Rumi's Storytelling in The Masnavi toward the Journey of Contentment and Mental Well-being

Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Balkhī, known as Rumi in the West, is a Persian poet, Sufi mystic, Islamic scholar, and spiritual teacher of the 13th century. The translation of Coleman Barks, in 1995, has made Rumi’s poems the best-selling foreign poetry in the U.S. Today, Rumi’s poems appear on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages daily. To investigate the reason that has kept Rumi’s words alive after centuries, this thesis looks closely at the stories of The Masnavi and the effect of Rumi’s storytelling approach on readers’ contentment and mental wellbeing. To this end, the author illustrates the compatibility between Rumi’s elements of mysticism, conveyed in stories of the Masnavi, and psychotherapy, specifically the mindfulness-based therapies.