century Konya, runs to roughly 25,000 couplets across six books. It teaches by story: a parable is told, interrupted, and glossed, so that narrative and commentary interleave rather than separate.
It is one of the most quoted books in the world in English, and one of the least accurately quoted. Many popular 'Rumi' lines come from Coleman Barks's versions, which are English poems based on earlier translations rather than translations from Persian; others have no counterpart in Rumi's text at all.
For writers, the practical standard is to name the translator and, where possible, the book and couplet. Nicholson's scholarly edition and translation remains the reference point for verification.
Common mistake: quoting a devotional Islamic poet in a way that strips the religious content that the original couplet states explicitly. The 'universalised' Rumi of social media is largely a twentieth-century American construction.
“"The wound is the place where the Light enters you." — widely circulated as Rumi; not located in the Masnavi and absent from Nicholson's translation.”
Keep reading the glossary
Naming the translator, because a quotation in translation is also that translator's wording.
How faithfully a translated quote preserves the meaning and music of the original.
Assigning a quote to the wrong person — the most common error in quotation.
The process of tracing a quotation to its earliest reliable source before publishing it.