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Mashrabaمشربة

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Welcome

Mashraba is a free reader for classical texts, Arabic above all, with Persian, Greek, Syriac and Chinese beside them. Tap any word to see its root, and every claim shows where it comes from.

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Recent posts

Each post comes from a passage in the reader. Open it there to see every word, its root and its sources.

  • A pink rose and a nightingale painted in Iran in 1856, with the opening lines of Shabistarī's Gulshan-i rāz set over it.

    Carousel

    Shabistarī's rose-garden, in seven couplets

    Seven couplets from the Gulshan-i rāz (1317), each over a rose-and-nightingale painting: the lamp of the heart, the world as a mirror, a hundred seas in a drop.

    Read it in contextSee it on Instagram

  • The cover of a nine-slide study of one couplet of the Gulshan-i rāz, on the word insān, the little figure seen in the eye.

    Deep dive

    The eye: insān in Shabistarī's verse 140

    One couplet read slowly: why Arabic calls the pupil "the human of the eye", where the word insān comes from, and the Qur'anic verse behind it.

    Read it in contextSee it on Instagram

  • A Persian miniature of Alexander lowered into the sea, the cover of a nine-slide study of Nāṣir-i Khusraw's couplet on the sea and the pearl.

    Deep dive

    Nāṣir: the sea and the pearl

    Nāṣir-i Khusraw on reading scripture: the outward of revelation is salt like the sea, its inner sense a pearl. A slow look at the word taʾwīl, "to return".

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Share a line yourself

An example share card: the opening couplet of Shabistarī's Gulshan-i rāz in Persian on a deep indigo ground, with its English below and the source line.

Any line in the reader can become a picture to send to a friend or post to your own story. Open a verse or a passage, tap the “⋯” beside it, and choose Share as image.

You pick the shape (feed or story) and the look (indigo or paper). The card holds the original in its own script, the English where we may show it, and where it comes from. It is drawn on your own device; nothing is uploaded.

If a line moves you, please pass it on.

Try it on the opening couplet of the Gulshan-i rāz

Hear when new texts are published

Occasional news of a new text or a new layer. If there is a text you would like to read here, say so below.

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