All the King's Falcons draws out Rumi's distinctive and creative insights into Islamic religious culture by focusing on his treatment of prophets as instruments in God's communication with humankind. But there is more to Rumi's views of revelation than meets the eye, for he does not view the prophets, from Adam to Muhammad, merely as historic individuals who lived and died. Stories and images of the prophets provide this mystic and poet with a way of communicating his rich awareness of the reality of the divine message.

John Renard is Professor of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. He is the author of In the Footsteps of Muhammad: Understanding the Islamic Experience and Islam and the Heroic Image: Themes in Literature and the Visual Arts.