Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī (Persian: نورالدین عبدالرحمن جامی; 7 November 1414 – 9 November 1492), also known as Mawlanā Nūr al-Dīn 'Abd al-Rahmān or Abd-Al-Rahmān Nur-Al-Din Muhammad Dashti, or simply as Jami or Djāmī and in Turkey as Molla Cami, was a Persian Sunni[2] poet who is known for his achievements as a prolific scholar and writer of mystical Sufi literature.

He was primarily a prominent poet-theologian of the school of Ibn Arabi and a Khwājagānī Sũfī, recognized for his eloquence and for his analysis of the metaphysics of mercy.

[3][4] His most famous poetic works are Haft Awrang, Tuhfat al-Ahrar, Layla wa Majnun, Fatihat al-Shabab, Lawa'ih, Al-Durrah al-Fakhirah.

[7] A few years after his birth, his family migrated to Herat, where he was able to study Peripateticism, mathematics, Persian literature, natural sciences, Arabic language, logic, rhetoric, and Islamic philosophy at the Nizamiyyah University.

[9] While in Herat, Jami held an important position at the Timurid court, involved in the era's politics, economics, philosophy and religious life.

[2] Because his father was from Dasht, Jami's early pen name was Dashti, but later, he chose to use Jami because of two reasons he later mentioned in a poem: مولدم جام و رشحهء قلمم جرعهء جام شیخ الاسلامی است لاجرم در جریدهء اشعار به دومعنی تخلصم جامی استMy birthplace is Jam, and my pen Has drunk from (knowledge of) Sheikh-ul-Islam (Ahmad) JamHence in the books of poetryMy pen name is Jami for these two reasons.Jami was a mentor and friend of the famous Turkic poet Alisher Navoi, as evidenced by his poems: او که یک ترک بود و من تاجیک،هردو داشتیم خویشی نزدیک.

[3][4] He remained a staunch Sunni on his path toward Sufism and developed images of earthly love and its employment to depict the spiritual passion of the seeker of God.

[3][15] He began to take an interest in Sufism at an earlier age when he received a blessing by a principal associate Khwaja Mohammad Parsa who came through town.

[18] In analyzing Jami's work greatest contribution may have been his analysis and discussion of God's mercy towards man, redefining the way previous texts were interpreted.

[20] His poetry has been inspired by the ghazals of Hafiz, and his famous divan Haft Awrang (Seven Thrones) is, by his own admission, influenced by the works of Nizami.

[22] Jami uses allegorical symbolism within the tale to depict the key stages of the Sufi path such as repentance and expose philosophical, religious, or ethical questions.

He completed this work perhaps around 1485, and in it he moves the emphasis from stories about Alexander's journey and conquest to short anecdotes that display notions of wisdom and philosophy.

In the last half-century, Jami has begun to be neglected and his works forgotten, which reflects an overarching issue in the lack of research of Islamic and Persian studies.

[15] Shortly after Jami's death, and with the reconfiguration of borders, the emergence of the 'Persianate world' with empires such as Safavid, Uzbek, Ottoman, and Mughal: his works were disseminated as far as to regions such as the Deccan.

[31] However, contemporary scholars perceive the usage of this word in a more transnational fashion, i.e., also take into account all the regions wherein Persian as a language, culture, and tradition flourished and developed.

Despite the politics of language and geo-cultural identity, Jami was well recognised in the Indian subcontinent, during his lifetime prior to the consolidation of the Mughal Empire.

The first Mughal emperor Zahir al-Din Babur, in his memoir Baburnama, referred to Jami as the "foremost authority of the age in all of the sciences and as a poet of such renown that the mere mention of his name is a source of blessing".

[31] According to British-American professor of Persian Studies Hamid Algar, it was not Jami's ghazals or qasidas, but masnavis such as Yusuf and Zulaykha that were thought of so eminent insofar subsequent Mughal emperors post-Babur like Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan produced their own versions of the narrative as late as the nineteenth century.