One episode in this work involves a competition between Chinese and Greek artists to paint a house, which the Greek artists win because their clean walls reflect the splendid colors on the Chinese house.
One episode in this work involves a competition between Chinese and Greek artists to paint a house, which the Greek artists win because their clean walls reflect the splendid colors on the Chinese house. Another episode in this work tells of a number of people who feel an elephant in a dark room, thinking that the beast resembles a water-pipe, a fan, a pillar, or a throne depending on which part they touch.  Dedicated to its author's student Husam Chalabi, it includes many poems about overcoming nafs, and begins with a prologue about the lament of an item "torn from its osier bed" that now moves "men and women to tears" with its "plaintive notes." That prologue, which opens the first of this work's six books, is sometimes called the "Song of the Reed-Flute." For 10 points, name this collection of Sufi poetry, the major work of Rumi.
One episode in this work involves a competition between Chinese and Greek artists to paint a house, which the Greek artists win because their clean walls reflect the splendid colors on the Chinese house.
Masnavi I Ma'navi [or Spiritual Couplets] 