This volume brings together the most beautiful poems of the three great Persian classics: Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam. Omar Khayyam was born between 1021 and 1048 and died in 1122 or 1131. Despite Khayyam's successful career as an astronomer, mathematician, theologian, and physician, his poems are marked by skepticism and a denial of the world. His drinking songs are mystical ciphers for a religious devotion beyond orthodoxy. They are among the most famous verses of Oriental poetry in the West. Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273), the founder of the Sufi order of the whirling dervishes, is not only one of the most significant masters of Islamic mysticism but also one of the greatest poets of the Persian language. At the age of 37, he was deeply moved by love for a wandering dervish. The mystical union with the beloved in God became the meaning of his life.