تصوف اسلامی و رابطۀ انسان و خدا

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, محمدرضا شفیعی کدکنی (Translator)

کتابی که با عنوان تصوف اسلامی و رابطه انسان و خدا اکنون در دسترس خوانندگان زبان فارسی قرار می‌گیرد، عنوان اصلی آن به زبان انگلیسی فکر شخصیت در تصوف است و چون کلمه «شخصیت» معنایی را که مورد نظر مؤلف است در زبان فارسی القا نمی‌کرد، ناگزیر عنوان‌ترجمه فارسی را عوض کرد تا موضوع کتاب و مقصود مؤلف از عنوان‌ترجمه قابل درک باشد. این کتاب یکی از معروفترین تحقیقات استاد نیکلسون در زمینه تصوف اسلامی است و جای آن در زبان فارسی خالی بود.
محمدرضا شفیعی کدکنی در آغاز قصد‌ترجمه تمامی کتاب را نداشت فقط آن قسمت‌هایی را که در باب مولوی، درین کتاب آمده بود، برای خود (به عنوان موادی در تهیه کتابی در باب مولانا) ترجمه کرد و بعد متوجه شد که‌ترجمه تمامی کتاب هم می‌تواند جویندگان فرهنگ اسلامی و تصوف ایرانی را سودمند باشد.

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, was the greatest Rumi scholar in the English language. He was a professor for many years at Cambridge Universtiy, in England. He dedicated his life to the study of Islamic mysticism and was able to study and translate major sufi texts in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish. That a Western scholar of "the first rank" dedicated much of his life to the study and translation of Rumi's poetry was very fortunate.

His monumental achievement was his work on Rumi's Masnavi (done in eight volumes, published between 1925-1940). He produced the first critical Persian edition of Rumi's Masnavi, the first full translation of it into English, and the first commentary on the entire work in English. This work has been highly influential in the field of Rumi studies, world-wide. His critical Persian text has been re-printed many times in Iran and his commentary has been so highly respected there, that it has been translated into Persian (by Hasan Lâhûtî, 1995).

Nicholson also produced two volumes which condensed his work on the Masnavi and which were aimed at the popular level: "Tales of Mystic Meaning" (1931) and "Rumi: Poet and Mystic" (1950).

His earliest translations of selected ghazals from Rumi's Divan ("Selected Poems from the Díváni Shamsi Tabríz," 1898) has been superceded by A. J. Arberry's translations ("Mystical Poems of Rumi," 1968; "Mystical Poems of Rumi: Second Selection," 1979), in that Arberry used a superior edition of the Divan (done by Foruzanfar). Arberry re-translated all of the ghazals previously translated Nicholson (his teacher and predecessor at Cambridge University) based on the superior edition, minus seven ghazals which were not in the earliest manuscripts of the Divan (and therefore are no longer considered by scholars to be authentic Rumi poems (Nicholson's numbers IV, VIII, XII, XVII, XXXI, XXXIII, and XLIV).