ABSTRACT
T H IS volume represents the second part of a task which it is hoped to complete in yet a third instalment. In my Tales from the Masnavi (George Allen & Unwin, 19 6 1) I offered transla tions of a hundred stories culled from the first three of the six books which make up the Masnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi 1207 1 273), together with an introduction sketching the nature and antecedents of that monumental poem. Here I have gathered a hundred more stories which run through the second half of the Masnavi, following the same method of putting the original verse-couplets into rhythmical prose, and appending a bare minimum of explanatory notes. If a third volume is published in the future, it will consists of selections from the didactic passages which intersperse, and very frequently interrupt these tales. The attempt will then be made, by a methodical arrangement of the selections, to render Rumi’s theological and mystical doctrine self-explanatory; the part which the tales play, in illustrating that somewhat complex and abstruse doctrine, will also become more apparent.
