"Neither Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian or Moslem am I; I am not an Easterner or a Westerner, or of land or sea..." - Rumi. In this classic work, the Persian scholar Edward Henry Whinfield translates and comments upon the Masnavi - Rumi's greatest work and one of the most important texts in the study of Sufusm. Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) led the quiet life of an Islamic teacher in central Anatolia (modern Turkey) until the age of 37, when he met a wandering dervish named Shams Tabriz - through whom he encountered the Divine Presence in a way that utterly transformed him. The result of this epiphany was the greatest body of mystical poetry the world has ever seen, and the establishment of a spiritual movement - Sufism - that would eventually stretch from Africa to China, enduring to our present day.