Elif Shafak

Forty Rules of Love

*The international bestseller* * One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'* "Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough..." Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work. It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored. . . 'Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love' Metro 'Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent' Daily Telegraph 'The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself' The Times

The Forty Rules of Love

beea

Bountiful is your life, full and complete. Or so you think, until someone comes along and makes you realize what you have been missing all this time. Like a mirror that reflects what is absent rather than present, he shows you the void in your soul— the void you have resisted seeing. That person can be a lover, a friend, or a spiritual master. Sometimes it can be a child to look after. What matters is to find the soul that will complete yours. All the prophets have given the same advice: Find the one who will be your mirror!

You think that the light of your soul has been put out and that you will stay in the dark forever. But when you are engulfed by such solid darkness, when you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. And only then do you come to realize that eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere.

Srijita Sarkar 

In order to flee from the past and reach the future, we forget to live in the present.

So when I lifted Kimya’s veil, all I did was to give her a comb made of tortoiseshell and plant a small kiss on her lips. She smiled. And for a second I felt as shy as a lost little boy.

Little did I know that I was making the most common and the most painful mistake women have made all throughout the ages: to naïvely think that with their love they can change the men they love.

“This boy will open a gate in the heart of love and throw a flame into the hearts of all mystic lovers.”

Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.

“Intellect and love are made of different materials,” he said. “Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, ‘Beware too much ecstasy,’ whereas love says, ‘Oh, never mind! Take the plunge!’ Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. A broken heart hides treasures.”

May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect.

When a person knows himself or herself, he or she knows God.

If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved...How can you blame others for disrespecting you when you think of yourself as unworthy of respect?”

“Kiss me, my beloved, peel my heart down to the core,

Your lips are as sweet as cherry wine, pour me some more.”

Isn’t it the same with the garden of love? How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships?...The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.

A relentless nomad at heart, he had been everywhere, equally at home in Siberia, Shanghai, Calcutta, and Casablanca.

He belongs in the Kingdom of Love. He belongs to the Beloved.

The emperor did not hide his disappointment. “Are you the one Majnun has been crazy about? Why, you look so ordinary. What is so special about you?”

Layla broke into a smile. “Yes, I am Layla. But you are not Majnun,” she answered. “You have to see me with the eyes of Majnun. Otherwise you could never solve this mystery called love.”

Is there a way to grasp what love means without becoming a lover first?

Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced.

Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.

Rumi’s eyes follow Shams the way a sunflower follows the sun. Their love for each other is so visible and intense, and what they have is so rare, that one can’t help feeling despondent around them, seized by the realization that a bond of such magnitude is missing in one’s own life.

Shams smiled fleetingly. “Every man has a degree of womanliness inside.”

“Especially those, my dear,” Shams said, garnishing his words with a wink and dropping his voice to a whisper, as if sharing a secret.

Shams put his hand on my shoulder, his face so close to mine that I could feel the warmth of his breath. There was now a new, dreamy gaze to his eyes. He held me captive with his touch, caressing my cheeks, his fingertips as warm as a flame against my skin. I was flabbergasted. Now his finger moved down, reaching my bottom lip. Baffled and giddy, I closed my eyes, feeling a lifetime’s worth of excitement welling up in my stomach.

“Numbing the pain is not the same as healing it,” Master Sameed said. “When the anesthesia wears off, the pain is still there.”

some people regarded Shams as a brazen heretic, but if you asked Rumi, he was the moon and the sun.

Grabbing the amber rosary Rumi had left behind, I thanked God over and over again for giving me a true companion and prayed that his beautiful soul would never sober up from the drunkenness of Divine Love.

“Religious rules and prohibitions are important,” he said. “But they should not be turned into unquestionable taboos. It is with such awareness that I drink the wine you offer me today, believing with all my heart that there is a sobriety beyond the drunkenness of love.”

I started The Forty Rules of Love knowing it was a fantastic read, and I was not disappointed. Elif Shafak has a delicate yet powerful way of telling stories, provoking reflection, and reinforcing the idea that empathy, kindness, and love are intrinsic parts of humanity. The stories of Shams of Tabriz and Rumi, as well as Ella and A. Z. Zahra, were so beautifully intertwined, despite the many centuries separating them. This is a book whose plot and lessons will stay with me for a long time.

Arissa

Tsamarah

4.5/5 stars

“Shams is my Sea of Mercy and Grace. He is my Sun of Truth and Faith. I call him the King of Kings of Spirit. He is my fountain of life and my tall cypress tree, majestic and evergreen. His companionship is like the fourth reading of the Qur’an—a journey that can only be experienced from within but never grasped from the outside.”

I, too, want to have love as great as Rumi and Shams.

As a young muslim, I can definitely see why this is so appealing for me; It showed me another side of Islam, especially Sufism that I am not familiar of.
The writing is beautiful, easy to read but still poetic at the same time.

One of the few books that made me cry with how beautiful it was. 

Aadya J 

Ozge Kara

Bu kitabı belki üç kere, belki beş kere okudum. Bitirir bitirmez tekrar okumak istedim. Elbette kusurları vardı ama çok teşekkürler Elif Şafak, çünkü ben bu kitabı kalbimde hissettim.

E-thar

لن أعلق عليها كثيراً لأنى لا أجد ما أقوله ، ولكن هذه الرواية لديها ميزة وهى 
أنها تتعارض مع مواريث وثقافات كثيرة فى مجتمعاتنا
ويمكن أن تصدم البعض وقد يعتبرها البعض هى الكفر المحض ،
ولكن لا نستطيع ان نقول أبدا أنها سيئة.
فهى فى الحقيقة رواية ملهمة ، لا تتركك ابداً كما كنت ، فهى تتركك مع رغبة ملحة فى البحث والقراءة عن الصوفية والشخصيات الواردة فيها سواء أحببت هذه الشخصيات أم كرهتها ، فى كلا الحالتين ستبحث عن ما يؤكد وجهة نظرك عنهم وعن افكارهم سواء سلباً أو ايجاياً..
أحببتها وأحببت شمس التبريزى ولكن ليس بالضرورة متفقة مع كل ما ورد فيها.
أنقصت نجمة لأنى غير متأكدة تماما من الأحداث الواردة فيها والعبارات التى قيلت على لسان أبطالها ، ولكن هى رائعة .
آه ، هناك شئ استوقفني ورد على لسان التبريزى وهو يقول " لنتخيل للحظة واحدة أن الشيطان غير موجود ، 
وأنه لا توجد شياطين بانتظار أن تحرقنا فى قدور تغلى .
فقد وضعت كل هذه الصور المرعبة لترينا شيئاً ، لكنها تحولت إلى كليشيهات مكررة وفقدت رسالتها الأصلية"
السؤال للمترجم هل يمكن أن يرد على لسان شمس التبريزى لفظة "كليشيهات" ؟
ازاااى يعنى !!

haifa

I am not someone who is well versed in Sufism or its traditions, but even for someone as ignorant as am, this was a superficial attempt to desperately interweave two stories with Sufism. Shafak's attempt to make her work more palatable to her western readers' coating a lot of spiritual mysticism into the text is obvious.

Shams' rules of love felt forced into the narration, with no life and philosophy in itself. How could there be when you try and bend historic contexts for the disposability of a modern-day soul-searching being found the author's styling to be weak, never trusting the readers with understatements, always being obvious, lauded with clichés like a NatGeo video to the Arab lands.

Hafsa

I wish I could like this book much more than I did.

sarah

very introspective, offered me a vantage pointbut not ground breaking storytelling

A Novel of Rumi

Félix

A rather blunt story but I think a good introduction to Rumi's poems and Sufism.

This book is AMAZING! This book is a unique one. I loved every bit, such a refreshing way to have a look at the word love. So pure and simple! 

Sairaaa

Sanaa Shaltout

لا قيمة للحياة من دون عشق،،، لا تسأل نفسك ما نوع العشق الذي تريده، ليس للعشق تسميات ولا علامات ولا تعاريف، إنه كما هو، نقي وبسيط....

العشق ماء الحياة.... <3

بقد عاد الله صديقاً لي ... :)

Shrouk Shafie

I don't think it is related to sufisim as much as love itself. Too many details I have seen to be out of islam's prespective. But overall the idea and the way of telling the stories and how the characters speak is new and interesting.

Stephanie Ridiculous

Goodness gracious this book is awful. I don't wanna yuck anyones yum, and most people seem to love this book- but I absolutely cannot understand why.

-It's all the same tone. Our middle age modern midlife crisis mom of 3 in the US and the religious men of ancient of Turkey all talk the exact same way.
-The writing stumbles over itself in its simplistic and modern vernacular. Its over written, clunky, juvenile, and cringey. 
-The waxing philosophical about the meaning of life and love and the divine machinations of it all strive way to far and rarely land. I will give credit to two or three quotes from Shams that are very spot on regarding legalistic approaches to faith, but by and large it just didn't work for me.
-Less objectively bad and more in personal preference, reading about a woman falling into a wildly inappropriate/unprofessional emotional affair and justifying it because her husband has been unfaithful, but never confronting him about it, was not great. 
-Shock factor used for literally nothing other than shock with rape on page and a hermaphrodite brothel owner.
-Shams tells a prostitute who was kidnapped/forced into sexual slavery who is trying to survive in a world that deems womens value based on their purity that people "disrespect her" (i.e. rape her) because she doesn't respect herself. 
-Fatphobia, Islamophobia, questionable rep of various Islamic sects

Richard Palmer

Fantastic book. Could easily be a guide book on love, is insightful into Sufism and openly challenges the inners of religion without being overbearing. I’ve taken an awful lot from it! More than a lot of nonfiction books 

Apurva  Kaul 

Nooshin

‫شاید به‌عنوانِ یک ایرانی که در طولِ سال‌های دانش‌آموزی در مدرسه و غیر از آن بارها و بارها ماجرای شمسِ تبریز و مولانا را به روایاتِ مختلف شنیده است نتوانم دیدِ عادلانه‌ای به این کتاب داشته باشم، ولی باید نظرم را بنویسم!
‫کتاب ترکیبِ جذّابی‌ست از زندگی‌های زنی میانسال در آمریکای قرنِ ۲۱ و مولانا و شمس. هر فصل از کتاب را شخصِ متفاوتی روایت می‌کند. گاهی یک فصل فقط متنِ یک نامه است، گاهی راوی دانای کل است و گاهی حتّی یک نوچه‌ی سرای درویش‌ها. این نوع روایت باعث می‌شود نثرِ کتاب خسته‌کننده نباشد، ولی از طرفِ دیگر داستانِ کتاب (تکرار می‌کنم برای فردِ آشنا با ماجرا) فراز و فرودِ جدید و غیر قابل پیش‌بینی‌ای ندارد، حرفِ جدید و جذّابی برای ارائه به خواننده هم.
‫کتاب ‐ همان‌طور که از اسمش پیداست ‐ سرشار است از «قوانینِ» شمس تبریز. بعد از قانونِ دهم تقریباً هر بار دیدنِ متنِ ایتالیکی که مخصوصِ آن‌ها بود آزارم می‌داد، بیشتر یادِ کتاب‌های self-help می‌افتادم تا حقایقِ زندگیِ یک صوفی. این هم می‌تواند ناشی از تفاوتِ عقایدِ معنوی‌ام با نویسنده‌ی کتاب باشد، امّا از دیدِ من نویسنده‌ی توانا باورِ متفاوت با باورِ خواننده‌اش را نیز می‌تواند به‌شیوه‌ای بیان کند که جذّاب و خواندنی باشد و خواننده را به تفکّر وادارد.
‫با این وجود، کتاب برایم در حکمِ آرام‌بخشِ ملایمی بود که برای فرار از واقعیّت به‌سراغش می‌رفتم. فضای قرنِ هفتم به‌خوبی تصویر شده بود و لحنِ شخصیّت‌ها خیلی خوب درآمده بود. از خواندنش لذّت بردم، ولی بیش از لذّت‌بردن خسته شدم و از ۷۰٪ کتاب به‌بعد مدام در انتظارِ تمام‌شدنش بودم.

---------
پ.ن: ‫متنِ انگلیسیِ بسیار خوب و روانی داشت. به خوانندگانِ تازه‌کارِ ترسیده پیشنهاد می‌شود. :)

Arta

I enjoyed the part that is set in the 13th century. I liked the varieties of characters that were described and that it tells the same story from different points of view. 
Didn't care much about Ella's storyline.

Safiya 

Boulversée, et après y avoir longtemps songé, je me devais un review après avoir vécu l'enchantement qui suivait tant de patience. Je n'ai pas l'intention de le prescrire en tant qu'Almanach comme aux temps des Geishas,quoique mon prénom y figurait correctement calligraphié, pour une autre ce serai le signe ultime d'un hasard voulu, donc un signe pour que je m'y attache d'avantage, et ce n'est non plus pour en faire objet de mépris.
La chose qui se présentait le plus à mon esprit dans ces récits entrelacés, entre Tabriz, Bagdad, Damas, Bagdad, Kayesri, Konya, Guantemala.. ( pour une fois ça dépassait mon royaume cognitif, un plaisir), fut la notion de soufisme, bien exposée, docilement domptée en poésie, plus claire que jamais ( serai-ce hérétique si j'avoue que j'ai pour un instant préféré ce récit à l'ouvrage d'Ibn 'Arabi, La voie et la loi ? ). Une histoire d'une fatalité partagée entre deux mondes, ayant en commun la transparente béatitude, bonheur affiché invraisemblable, mais le seul coup d’œil, et les braises d'un profond vide sanglant font surface, que toute tentative d'étouffer, ne faisait que remuer le sel dans la plaie enfoncée. Le vide, qui se présentait de par son absence, s'emparait de ses esprits. En anglais, le titre s'annonce comme suit : The Forty rules of love, il s'agissait plutôt de 40 Mantras de détachement, sans pour autant tomber dans l'indifférence, un manuel vers la quête de soi.
Frappante est la ressemblance, entre ce fil et celui avec lequel Maalouf tissa ses romans, surtout Samarcande et Les Jardines de lumière, même parfum oriental de jasmin et sésame, mêlées aux brises marines gelées nordiques : un voyage du bout au bout. 
Savais-tu que je te serai éternellement reconnaissante ? Ton arrivée aussi brusque que ton départ ne ressemblaient-ils pas à ceux de Shams ? Aurais-je pu deviner que c'était le plus extraordinaire de mes voyages qui commençait ainsi ? 
Sincèrement à toi, ombre d'enfance, souvenir d'insouciance, amie pleine d'assurance,
Merci M... pour le merveilleux voyage.
 ( J'ai commencé par un B, pour tenir la promesse du livre )

Samiha Tasnim

For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet feeling bound to come and quickly go away.






When one speaks ill of God, he speaks ill of himself.






“How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.”






Let us choose one another as companions! Let us sit at each other’s feet! Inwardly we have many harmonies—think not That we are only what we see.






No matter who we are or where we live, deep inside we all feel incomplete. It’s like we have lost something and need to get it back. Just what that something is, most of us never find out. And of those who do, even fewer manage to go out and look for it.






But let us not forget that cities are like human beings. They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die.






Cities are erected on spiritual columns. Like giant mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents. If those hearts darken and lose faith, cities will lose their glamour. It happens, and it happens all the time.






It is not the ceremonies or rituals that make a difference, but whether our hearts are sufficiently pure or not. 






Loneliness and solitude are two different things. When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path. Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror. Remember, only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.






Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.






God is busy with the completion of your work, both outwardly and inwardly. He is fully occupied with you. Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed. God deals with each of us separately because humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the entire picture.






Despite their seemingly endless differences, all of these people gave off a similar air of incompleteness, of the works in progress that they were, each an unfinished masterwork.






“Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.”






The whole universe is contained within a single human being—you. Everything that you see around, including the things you might not be fond of and even the people you despise or abhor, is present within you in varying degrees. Therefore, do not look for Sheitan outside yourself either. The devil is not an extraordinary force that attacks from without. It is an ordinary voice within. If you get to know yourself fully, facing with honesty and hardness both your dark and bright sides, you will arrive at a supreme form of consciousness. When a person knows himself or herself, he or she knows God.






If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.






We were all created in His image, and yet we were each created different and unique. No two people are alike. No two hearts beat to the same rhythm. If God had wanted everyone to be the same, He would have made it so. Therefore, disrespecting differences and imposing your thoughts on others is tantamount to disrespecting God’s holy scheme






How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.






...all religious wars were in essence a “linguistic problem.” Language, he said, did more to hide than reveal the Truth, and as a result people constantly misunderstood and misjudged one another. In a world beset with mistranslations, there was no use in being resolute about any topic, because it might as well be that even our strongest convictions were caused by a simple misunderstanding. In general, one shouldn’t be too rigid about anything because “to live meant to constantly shift colors.”






Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness.






“A man who has no time for stories is a man who has no time for God,” he said. “Don’t you know that God is the best storyteller?”






...all I can give you is the present moment. That is all I have. But the truth is, no one has more than that. It is just that we like to pretend we do.






“It is never too late to ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?’ “Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death.”






By and large over time, pain turns into grief, grief turns into silence, and silence turns into lonesomeness, as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans.






You need to keep walking, though there’s no place to arrive at. The universe is turning, constantly and relentlessly, and so are the earth and the moon, but it is nothing other than a secret embedded within us human beings that makes it all move.






“A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western.… Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. “Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! “The universe turns differently when fire loves water.”

Olivera Mitić

ovo je za ljude što vole Jedi, moli, voli

Hala Abdulaziz 

Kinnari 

If it doesn't change you at the end of it, or at least doesn't make you wonder about self and love and the world. You haven't read it right.
Also please take your time with the book, you'll enjoy it that much more.

Adiya 

I really don't get the point of this book, it's misleading and boring. The title should've been 40 Ways To Bore Your Readers.

Yana Khalid

This is the kind of book I would’ve never picked up or finished if it wasn’t for a challenge I’m in. Tho it wasn’t anything like I normally, I enjoyed it and I’m surprised by it!! 
The writing was so magical and somehow calming. The story kept me interested from start to finish.
I kind of wanted to skip through Shams and Rumi’s story because it was boring me but i loved Ella’s story so much.

Forty Rules of Love

Reviews

Highlights