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Volume 2 of Reynold A. Nicholson's authoritative translation and edition of Rumi's magnum opus - reissued with a new foreword by Alan Williams - provides the English translation of books I and II of the Mathnawi. The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi is his greatest work in every sense. As well as being his longest single composition, it is his most mature, as it was his last work, written from 1261 until his death in 1273 CE. It comprises six books, which amount to over 25,600 rhymed couplets in Nicholson's edition, plus six brief prose prefaces, variously in Arabic and Persian. The Mathnawi relates a range of folk stories, from traditional Iranian and Muslim lore, as well as from pre-Islamic, Western Classical and Indian Sanskritic traditions. It also includes moral and mystically contemplative discourse, exegesis and meditation on the Qur'an and Hadith, and stories not recorded before Rumi's writing, which may have been composed for the work. This volume is part of an eight-volume set by Nicholson. Three volumes present his edition of the Persian text, three volumes provide his English translations, and two volumes offer his commentary.