Salaman and Absal

Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami (1414-1492) 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, then Khorasan, now located in Ghor Province of Afghanistan, but 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. In his role as Sufi shaykh, Jami expounded a number of teachings regarding following the Sufi path. In his view, love was the fundamental stepping stone for starting on the spiritual journey. 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. His poetry has been inspired by the Ghazals of Hafez, and his Haft Awrang is, by his own admission, influenced by the works of Nezami.