Mathnawi

Mathnawi (Arabic: مثنوي‎ mathnawī) or masnavi (Persian: مثنوی‎) is a kind of poem written in rhyming couplets, or more specifically “a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines”. Most mathnawī poems follow a meter of eleven, or occasionally ten, syllables, but had no limit in their length. Typical mathnawi poems consist of an indefinite number of couplets, with the rhyme scheme aa/bb/cc.

Mathnawī poems have been written in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish and Urdu cultures. Certain Persian mat̲h̲nawī poems, such as Rumi’s Masnavi-e Ma’navi, have had a special religious significance in Sufism.