A Little Book of Mystical Secrets: Rumi, Shamz of Tabriz, and the Path of Ecstasy

This slim volume focuses on Shams of Tabriz, the Sufi teacher who inspired Rumi. It opens with a biographical sketch and presents a new translation of five hundred of Shams’s core teachings meant to clarify the meaning and mysteries of life and love. The book traces the pivotal encounter that turned Rumi from a resolute, ascetic cleric into a passionate disciple of the religion of love; Shams—Arabic for “sun”—is shown as the catalytic presence behind that transformation. Compact and direct, the collection centers Shams’s voice rather than Rumi’s celebrity.