Women through the mirror of Persian poetry (Part V) Mowlana Jalal Al-Din Mohammad Balkhi (III)

Mowlana’s positive and negative approaches to women being studied in the previous two parts of the article, the symbolic representation of women in his works is elaborated in this issue. Woman in Mowlana’s poetry is symbolized as divine love, spirituality, earth, and fertility, on the one hand, and corporeality, sensuality, worldliness, and cupidity, on the other hand. This contrastive symbolization of women is due to the duality of Mowlana’s views on women, which is rooted in the historical culture of the Muslims’. The next section of the article deals with Mowlana’s conduct towards women in his private life and social relations. This section best represents Mowlana’s conception of women, which is unique among mystics and poets.