Whatever happened to Rumi?

My excuse for not having finished Al-Ghazali yet is that I freaking lost the library book for nearly a week; only recovered it after having bought a replacement from Wardah Books.

But I owe you guys an explanation for why I'm not doing Rumi Jalaluddin's Masnavi, as I originally announced. After all, he's the national poet of (currently much-beleaguered) Iran, isn't he?


Said explanation is complicated. Y'see, upon doing a bit of research, I discovered that Rumi lived in a time when the Persian Empire was pretty damn big: the town where he was born lies in either present-day Afghanistan or Tajikistan. Later, he fled his town when he was seven to settle in Konya, Turkey.

Somehow, I got it into my head that Rumi never once set in what's currently Iran. However, a glance at Wikipedia that he did indeed encounter the poet Attar in Nishapur.

So I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Do I return to my original plan of reading the really long Masnawi? Or shall I read it for Afghanistan, thus displacing Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner? Or shall I keep it for my next circuit, when I'm reading Tajikistan? After all, there are really few famous literary works about Tajikistan...

In other news, the replacement Kindle is here!


Hurrah!