By Roxana Mehrin

What happens when love changes the way we see ourselves? We may begin with longing for another person, only to discover questions about patience, pride, and the kind of life we want to lead. That is one reason to return to Abdurahman Jomi: his literary world gives those questions room to breathe.

Known internationally as Abd al-Rahman Jami, Jomi was a fifteenth-century Persian poet, scholar, and Sufi. He lived from 1414 to 1492, yet the distance between his world and ours need not make his work feel remote. Encyclopaedia Iranica

Jomi was born in Kharjerd, near Jam in historical Khorasan. He later studied in Herat and Samarkand, developing a wide scholarly education. Herat became central to his adult life, and he formed close ties with the poet and statesman Ali-Shir Nava’i. His writing extended across Persian poetry, Arabic scholarship, religious thought, and even music theory. Jami: Life and Works

There is something refreshing about that range. Today, we often ask people to choose a single identity: artist, teacher, thinker. Jomi offers an occasion to imagine a creative life in which those interests can nourish one another.

Jomi’s relationship with the Naqshbandi Sufi tradition was fundamental to his life. His poetry and scholarship belonged to a larger spiritual commitment, shaped in part by the thought of Ibn Arabi. Reading him with that context helps us recognize why love, beauty, and longing can carry religious meaning. Jami and Sufism

For a modern reader, this opens an interesting possibility: a love story can be read for its emotional drama and also for the questions it raises about the self. Does longing make us more generous? Can admiration become possessiveness? What do we discover when we cannot have what we desire?

These are questions to bring to the reading, rather than simple lessons to extract from every poem. Allowing that uncertainty makes the encounter more rewarding.

Jomi’s Haft Awrang, often translated as Seven Thrones, brings together seven long narrative poems. Among them are Yusuf and Zulaikha, his celebrated treatment of the Joseph story, and Layli and Majnun, his version of an established love narrative.

Another important work, Baharistan, combines prose and verse. Written with his son’s education in mind, it follows the example of Saadi’s Gulistan. These works offer different entrances into Jomi’s writing: extended storytelling on one hand, shorter encounters with anecdote and reflection on the other. Jami: Life and Works

If you are reading Jomi for the first time, begin with a small selection in a well-annotated translation. Pause over an image that stays with you. You do not have to understand an entire literary tradition before a single passage can become meaningful.

For readers approaching Jomi through Tajik language and culture, his work can become an invitation to explore the wider Persian literary tradition. That exploration need not become a competition over who may claim a poet. A more fruitful question is what we will do with the inheritance: read it, discuss it, translate it carefully, and introduce it to someone younger.

His words also lived beyond the written text. Jomi’s works became important subjects for Persian manuscript illustration, bringing storytelling into conversation with painting. Jami and Persian Art

For a songwriter, that relationship between artistic forms is especially suggestive. A poem can invite a melody, an image, or a new response. The responsibility is to distinguish the original work from our own interpretation while allowing the encounter to inspire something fresh.

We keep a poet close by making time to read. Open a page of Jomi, stay with a difficult thought, and ask what it reveals about your own understanding of love. That is where a historical name can become a living conversation.