Abd ar-Rahman Jami

Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami (August 18, 1414–November 19, 1492) was one of the greatest Persian poets in the 15th century and one of the last great Sufi poets. Jami was born in a village near Jam – Khorasan. A few years after his birth, his family migrated to the cultural city of Herat where he was able to study Peripateticism, mathematics, Arabic literature, natural sciences, and Islamic philosophy at the Nizamiyyah University of Herat. Afterwards he went to Samarkand, the most important center of scientific studies in the ####Muslim world and completed his studies there. He was a famous Sufi, and a follower of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order. At the end of his life he was living in Herat.

Teachings
In his role as Sufi sheikh, Jami expounded a number of teachings regarding following the Sufi path. In his view, love for the Prophet Mohammad was the fundamental stepping stone for starting on the spiritual journey. To a student who asked to be his pupil and claimed never to have loved anyone, he said, "Go and love first, then come to me and I will show you the way”.

Works
Jami wrote approximately eighty-seven books and letters, some of which have been translated into English. His works range from prose to poetry, and from the mundane to the religious. He has also written works of history.
Among his works are:
• Abode of Spring
• Breaths of Fellowship (Biographies of the Sufi saints)
Seven Thrones (His major poetical work. The fifth of the seven stories is his acclaimed "Yusuf and Zulaykha" which tells the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife based on the Quran)
• A treatise on Sufism
• Triplet Divans
• Homonymy/Punning of Language ( A lexicographical work containing homonymous Persian and Arabic lemmata)

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