A Thousand Years of Persian Rubáiyát

Reza Saberi translates over 1,500 quatrains from more than one hundred Iranian poets since the tenth century. In addition to the quatrains of better known poets such as Hafez, Sa'di, Rumi and Khayyam many of the poets and their poems have been translated into English for the first time. A rub is a poem in four lines, which is complete in itself and expresses a single feeling or thought in a very concise and elegant language. Their subjects include divine love, the ecstasy of love, mystical knowledge, and the nature of life and existence. The tradition of sufism, the Irano-Islamic mysticism that advocates the oneness and wholeness of all things and the unity of existence (vahdate vjud), is conveyed in the majority of the poems. Reza Saberi has tried to be as faithful to the original text as is possible in English. His translation can be of special interest for speakers of Persian who try to communicate the sense of beauty of their poetry in the English language. The bilingual format is also very useful for students of Persian language and literature.