Persian Poets

The Middle Ages saw an extraordinary flowering of Persian poetry. Though translations began appearing in Europe in the nineteenth century, these remarkable poets—Omar Khayyam, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafiz, and Jami—are still being discovered in the West.

The great medieval Persian poets owe much to the mystical Sufi tradition within Islam, which understands life as a journey in search of enlightenment, and, like their European contemporaries, they combine religious and secular themes. W...