Mathnawi (Arabic: مثنوي, mathnawī) or masnavi (Persian: مثنوی, mas̲navī) 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. Other influential writings include the poems of Ghazali and ibn Arabi. Mathnawi's are closely tied to Islamic theology, philosophy, and legends, and cannot be understood properly without knowledge about it. Source: Wikipedia (en)