For the first time, The Mystic and the Lyric brings together the classic work of four women poets from Kashmir who have shaped its literary imagination: Lalded, Habba Khatun, Arnimal, and Rupa Bhavani. These women inhabit not just the collective memory of Kashmiris and Kashmir but are part of the land's living oral tradition. Folk singers begin their performances with Lalded's vaakhs (quatrains). Arnimal's pain of unrequited love and Khatun's complaints about her in-laws are ironic wedding vatsans or songs. Bhavani's sites of meditation are now shrines where her vaakhs are chanted in annual celebrations. Central to the shaping of both the mystic and the lyric traditions of Kashmiri poetry, the work of these poets is unknown outside Kashmir. In this collection, Neerja Mattoo's elegant translations introduce new readers to the beautiful living oral tradition of Kashmiri lyric poetry and give these revolutionary women the recognition they richly deserve.

Lal Ded, Habba Khatun, Rupa Bhavani, Arnimal: these four women poets, dating from different periods in the history of Kashmir, are household names in the valley and are claimed by all, no matter what religious, ethnic or other group they belong to. In this beautiful volume, Neerja Mattoo brings their work together for the first time, placing it in two traditions, the mystic and the lyric. Fine and nuanced translations of their poems are accompanied by brief introductions to their work that place the women in a historical context and deal with both the facts and the beliefs about their work.

Jalal al-Din Rumi, a towering figure in the Persian-speaking world, is currently the most widely published poet in English translation. Yet despite the popularity of his verse, the majority of scholarship on his work focuses not on Rumi's poetry but on his contributions as a mystic. Fatemeh Keshavarz's pioneering study is the first extensive critical examination of this vast, dynamic body of literature. Through close readings of the Divan, his collection of more than 35,000 lyric verses, she explores Rumi's extraordinary popular and critical literary success.

For the first time in English, this collection presents a compilation of seven centuries of the mystic hymns of Turkey's rebellious Sufi poets, the popular folk counterparts to Rumi whose poems are characterised by a passionate and unorthodox commitment to Truth. At the time Rumi was writing in ancient Anatolia, many other great mystics in the region were also composing wild, ecstatic and controversial poems which were circulated among the people as spiritual songs (called 'nefes' and 'illahis') still played and sung today in sacred dervish ceremonies and gatherings. These poems were meant to swiftly and easily penetrate the heart of the spiritual aspirant whether educated or uneducated, and awaken the human heart to its divine inheritance. These poems present a spiritual tradition from the Islamic world which bravely challenged orthodox religion and emphasised universal mystic love and tolerance.

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