IBN AL-FARID BY A. J. ARBERRY

 

CHESTER BEATTY MONOGRAPHS

No. 5

THE POEM OF THE WAY

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE FROM THE ARABIC OF IBN AL-FARID

BY

A.  J. ARBERRY

LONDON

EMERY WALKER LIMITED

41 GREAT RUSSELL STREET

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD BY CHARLES BATEY, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION                                       pages

TRANSLATION                                                9

NOTES                                                             75

BIBLIOGRAPHY                                             88

INTRODUCTION

Sharaf ad-Dïn  Umar ibn ^cAlî as-Sa<dï, familiarly called Ibn al-Fârid or the Notary’s Son, was bom at Cairo in a.d. ii8i, ten years after the final extinction of Fatimid rule in Egypt, and six years after the formal recognition of the accomplished fact of Saladin’s supremacy. His life of a little less than fifty-four years fell within a period of great military, political, and intellectual activity. He himself had but few material adventures; dedicated from early man­hood to the mystic’s way of withdrawal from the world, he was utterly satisfied in later days to remember with ecstatic pleasure the pilgrimage he made to the Sacred Places of Arabia, and to meditate upon the union with the Spirit of Muhammad which he then experienced. When he died on 23 January 1235, he left behind him the memory of a holy life sur­rendered to the Will of Allah, and a small collection of exquisite poetry.

Ibn al-Farid’s greatest and most justly celebrated work is the Nazm as-sulük, the ‘Poem of the Way’ which is here translated. This has been described by R. A. Nicholson as ‘not only a unique masterpiece of Arabic poetry but a document of surpassing interest to every student of mys­ticism’. The original consists of 760 couplets all rhyming together upon the verse-ending -ti, a fact which explains its alternative title at-Ta’iyat al-kubrâ (‘The Greater Ode in T’). It was extremely rare for Arab poets to exceed even 100 couplets in a single poem; the epic length of the Nazm as-sulük is entirely without parallel, and considered only as an example of rhyming virtuosity it must be accounted most remarkable. The metre is tawtl, scanned as follows :

saqatnï | humaiyâ l-hub|bi raha|tu muqlati

wa-ka’sï | muhaiyâ man | ‘ani l-hus|ni jallati

The great theme of the poem is the mystic’s quest for and realization of his identity with the Spirit of Muhammad, and thereby the absorption of his individual personality into the Unity of God. Ibn al-Fârid brought to the treatment of this theme, the focal meditation of the Muhammadan mystic, a great wealth of metaphysical learning and poetic imagery. His style, like that of some modern poets, presupposes in the reader a ready familiarity with a wide repertory of reference ; and this fact, combined with a deliberate complexity and intricacy of syntax, often leads him into obscurity which is at times barely comprehensible. He was moreover heir to a literary tradition which prized highly extravagant embellishment of rhetoric ; for example, in the first line of his poem which has been quoted above there is a conscious verbal pattern in the occurrence of the words humaiyd and muhaiyâ (this figure is known to the theorists as jinâs maqlüb), and in the juxtaposition of râhatu (‘hand’) and muqlatl (‘The pupil of mine eye’). Scarcely a line of the entire poem is without some ornament, and in some lines the decoration is as fine and tightly woven as filigree.

The aesthetic effect created by this sharp contrast between the repeti­tion of strongly dominating themes and their almost endless elaboration in minute detail of patterned variation is precisely similar to the im­pression conveyed by a monumental building decorated with delicate arabesque tracery. The resemblance is not accidental ; for Ibn al-Farid’s style, not excelled in its kind by any other Arab poet, represents the consummation of the same artistic impulse which culminated (with building materials instead of words and images) in the Alhambra’s per­fect balance between strength and subtlety. It obviously follows from this brief appreciation that his poetry is untranslatable, if by translation is meant the reproduction in the foreign language of not only the mean­ing but also the artistry of the original.

Ibn al-Fârid thus presents a peculiarly stubborn problem to one who seeks to render what he says and how he says it into another idiom. Despite the help—if that be not a euphemism—offered by the several Arabic commentaries which claim to hold the key to his frequent enigmas (and in their more candid mood the commentators admit themselves defeated not seldom, and put forward merely tentative solutions), it must still be confessed that the poet’s intentions are on occasion intellectually undiscoverable. There are passages in which he seems to write in a kind of sensual trance, fascinated by the shapes and sounds of the words with which he is playing, struggling desperately to arrange them into some semblance of sense. Even in his most opaque moods, however, he never fails to rescue his reader from total bewilderment by a following line or two of almost transparent simplicity, so that the thread of the argument need never be wholly lost. This alternation of darkness and clarity creates a sustained tension and excitement in the reader’s mind, unfortunately not at all communicable to those unable to follow the original.

The first European scholar to attempt the translation of this poem was the German orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. He printed an edition of the text in the beautiful nasta'liq fount belonging to the old Imperial Press of the Hapsburgs, and he put what he understood Ibn al-Farid to mean into rhyming German verse. This enterprise, which came out at Vienna in 1854, has been summarily dismissed by R. A. Nicholson, most charitable of scholars, as worthless ; a fair verdict on a brave failure. S. I. di Matteo, the Italian amateur, made the second trial in 1917; he had the humility not to attempt rhythm or rhyme, but his scholarship was unequal to the task, and the gentle C. Nallino tore it to shreds in a very learned review. Then R. A. Nicholson marshalled his mature and experienced powers to the third endeavour; his honest literal version of three-fourths of the poem, expertly and illuminatingly anno­tated, forms the concluding section of his brilliant Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge, 1921). Finally, Maria Nallino found among her father’s papers after his death an unpublished prose translation, similar in scholarly austerity to R. A. Nicholson’s, of a little more than one-half of the whole ; and this has now been printed.

Though I had long been fascinated by the Nazm as-sulük and all too well apprised of its difficulties, it never occurred to me that I should chance my hand also at its interpretation, until I happened to hit upon a manuscript of Ibn al-Farid’s poems in the library of my generous friend Mr. A. Chester Beatty, a copy which substantially antedates all other known codices; I have given a description and transcription of this manuscript elsewhere. By one of those strange coincidences which al­most persuade a man to believe in destiny, I had the luck at about the same time to pick up in an obscure bookshop a copy of the very rare edition (published in the East in 1876) of the oldest and most detailed commentary on the poem, that written during the latter half of the thirteenth century by Sa'ïd ad-Dïn al-Farghânï, an instrument which had not been available to R. A. Nicholson. With these two new sources of information in my hands, I felt a little less diffidence about the possibility of taking the interpretation of Ibn al-Farid one further stage ; and having studied the evidence now before me, I resolved to make the fifth attempt.

My first essay was to render the poem into a line-for-line equivalent in a sort of loose tawll, so far as that lilting rhythm can be imitated in our unquantitative English ; and I published a fragment after this fashion in my Sufism (Allen & Unwin, 1951). But it quickly came home to me that liberties like these could not well be taken with poetry so mannered and elusive as Ibn al-Fârid’s. The pedestrian prose-renderings of R. A. Nicholson and C. Nallino, admirable products of high scholarship that they were, advised me against following that path if Ibn al-Fârid were ever to be read by more than a handful of erudites. Von Hammer- Purgstall had signposted a monumental warning against rhyme. There remained our great English heritage of blank verse, a medium equal to every shade of darkness or clarity the craftsman could desire ; and that was the making of this try. If I have abandoned as inappropriate the line- for-line technique, at least I have striven deliberately to match obscurity with obscurity, and light with light ; seeking at the same time to shadow the sustained tension which I have remarked as so outstanding a feature of the original.

This version as it stands stark is therefore frequently unintelligible without recourse to the notes appended to it. If these notes do not resolve every purposed tangle, this is because I have set myself to rival Ibn al-Fârid’s own enigmas, the solutions of which are to be sensed rather than reasoned. I feel myself to have sensed solutions to every riddle, keeping always clearly in my mind the strongly dominating themes which are the poem’s massive framework.

TRANSLATION

^■■i ^he pupil of mine eye stretched forth its hand I To grasp my bowl (her matchless countenance Transcending mortal beauty) and therefrom

JL Poured me the fever and the flame of love,

5 While with my glance I gave my friends to think Draining their juice it was that filled my soul (And I intoxicated) with deep joy;

Yet having eyes to drink, I could dispense With that my goblet, since her qualities

io And not my wine inebriated me.

So in the tavern of my drunkenness The hour was ripe that I should render thanks To those the lads by whose conspiracy My passion could be perfectly concealed

15 For all my notoriety. But when My sober mood was ended, boldly I Requested union with her, being now No more inhibited by clutching fear But wholly unrestrained in love’s expanse;

20 And privily, as when a bride unveils Before her bridegroom, I disclosed to her All my heart’s story, having none to share And spy upon my joy, no lingering trace Even of self-regard. So, while my state

25 Attested my tom passion, as between Annihilation in discovery

Of her my love, and re-establishment

Shocked by the loss of her, I pleaded thus: ‘Give me, ere love annul in me a last

30 Poor relic of myself, wherewith to look Upon thee—give me but one fleeting glance As turning casually upon thy way!

Or if thou wiliest not that I should gaze

At thee, grant to mine ear the blessed grace

35 Of that Thou shalt not wherein ere my time Another once rejoiced; for I have need Imperious, in my spirit’s drunkenness, Of that twice sobering, by which my heart Except for passion were not fragmented—■

40 And if the mountains, and great Sinai Itself among them, had been made to bear The burden of my anguish, even ere The revelation of God’s splendour flashed They had been shattered—passion tear-betrayed,

45 Ardour augmenting those the inward flames Whose sick-bed fevers made: an end of me.

So was the Flood of Noah as my tears When I make moan, the blaze of Abram’s fire My passion’s scorch. (Only my sighs prevent

50 My overwhelming in that surge of tears, Only mÿ tears deliver me alive

From my sighs’ holocaust.) And for my grief, Jacob expressed but the least part of it, And all Job’s sufferings a fraction wefe

55 Of my dire torment; as for those who loved Constantly unto death (in legend famed), Their final agony might scarce have served To be the prelude of my tragedy.

Or had the guide heard in his ear my sigh

60 When in the throes of throbbing sicknesses That tortured this my passion-wasted flesh, Haply my grief might have recalled to mind The critical distress of travellers

Stranded untimely, when the caravan

65 Is reined, the racing dromedaries strain Unto the track. Affliction unrelieved Hath harassed and destroyed me utterly; Emaciation hath revealed the last Deep-hidden mystery of my truest self.

70 For, drunken of my wasting, I regaled My new-found intimate, the attentive spy, With all my secrets, and the detailed score Of my most private life. An abstract thought, No more, was all that I appeared to him,

75 My essence being brought to such a pass As he might not descry it, so the woes Of burning love obliterated it;

And though my tongue spake not, the fluttering thoughts Within my soul whispered into his ear

80 The secret of those things my soul had sought The most especially to hide from him.

Thus to my thought his ear became a mind Wherein my thought revolved, and thus his ear Sufficed him for the lack of visual sight;

85 Thus he bore news to all within the tribe Openly of my innermost affairs, Being right intimate with my estate, As if the angels who record all deeds Had come down out of heaven to inspire

90 His heart with knowledge of whatever tale Is written on my scroll. Nor had he known What I was veiling, what dark mystery Well-guarded in my bosom lay concealed, Save that my body’s curtain being drawn

95 Disclosed that secret of my inmost soul

It had till then most strictly screened from him.

And in my secret too I had remained Invisible to him, but that the sigh Gasped by emaciation’s feeble lips

ico Divulged it: so it was the malady Whereby I had been hidden from his eyes Itself displayed me—truly passion brings All things most paradoxical to pass. But then my agony surpassed all bounds:

105 The whispered thoughts within my soul, like tears That had betrayed me, smitten by that pain Dissolved to nothingness. Had loathsome death Purposed to seize me, it would not have known To find me, being made invisible

no By my resolve to hide my love for thee. Torn between longing and intense desire As now thou tumedst thy back repelling me And now revealedst thyself before my gaze, I wholly passed away; and were my heart

115 Restored me from thy court, as being now Annihilated, never had it yearned For such a lodge of exile. This I tell To thee in part is but the frontispiece Of my long story, and below it lies

120 A sequel far beyond me to declare.

So in my impotence I hold my tongue On many things, that never by my speech Shall be enumerated; and did I Open my lips, I could but tell of few.

125 My cure itself was nigh to perishing,

Nay, passion doomed its death: the cooling draught That would assuage my thirst found raging yet The fever of my drought unquenchable.

My heart was grown more ragged than the robes

130 Of my long-suffering, nay more, my self Itself was linked in naughting with my joy;

So, had I been revealed in verity

Unto my visitors, and had they learned Scanning the Tablet what was left of me

135 By ardent passion, nothing more their eyes

Would have beheld of me except a ghost Pervading yet a dead man’s cerements.

And since the hour my tracks were blotted out And I became a wanderer distraught,

140 My mind was filled with vain imaginings About my being, and my thought yet failed To light on my existence. Afterwards My spirit’s state, as loving only thee, Subsisted of itself, my proof whereof

145 Is that my vital spirit did exist

Long ere my frame corporeal was knit.

And so I told the story of my love

For thee, not grown impatient of my woes Or restless in the turmoil of my mood,

150 But to dispel my spirit’s agony:

For comely is it to show fortitude Before one’s foes, unseemly to display Aught but incompetence to the beloved. (And yet the excellence of my fortitude

155 Prevents me from complaining, though indeed Had I protested to mine enemies

They would have satisfied my deep complaint.) That I endure with patience, loving thee, The burden of that love, shall issue fair

160 Hereafter win; but that I should endure To lose thee, that were little praiseworthy. Now every pain in love, if it appear From thee, to it I offer all my thanks And no complaining; whatsoever woe

165 Befalls me is a grace, let my resolve

Be but secure, my knotted vows yet tied;

Yea, though the torments of too ardent love Assail me, they shall be for dear love’s sake Reckoned as blessings. All my misery

170 And tribulation, being wrought by thee, I count a benefaction, and to wear

The garment of affliction for thy sake Is grace abounding. That eternal bond Of loyalty to thee hath made me view

175 As best of treasures what is given me As from the worst of fellows: railing one, The other slandering—the former seeks To guide me into negligence astray, The latter babbles still his jealous lies

180 About me and about. I stand opposed Against the first’s reproach for awe of God, As equally by caution moved I stand Beside the second’s pettiness and spite. And never terror of encountered woe

185 Deflected me from following thy path, Nor all the malice there afflicting me.

Nor was it self-restraint that made me bear

All that beset me on thy dear behalf To qualify me for applause, or prove

190 My love deserving praise: thy loveliness, That summoneth all hearts to worship thee, Decreed that I should suffer and with joy What I have told, and all the furthest reach That stretches sequel to my history.

195 And this was all: that thou didst show thyself To me in thy most perfect attributes Exceeding mortal beauty, and didst make Affliction my adornment, free entire

For me to wear, the which, as come from thee, 200 Proved my most fair and glorious ornament.

He who is lured by loveliness, behold How from the most delightful life his soul Is yielded up to death most willingly: But any soul that thinketh not to meet

205 Suffering in love, and offereth itself To passion thus, findeth itself rebuffed. No spirit given over to repose

U

Ever won true affection; loyalty Escapes the spirit loving ease of days.

2io Ease—how remote it lieth from the life Of constant lover! Eden’s heavenly bowers Are set about with dreads most horrible. Mine is a noble spirit—offer it Rewards beyond the boundaries of desire

215 But to forget thee, yet it could not dare To let thy memory go; be it removed Far from thy side, by exile, hatred, scorn, Abscission of all hope, it would not yield The precious prize of love I call my own.

220 I have no other way that I may go Going from love away, and if I swerve One day therefrom, I shall forswear my faith; Or had a stray desire for other love

Than thine chanced in my mind though unawares

225 Then were I proved apostate, self-condemned.

Thine be the arbitration in my case:

Do what thou wilt, for never have I yearned To turn away, but only unto thee.

Now by that firm-knit love between us twain

230 Wherein no fancy ever intervened

Of abrogation (O most solemn oath) ;

And by the covenant of holy troth

Which thou didst take, what time I had not yet Appeared in manifest and outward guise

235 As of a spirit clad in my clay’s shade;

By that primeval pledge, unaltering Since first I took it, and the latter bond Too sacred to be loosed by ardour dimmed; By the uprising of those lights that shine

240 Upon thy countenance, before whose gleam Resplendent every moon is lost to sight; By that thine attribute of absolute

Perfection, whence the loveliest, shapeliest form

In all creation manifest derives; As by thy quality of majesty That doth my torment unto pleasure turn And make my very slaying seem most sweet; As by the secret of a loveliness Thy emanation, the sole origin And perfecting of every elegance In all the world for ever visible;

As by a beauty every intellect Leadeth into captivity, my guide Unto a passion wherein grace most fair My humbling was, for thy exalting’s sake: As last by an idea in thee (the which Transcendeth beauty) through itself I viewed, Too subtle to be seen by vision’s eye— Thou truly art my heart’s desire, the goal Of my long quest, the far and final end Of my soul’s search, my choice and chosen one. It is my bounden duty to cast off All modesty, for thy sake (though my kin Scorn to draw nigh me), yea, immodesty Is now my sacred law; and no true folk Of mine they are, while they will disapprove My recklessness, and manifest their hate, And see fit to abuse me, for thy sake.

Nay, those my kindred are (within the fold Of love’s religion) who do truly love And, loving, are content with my disgrace And my dishonour deem most excellent. Then let who will be wroth, save only thee: It cannot hurt, so be it they approve Of me who are the nobles of my tribe. If but some part of thy fair attributes Be thought as apt ascetics to enchant, The whole of thee my fascination is.

I never was bewildered, till I chose

28o Thy love to be my faith; and ah, if thou Wert not the cause of my bewilderment, How great would my bewilderment have been!’ ‘Nay, thou hast sought another’s love, not mine’, She answered. ‘Thither blindly purposing

285 Thou didst forsake my straight and narrow way: Dupe of a soul puffed up with vain desires, Prey to imposture, in whate’er thou saidst Thou puttest on the infamy of a lie, Daring to covet the most precious boon

290 And thine a wayward soul that passed its bounds In arrogant aggression. How indeed Shouldst thou attain affection’s best, my love, By mean pretence, the worst of qualities ?

Shall dim Suhâ be seen of eyes born blind,

295 Confused into oblivion of their goal ?

’Twas thy vain hopes deceived thee, until thou Hast taken up thy stand upon a point Transcending thy true rank, what time thy foot Exceeded not its small environment;

300 Thou wast ambitious to attain a height How many folk have stretched their necks towards And been struck off! Thou earnest unto tents Not to be entered upon netherwards

Whose doors are barred against the like of thee

305 Come knocking. Thou wouldst whisper privily Into mine ear, for which high privilege (A glory scant indeed to realize) Thou broughtest for thine offering empty gauds, Aye, and with shining face, not letting slip

310 The least part of the honour thou wouldst hug In earth and heaven, seeking my pure love Thou earnest to me thus. If thou hadst been A thin-drawn line marking the vowel i Beneath the dot of b, be it through me,

315 Thou shouldst have been exalted higher far

Than thy unaided strength might struggle to, There to perceive not worth a single thought What formerly thou thoughtest of account, And all thy preparation scarce enough

320 To count provision. Clear the roadway runs, For all who are right-guided, unto me: ’Tis men’s desires for ever blind men’s eyes. Now it is time that I disclose to thee The nature of thy passion, and for whom

325 Thou languishest, as so thy false pretence To love me is disproved. True, thou art sworn To ardour; but thy ardour is thyself, Whereof in demonstration I would cite Thy sparing of thyself an attribute

330 Yet to survive. Till thou hast passed away Wholly in me, thou hast not loved me true, And till my form is manifest in thee Thou hast not passed away. Then have thou done With false pretending love; summon thy heart

335 To other occupation; drive away

Thy error with that state more excellent.

Avoid the courts of union: far indeed

True union is, and never was as yet Thou livest: if thou art sincere, then die!

340 For such is love: thou gainest never goal In love, except thou die. So choose thou that: Die, or let go my love, and leave me be.’ Whereat I said to her: ‘Behold, my soul Waiteth upon thee; it is thine to take;

345 What matters it to me, that it should hap Within my hands ? I am not one to hate Death for dear love; faithful unto the end Is still my wont; all else my nature scorns. And what might now be said of me, except

350 “Such a one died of love” ? Or who is there Can guarantee me this, my soul’s desire ?

Yes, it would please me well to have my term Determined, yearning yet and union yet Not mine, if so my lien on thy love

355 Be shown well-founded; or if I should fail In fact to prove some claim on thee (too high Such honour being), it sufficeth me For boast to be suspected of thy love. And if I die, unsuspect, of my grief

360 Yet shalt thou not have wronged me, since my soul Delights in martyrdom; enough for me, If thou shalt shed my blood and I not count As martyr, that the motive of my doom Be known to thee. My spirit, as I think,

365 Scarce merits to be spent as price to win Union with thee, for any difference Betwixt reserve and prodigality With so slight asset. I am well at ease Before the threats of death, whose terrors else

370 Shake down the fragile pillars of man’s joy. Thou didst not wrong my soul in slaying it; Rather thou gav’st it succour, if thereby Thou didst destroy my life-blood, and if true This omen is, thou hast exalted me,

375 Enhanced my worth, marked up my market-price. Lo, I invite thy doom, and bid thee work Thy pleasure: I seek not my span of days To be prorogued. Whate’er thou threatenest I take as fairest promise, which fulfilled

380 Fulfils the aspirations of a friend

Who standeth firm before whatever blow Save to be sundered far from his beloved.

So I have come to hope what other men Shrink from in fear: succour therewith the soul

385 Of a dead man prepared for endless life! ’ Now let me be her ransom, by whose grace I did aspire to love, treading the path

Of them who went before me, and refused All laws of life but mine. In every tribe How many fell her victims, slain by grief, Who never won upon a single day Even one glance at her! How many men Like me she slew of passion, and had she Gazed in compassion on them, every one Had stood revived! Now if she make my blood Lawful to shed, and that I loved her well, Upon the heights of exaltation, yea The pinnacles of honour she hath set My rank secure for ever. By my life, If I do lose my life in loving her I win the bargain; if she waste my heart Yet shall she after heal it whole again.

I was humiliated in the tribe Through her, until I found myself, in their Esteem, too mean-aspiring to attain The least worth striving; my subservience To them debased me to obscurity Matching my feebleness, so that they deemed Me too contemptible to serve their will.

So I have fallen, after all my pride, Down from the heights of glory to the deeps Of degradation; lost my self-respect, Men no more press my gate, nor put their hopes In my authority; no neighbour comes To me for shelter from the world’s despite. It is as if I had been never held In honour by my fellows, but was still Despised, alike in hardship and in ease. Had any asked, ‘Whom lovest thou ?’ and I Boldly declared her name, they would have said, ‘He means another, surely’, or ‘Poor man, A demon madness hath assailed his brain!’ But had it not been possible to be

For her abased, passion would not have been

425 So sweet to me, and had I never loved, Abasement would have never been my joy And glory. Now my state, because of her, Is thus adorned: the reason of one crazed, The health of one oppressed by malady,

430 Humiliation’s pride. In secrecy

My spirit whispered to my secret heart How it desired to love her, where my mind Could not be spy; for I did fear the tale Might so transport my rest, that my shed tears

435 Would babble in their fashion and declare My precious secret. Thus one part of me Sought to deceive another, guarding close This thing within me, though in truth my lie In hiding it proved my veracity.

440 And then, as my first thought refused to show This secret to the ribs within my breast, I kept it from my meditating heart;

I strove my all for its concealment, and

So well that I forgot it, and was moved

445 Quite to forget concealing this same thing My spirit whispered to me. Now if I In planting these desires shall pluck the fruit Of suffering, O wonderful the soul That in desiring suffers! Of all hopes

450 Moving the loving soul, that is most sweet Whereby the one who caused it to recall And to forget doometh its suffering. She took a part of me and set it guard For her against me, watching my heart’s thoughts

455 If they drew near with love; and if they steal From my imagination secretly Into my mind, naught hindering, in awe And reverently I cast down my head. Mine eye is closed, if I essay one glance,

460 And be my hand stretched out familiarly To touch her, ’tis restrained; in every limb Of me is a like eager reaching out, And a like fearful drawing back by force Of veneration. So my mouth and ear

465 Exhibit in me all the jostling signs Of rivalry, that manifest as in Self-sacrificing mercy on my soul: As when my tongue recites her name, if then Mine ear displays its quality thereto

470 And is not deaf, my tongue straightway is stilled, Or if my tongue bestows upon my heart The mention of her, being not the slave Of silence, then mine ear becometh stopped. Jealous am I for her, being distraught

475 With love of her, yet knowing my poor worth

I do disown my jealousy. My soul Is rapt thereafter in an ecstasy Of perfect joy in her, though even yet I cannot hold my spirit innocent

480 Of inwardly conceiving a desire.

Mine ear beholds her, far indeed though she Be from mine eye, in the pale visitant Of phantom blame, the while I lie awake;

Or let her name be mentioned, then mine eye

485 Deemeth mine ear too lucky, and my rest Envieth that she did efface in me.

I led my leader, in reality,

And all mankind behind me stood arrayed: Whither I faced, there my true facing was.

490 My sight saw her before me as I prayed, My heart meanwhile beholding me imam Of my imams; and this scarce wonder was That he who led the prayer led towards me, Since she, the qibla of my qibla, lodged

495 Within my heart; and all directions six

To me had been directed, and therewith

All acts of piety and pilgrimage

Greater alike and lesser. (Unto her

At Abram’s station I perform my prayers 500 And therein witness that to me she prayed:

We twain are one at prayer, prostrating one, United, to his own reality

In each prostration.) None had prayed to me

Except myself, neither were my prayers said 505 In every genuflexion save to me.

Then how long shall I hug to me my veil ?

Lo, I have rent it, as ’twas in the bond Of my primeval compact I should loose The curtain’s locks. This gift of loyalty

510 To her was given me upon that day

When no day was, ere she appeared to me

At the high covenant, in my primalcy: This loyalty I gained neither by sight, Nor hearing, nor acquiring, nor the pull

515 Of nature, but I was distraught with her

In the supernal world of the Command

Where naught is manifest: I drained the cup Of high intoxication, ere by birth

In this created world. The attributes 520 Dividing us, whereof none there survived,

Love here annulled and naughted utterly.

And I discovered with my inward eye That which I had rejected from myself Issuing unto me, and out of me

525 Proceeding forth; and I did contemplate Myself by those same attributes whereby I from myself was veiled, alike when I Was present, and in occultation too;

And I was whom I loved without a doubt, 530 That same for whom my soul had to myself

Referred me; while my self myself had loved Distractedly and unawares, although In contemplation not in ignorance Of where the truth resides in this affair.

535 And now the time is come that I should tell In more particular what I have said Succinctly, and more briefly summarize What I have detailed, that I may spread forth My wider scope. My taking her to love,

540 Thanks to our unity, bestowed on me Rare subtleties and most exceptional To lovers’ habitude. The slanderer Slanders me to her, but for my own sake, While he who blames me on account of her

545 Manifests in her presence and through her The goodly counsel he intends for me.

I give her thanks abounding (and before She never hated me), while she accords Me bounteous kindliness because my love

550 Was proved sincere. I offered up myself To win her favour, counting it for her Alone, and hoping for no recompense From her; but she did draw me nigh to her. Forthwith I proffered all that should be mine

555 In my hereafter, with whatever she Might think to give me; in sincerity I left behind me all regard for that, Being unwilling my self-interest Should be the beast to bear me unto her.

560 In poverty I sought her, yet was rich In having poverty my attribute, Wherefore I cast away impoverishment Alike and riches. When to jettison My poverty and wealth assured to me

565 The merit of my quest, I thrust aside My merit also, and therein appeared Evident my good fortune: she who would

Reward me (and naught else) became my prize.

And now through her, but never through myself, 570 Continued I to guide to her all those

Who of their own sweet will had gone astray From passion’s path; and she the true guide was. Leave then to her, my friend, thy heart’s desire; Give her thy leading-rope, a soul at peace

575 In her. Be empty of all selfish whims;

Rise from thy slough; thereafter stablish thee Firm-fixed, and thou shalt flourish mightily. Keep on the way of righteousness; draw nigh, Hold firm to her; direct thee unto her

580 Obedient, with the goodly penitence

Of a true, contrite heart. Return right soon; Answer her (for she calleth), and refrain To say, ‘Tomorrow I will gird my loins In earnest resolution to arise’.

585 Be sharp of edge as trenchant Time itself, For hatred lies in ‘haply’ ; and beware, Say not ‘Perchance’, that is a malady Most perilous. Rise up to please her well; Labour, nor seek for respite or relief;

590 Yield not to weaknesses that let the hour Of duty pass. Though thou art palsied, walk, And rise, though thou be broken; for thy lot Is worthlessness, if thou defer resolve Unto the day of health. Go boldly forth;

595 Put forward all for sake of which thou sat’st Among the laggards; issue from the chains Of idle heeding of the idle show.

Cut with the sword of resolution strong T shall’; if thou run swiftly in the race

600 Thou shalt win respite; giving of thy all Thy soul shall win to fortune infinite. Turn thyself unto her: to her direct Thy steps, in utter bankruptcy: herein

I have comprised (if thou wilt but accept

605 My testament) all counsel that I know. No rich man ere drew nigh to her, for all His striving, nor remote from her thereby Any remained who poverty preferred: Such is the law of love, which all obey

610 Who have to do with love—a band of men Fulfilled their compact, and were paid in full. When blows the gale of self-sufficiency It strips the man of substance; had it fanned His poverty, the tender plant would thrive.

615 The right hand richest in prosperity Reaps the reward of cutting knives, if it Be outstretched eagerly in love, to clutch At union. Whatsoever works are pure And pious, let them all be unto her

620 Wrought, and escape thereby from self-regard In that thy poverty. Do thou oppose The promptings of vain talk, and free thyself From the impediments of empty claims Whose purpose is in truth the quest of fame:

625 The tongues of those men call most eloquent Of gnostics, having given voice to all Expressible in words, are fallen dumb.

What things thou hast not uttered, thou thereof Art apt possessor, but so long as thou

630 Speakest, a stranger: wherefore hold thy peace! In silence lies a way wherein resides The dignity of a remainder; yet Whoever deems that dignity the best Object of silence, doth become its slave.

635 Then be thou sight, and see; ear, and retain; Be thou a tongue, and speak; since union is The most direct of paths. Follow thou not Him who is led into a vain conceit By his base soul, that thereby takes control

640 Of all his actions, waxing powerful.

Leave all but her, and set aside thy soul Which is among her foemen; refuge take Against it with the doughtiest of shields. My soul ere now reproachful was; when I

645 Obeyed it it rebelled, let me rebel And it obeyed me. So I brought it down To drink of what the easier draught were death, And wearied it, till it might give me ease.

And it became disposed to bear what loads

650 Soe’er I charged it with, and was sore grieved If I should lighten them; I tasked it well, Nay, I took care my soul should task itself And found strange fondness for my suffering, Forsook all pleasures in amending it

655 And strove to set it far from its old wonts, Until it was at rest. No more remained Of terror yet before it, but I rode Boldly upon it, for so long as I Witnessed my soul was still unpurified.

660 Each station I traversed upon that way Was an ascetic exercise, the which I fully realized in servanthood.

Till now I had been passionate for her;

But when I yielded up what I desired

665 She did desire, and love me, for herself.

So I became a loved one, nay, in love With my own self, yet not upon the mode I said before my soul is my beloved;

Through her I issued from myself to her

670 Nor to myself came back; and one like me Holds not to any doctrine of return. Generously I set my soul apart From my forthgoing, and consented not That it should ever more consort with me;

675 For all, while I was made unconscious of

My soul’s detachment, in such fashion that No manifesting of an attribute

Jostled me in my presence; and when she

Appeared, ’twas given me to contemplate 680 My occultation, and I found myself

There to be she in the unveiling of My privacy; my being was effaced In my beholding, and I was detached From my beholding’s being, blotting out 685 And not establishing. And I embraced

(In the sobriety that subsequent

To my intoxication came on me)

That I had contemplated, even in

The blotting-out of what was to behold, 690 What time it was to be beheld anew.

In the sobriety that followed on

The blotting-out, I was not else but she;

When she unveiled herself, my essence took My very essence for investiture.

695 And now I will display my origin

In that my unity, and bring to end

My final ending in the bending low

Of my high exaltation. In the time

When she unveiled herself, she did unveil 700 All being to my gaze, and I did see,

Self-seeing, her in all things visible.

My attribute, since we are not called two,

Is likewise hers, my aspect, seeing we

Are one, her aspect. When her name is called 705 I answer, and if I am summoned she

Replies to him who calls me, crying Lo

Labbaika! If she speaketh, it is I

Who do converse, as likewise when I tell A history ’tis she that doth narrate.

710 Removed between us twain has been the ta That marks the second person, and in its

Removal stands my raising up above The sect who separate the one from one. But if (it being to deliberate

715 A matter so remote) thy mind refuse To take as feasible and to affirm The possibility to see two one,

I will unveil and demonstrate to thee

Hints to this view erst hidden, that shall prove

720 Plain as expressions unequivocal.

Now to this matter. Since it is no time

For ambiguity, I will expound

In words sufficient strange the truth thereof

With twofold explanations, drawn the one

725 From hearing, and the other one from sight.

I will confirm my speech with evidence Citing the parable of one who speaks The truth (and my sole stay is verity)— A cataleptic woman, by whose mouth

730 Another (she by madness being touched

And of a devil seized) informeth thee: In language that upon another’s tongue Proceedeth, evidences of the proofs

Of what we say stand proven clear and true, 735 Since it is known for certain that the one

Who uttereth the strange things thou dost hear Is other than herself, though in the sense Of sense, true, she herself did utter them.

Hadst thou been one, thou wouldst have come to feel 740 By mystic intuition this I said

As true; but (didst thou know it) thou art prone

On secret polytheism, with a soul

Far-strayed from truth’s right-guidance, and in love Whoso to union with the one he loves

745 Impediment discovers, falls to burn A polytheist in the consuming flames Of separation from his heart’s beloved.

’Twas only otherness did mar in thee

This high estate; if its pretension were 75° Truly effaced from thee, thou shalt stand firm.

So was I for a while, before the veil

Of that confusion was removed, not yet Released from dualism: now by loss In contemplation reuniting me,

755 Now scattering me in discovery

Of being. Whilst my intellect, attached

To my self-presence, separated me,

My deprivation (being rooted out

In my self-absence) joined me up anew. 760 I thought sobriety my lowest point,

And drunkenness my ladder up to her, And my annulment the remotest reach Of my approach to the lote-boundary;

But when I cleared the cloud from me, I saw 765 Myself recovered, and the eye in me

Refreshened by the essence; and no more Stood I in need of drunkenness, since I Was now recovered (being separate A second time) ; henceforth my union is 770 One with my unity. (Then labour thou

Within thee, and thou shalt behold of thee Beyond what I have pictured a great peace Born of a calm secure.) So, after I Had laboured, I beheld that I beheld

775 Contemplatively, and that guided me

To me, was I, nay, I myself was proved

Mine own ensample: when I stood, I stood Before myself, nay, when I turned I turned To me, as likewise to myself I prayed

780 And I was my own Kaaba. Be thou not Entranced by thy sensation or beguiled By thy self-admiration, dedicate

To the confusion sprung of heedlessness.

Forsake thou separation’s error, since 785 Union produceth guidance, as that sect’s

Who after oneness strained in rivalry.

Boldly proclaim, Beauty is absolute, Nor deem it finite as awhile bemused By tinsel ornament. Whatever youth 790 Is comely, or whatever maid is fair,

Their beauty of her loveliness is lent

For them to wear; of her was Lubna’s Qais Distraught, nay, every lover—as Majnûn Laila’s poor madman, or as Azza’s fond

795 Kuthaiyir—each and every one of them

Yearned after her ambiguous quality Clothed in a form of beauty, radiant In beauteous form. Nor was there other cause Save that she showed her in phenomena

800 They thought were other, yet she did reveal Herself herself in them. She showed herself By veiling, and herself concealed from view Through manifest phenomena, by way Of variable tints in every time

805 Of issuing upon the stage of life.

Thus at the first creation she appeared To Adam in the outward guise of Eve Before the rule of motherhood began, And he desired her ardently, that he

810 Through her might be a father, and the rule

Of sonship (through the husband and the spouse) Might be established: thus the origin

Of mutual love between the outward forms While yet was there no opposite, with hate

815 To stand between them. Ceased she never since

To manifest (and hide) for various cause According to the times, in every age: In every form of ambiguity

She showed herself to lovers, wondrous fair

820 Her shapes of beauty. Now as Lubna she Appeared, now as Buthaina, and again She was called Azza, Azza well-beloved. Other than she these were not, nor became Other: in her transcendent loveliness

825 She hath no partner. So by virtue of Oneness (as she displayed herself to me In all her beauty, clad in others’ forms) I too appeared to her in every swain Swayed by sweet love for beauty of a youth

830 Or maiden fair, bewitching; nor were they Else than myself (though they preceded me In passion), since through all the ancient nights I went before them. In my love of her The folk are no way other than myself;

835 But I appeared through them in every shape Ambiguously—this time I was Qais, Anon Kuthaiyir, and again Jamil Buthaina’s lover; I to outward eye Revealed myself in them, yet inwardly

840 I veiled myself in them. Then if thou wilt Marvel at this unveiling by a mask! No idle fancy this: those the beloved And these the lovers—men and maidens all Were our appearances, wherein we showed

845 Ourselves in all our love and beauty bright. Each youth who ever loved, that youth was I, And she was his beloved, whoe’er he be, All being names of vestures, nothing more— All names, whereby myself in truth was named,

850 And I myself unto myself appeared Through a self-hidden spirit. Evermore I ceased not to be she, and she was I Without distinction; nay, my essence loved My essence. There was naught in all the world

855 Beside me, save myself; besidedness

Never occurred to my sagacious mind.

Now by this hand I swear: it was not that My soul had fear of other than myself Or hoped for any other’s charity,

860 Nor that it did anticipate the shame Of some obscuring of my high renown Or sought the glory of men’s faces turned In gratitude to me, but solely this I purposed—by my valour to repel

865 The adversary come to make assault

On the high stations of my succouring friends; And for this cause alone I turned again To the accustomed acts of piety

And took for my accoutrement the states

870 Meet for discipleship. I had recourse To my old godliness again (and I Had flung aside all modesty long since) ; Abandoning the gay abandon of My wild dilation, I betook myself

875 To the contraction of a chaste reserve.

I fasted all my day as one who hopes For a reward in heaven; all my night

I watched in prayer, as fearing chastisement;

I occupied my hours with litanies

880 (Waiting on inspiration), silently

(As meet and proper), in devout retreat (So reverence required). I went apart From my familiar haunts, as one who breaks Migrating links of old companionship,

885 And chose my own society, alone.

I meditated scrupulously on

What lawful was to strictest abstinence, Guarding my strength, no more, in setting right My provender; I spent abundantly

890 The riches of contentment, satisfied With a mere minimal sufficiency

Of worldly pleasure. Thus I trained my soul With discipline, proceeding to unveil What sensual habitudes had overlaid:

895 Thus I fulfilled my high resolve, to live Detached in utter abstinence, preferred In my devotion to attain the rank Of answered prayer. Yet when did I recant My statement T am she’ ? Or when should I

900 Profess—far be it from the like of me!— She came to dwell in me? I do not seek To pass thee over to some occult thing, To some absurdity that would imply Negation of all perspicacity:

905 How should such tales of error me affright, Seeing my certitude remaineth based Squarely upon the Holy Name of Truth? Behold, the faithful archangel, when first Our Prophet’s inspiration came on him,

910 Came to our Prophet in the fleshly form Of Dihya: tell me then, was Gabriel This Dihya, when he manifested thus To our true Guide to guidance ? That he knew Beyond contention the identity

915 Of him he saw, proveth superior

His consciousness to theirs who stood him by. He saw an angel that revealed to him;

The others saw a man, full reverend

As one who kept the Prophet’s company.

920 In the more perfect of these visions twain

I have an indication, which acquits

Of all pretences incarnationist

My simple creed. ’Tis not to be denied The Scripture speaks of covering, and I

925 Go not beyond the twain authority Of Holy Book and Apostolic Word. This much of knowledge I have given thee:

If thou desirest its unveiling, come

Seek thou my path, and make beginning now 930 Of following my Law; for Sadda’s fount

Springs from a water whose abounding well

Is found in me; tell not to me the tale

Of some mirage a-shimmer in some waste!

Behold the ocean, wherein I have plunged 935 While those aforetime halted on its shore

Guarding the locus of my sanctity:

Draw ye not nigh the orphan's property—

That is a reference to a hand held back

When it was stretched to take it; and none else 940 Beside me ere attained to aught of it

Except a youth, who never ceased to tread Upon my steps in hardship or in ease.

Then stray not from the traces of my path,

And fear the cloud that shadows o’er the heart 945 Who chooses other than myself; strive on

Upon my very road; her friendship’s vale, O friend of heart serene, runs in the march Of my command, and enters ’neath my sway. For lo, the kingdom of love’s high degrees

950 Is my possession; the realities

My army are, and lovers every one

My subjects. Youth impassioned! I have gone Apart from love, as one who deemeth love To be a veil (for passion is beneath

955 My grade), and I have overpassed the bounds Of amorousness; love is now become Even as hate; henceforth my journey takes For starting-point the terminus of my Ascension unto oneness. Then be glad

960 In passion: thou hast seized supremacy

Over the best of creatures, who serve God

In every nation. Gain these heights; be proud Surpassing the ascetic, whose ascent

Was won by outward works, and by a soul

965 Self-purified. O’ertake the heart oppressed By its great load of ancient precedents And intellectual wisdom, which cast off ’Twould make but little weight. Take unto thee The heritage love’s kinship hath secured

970 Of the sublimest gnostic, whose chief care Was to prefer his aspiration leave

Its mark upon mankind. Be haughty; sweep The clouds beneath thee with thy lover’s skirts Trailed o’er the topmost of heaven’s Milky Way

975 In pride of union; wheel thou round about The grades of oneness, neither turn aside Unto a squadron that have spent their lives To other end. The solitary sword Of oneness is himself a mighty host,

980 The rest a rabble vanquished by a proof Most eloquent; seek its significance To win thee nigh, then live therein, or die Worn out upon the quest, still following A folk who strove before thee to that goal.

985 For thou art worthier of this glory high Than he who labours zealously in hope And fear; no wonder, if thou shake thy sides Swaggering past him in supreme delight And sweetest joy, seeing the qualities

990 Thereto attributed, and the names thereof— How many men that were obscure before Those have elected, and these lifted up !

Yet thou, there where thou art, art still afar From me: the Pleiades do scarce consort

995 With lowly Earth. Thou hast been step by step Led to thy Sinai, and hast attained

Beyond thy sphere, whither thy soul ne’er dreamed To adventure: here thy limit is: here stay, Or if thou do advance beyond this term

looo Soever little, thou shalt be consumed With flaming brands. Exalted is my rank Beyond e’en envy’s emulating grasp: High o’er thy range soars my beatitude. All men are Adam’s sons, but I alone

1005 Among my brethren have attained supreme Sobriety of union; for mine ear Is Moses’ ear, my heart intelligenced By the most glorious vision of an eye Ahmadian. Of every spirit mine

1010 The Spirit is; whate’er of beauty thou Beholdest in the universe doth flow Out of the bounty of my natural clay. Leave then to me the knowledge that was mine Especially ere I was manifest

1015 (And my companion-prophets knew me not Yet in the seed); assign me not the name Desirer in that company, for he Yclept Desired-of-her (as being rapt) Hath need of my protection. Banish all

1020 Such names of honour from me; mouth them not Babblingly; they are signs all fashioned forth By one I formed. Withdraw my soubriquet Of Gnostic; for the Holy Book declares If thou approvest bandying of names

1025 Thou shalt be hated. My least follower Received in his heart’s eye in nuptial joy The virgin-brides of gnosis ; he hath plucked The fruit of mystic knowledge from a branch Of understanding that by following me

1030 Flourished (and springeth of my nature’s root), So, being asked of any concept, he Answereth wondrous sayings which transcend All comprehension, yea, too subtle are To be imagined. Neither call thou me

1035 The One Brought Nigh (out of that company),

Which epithet I hold (in virtue of Union achieved) most sinful severance: My joining is my separating, my Approximation is my distancing,

1040 My love is my aversion, and my end Is my beginning. For her sake indeed (By whom I have equivocated on Myself, yet I intended none but me) I have stripped off my name, my epithet,

1045 My style of honour, and advanced beyond Where those aforetime halted, and such minds As by material gains were led astray Perished. There is no attribute in me (For mere description is all attribute

1050 As name is but a sign) ; if therefore thou
Desirest to allude to me, make use
Of styles of honour, or of epithets.

And then I mounted up from T am she’ To where is no unto: all being I

1055 Perfumed with my returning. I came back From T am I’ for inward wisdom’s sake As for those outward ordinances I

Established for my calling. The far goal Of those enraptured neophytes of her

1060 Passion, and the extremest reach of these Passion desired, is where I stood before Before I turned: the apogee of them Who (as they thought) outstripped me is in truth The lowest depth of earth that bears the trace

1065 Of my tread’s fall: the topmost pinnacle Beyond allusion, whence in higher climb None may ascend, is where my foot first fell. None knoweth, save he knoweth of my grace, Nor any speaketh in existence all

1070 Except upon my praise. No wonder then If I am master over all who went

Before me, having grasped the firmest stay To Taha. My saluting her is thus But metaphorical; my greeting is

1075 From me unto me, in reality.

Now the most excellent I found in all My loving her, when passion first began (And that my passion every marvel showed) Was my appearing (and I first concealed

1080 My state) reciting in exultant joy

For her, my state no longer being hid: ‘She stood revealed before me, and I saw True resolution in the breaking of My erstwhile penitence; the agonies

1085 I suffered for her sake were fair excuse As judged my reason; my security Against my body’s wasting of her love Was the desires of hope, the which at first She freely gave, but after miserly.

1090 The body’s restoration (sickness-won In loving her) is health indeed thereto: The soul’s destruction is true chivalry. My death in passion’s ecstasy for her Is sweetest life, and if I do not die

1095 In love, I live for ever in death’s throes.

Then O my heart, in amorous transport melt, And O my ardent pains, dissolve me so; O fire within my vitals, straighten by Thy flames the curvatures of my bent ribs;

1100 O my fair fortitude, unfaltering

Accord thee with her pleasure whom I love, Nor succour Fate to triumph over me. O my long-suffering, as obedience Unto her love requireth, still endure

1105 (May faintness overpass thee!) every woe;

O wasted body, seek oblivion Of any cure; O liver, who will be

My warrant thou shalt not be wholly crushed?

My sickness, let no single gasp survive mo In me, for I have scorned the indignity

Of living on, that so I may be spared To live with her in glory. O my health, Our old companionship hath come to end, And thy association with one dead 1115 Among the living is as banishment.

O all that languor yet hath spared of me, Depart: no refuge in my crumbling bones Remains for thee. O any part of me I haply might imagine to address

1120 With O the vocative in my heart’s heart,

I am become familiar now to be

Estranged from thee. Whate’er thy pleasure is (And death itself be lighter to endure) I am content therewith, since love aflame 1x25 Hath made me so contented. For my soul

Was vexed not love destroyed it all in pain, Since such impatience had been following Ensample not mine own. In every tribe Whatever living man because of her 1130 Is as one dead, believeth to be slain

Of passion is most gloriously to die.

In her are all desires united; none

Thou seest but is ardent for her, naught

But ardour knowing. If upon a day 1135 Of festival she casteth off her veil,

The eyes of every tribe crowd eagerly

To view her beauty; for their spirits yearn To glimpse the meaning of her loveliness, What time their pupils in a garden dwell 1140 Filled with her beauty. I count every day

My festival, whereon I contemplate With jocund eye the loveliness of her Sweet countenance; and every night, if she

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Draw nigh, is that miraculous Night of Power, And holy Friday every day we meet. My running to her is a Pilgrimage, And every standing suppliant at her door Equals a standing on Mount Arafat. Whatever of God’s lands is her abode I count it not (so fair ’tis to mine eye) But Mecca. Whatso place embraceth her Is Sacred Precinct; every house she dwells Within I deem a House of Holy Flight, Where she inhabits a Jerusalem Whose joyous vision cools the fever of My burning heart. Where’er she trails her robe There is my Furthest Mosque, my fragrant scent Whatever sod her feet have trodden on.

Haunts of my joys, watch-tower of my desires, Boundaries of my longings, safe retreat From all my fear—such are the loved abodes Where Fate came not between us, neither Time’s Vicissitudes us parted treacherously, Nor did the days endeavour to disperse Our union, nor the nights doom cruelly Our sundering. No sudden overthrow Calamitous assailed us at the dawns, No accidents of Fortune spake with us Upon disaster. Not with blasphemy Discoursed the slanderer anent repulse And banishment, nor the reviler spread His slimy whisperings of severance And consolation. Waked not watcher’s eye, Nor ceased mine own to watch me for her sake And love’s account. No time was singled out For joy above another: all my times Were seasons of rejoicing and delight.

My day was all a vesper, if its first Soft hours exhaled a sweet response from her

ii8o Unto my greeting; and my night therein Was dawn entirely, when the redolence Of a sweet breeze was wafted unto me From her within those hours. If e’er at night She came to me, my month was all through her

1185 Converted to a wondrous Night of Power Exultant in her visitation: if

She ventured nigh my dwellings, all my year Was temperate Spring in meads luxuriant. If she be pleased with me, my life is all

1190 A season of sweet fancy, and the age Of amorous youth. Truly, if she unites The sum of beauties in a single form All subtle meanings I behold therein: Truly, my heart has gathered all desire

1195 For them, a passionate glow informing thee Of every youthful ardour. Why should I Not vaunt myself (on her account) above All who pretend to passion ? Why should I Not overleap all limits in my boast

1200 Of such high honour and felicity?

For lo, I have obtained from her above What ever I expected, or could hope Such near propinquity, and sundering’s self Humiliated by her grace o’erwhelming me

1205 With benefits surpassing all desire.

At morning as at evening I was seized With love for her, and in what beauty she Went forth at dawn, so came she back at night: Had she bestowed on all humanity

1210 Save Joseph of her beauty but a part In no prerogative excelled he them.

I brought and laid upon her beauty’s hand The whole of me, and her benevolence Accepting the exchange doubled to me

1215 My every union; every particle

Of me beheld her beauty, and therewith In every glance rotated every eye; My every subtlety applauded her

On every tongue prolonged in every word;

1220 I drew her perfume in with every nerve Comprising every nostril breathing in All wafts of air for ever; every part Of me (wherein was every ear contained Of every listener attentive) heard

1225 Her words; my every portion kissed her veil With every mouth whose touch held every kiss. Had she dissolved my body, she would see In every separate atom every heart Inhabited by every human love.’

1230 And now the thing most strangely excellent

I found in her, and the munificence Of revelation lavished upon me

(And that unveiling drove away all doubt) Is that with union’s vision I behold

1235 My every adversary is in truth

My true confederate, and his repulse Even as affection: he that did revile Loved (and reproached) me (all of jealousy), And he who slandered was distraught for her

1240 And therefore wronged me, spying upon me. ’Tis seemly then I thank the slanderer, While the reproacher well her goodness knows, And all are marks of my beneficence.

Others than I praise others; others turn

1245 (Not I) from self to others gratefully;

I thank myself; the goodness springs from me Unto myself; my self alone concerns Itself with this my being one with her.

And there be matters veiled, the veil whereof

1250 Through a recovering sobriety

Was wholly raised for me, yet they remained

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Concealed from all beside me: none may noise These things abroad save forfeiting his blood, What though allusion a significance Possesses that expression ne’er defined. The mystic comprehends me when I speak Obliquely (not requiring what I say Should be explicit) lest one trip me up. Now the beginning of my exposé

Is those same twain who sought to be the means Of parting me (though union doth defy My separation): they are one with us In union’s inner truth, albeit we In outward segregation count as four.

For truly she and I are essence one;

The twain who slandered her, and turned away From her, are attributes self-manifest.

The one the theatre of spirit is Guiding contemplatively to the rim Of its uprising, manifest in mould Spiritual; the other succoureth The soul, the which he urgeth with a song To her companions existentially In form material; and he who knows Like me the figures as they truly are, No infidelity confuses him

Upon his guidance, when he would remove Doubt’s grave perplexities. My essence then Embraces with delights particular And general the sum of all my worlds In broad replenishment of unity. Bounteously it poured its overflow While yet was no capacity to gain, And ere the world was ready to receive It was prepared to give. So in the Soul The forms of existentiality

Rejoiced, while in the Spirit were refreshed

The spirits of the world contemplative. My state of contemplation (as between The slanderer who to his rising runs And the reproacher succouring his friends With goodly counsel) witnesseth my state In mystic ecstasy, the twofold draw Of the decree of my eternal home And of that place wherein my judgement is Enacted; and the correspondence of The twofold images the senses five Impart confirmeth by proof positive The negative of ambiguity.

Before my purpose, listen while I tell The mystery my spirit secretly Received from them, and did communicate. Whenever the idea of beauty in Whatever form appeareth, or the voice Of one bowed down by grief is lifted up In loud lament to text of Holy Writ, My thought beholdeth her with fancy’s eye And with the ear of my intelligence My memory heareth her; my faculty Imaginative as in pictured thought Presents her to my spirit, sensibly My understanding deems her at my side. Then I do marvel at my drunkenness Withouten wine, and very inwardly I maken joy, rejoicing of my self;

Danceth my heart; the tremble of my limbs Clappeth as one who chaunteth, and my soul Melody maketh. Still my spirit was fed With manifold desires, my faculties For all their weakness striving to their goal Till they were fortified. Herein I found What things soe’er had being did conspire To aid me (though the aid was of myself),

So that my every organ might unite

1325 Me with her, and the root of every hair Comprise my union; that the robe of our Estrangement might be stripped (yet found I it Naught other than familiarity).

Now note (and turn away from formal lore)

1330 How sense transmits to soul what she reveals

By inspiration unpremeditate:

Whene’er a breeze borne through the night from her Wafteth at dawn sweet-scented, to my soul It bringeth her remembrance, and mine ear

1335 Respondeth joyfully when doves do sing

And warble through the forenoon on green boughs The selfsame message; if at eventide The lightning-flashes recollect her tale And do convey it to my heedful sight

1340 Mine eye is gladdened; that sweet memory The wine-cups lavish on my lips and throat Touching and tasting when the bowl comes round To me at night; and so my heart conveys Her recollection (as an inward thing)

1345 Unto my ribs through this external means Delivered by my members’ messengers. And he who in the assembly chants her name Brings me before her, and the while I hear With all my being I do gaze on her:

1350 My soul soars to the heaven whence my soul Was breathed in me, what time my theatre Soul-fashioned stoops unto its earthly kind. So part of me is drawn to her, and part Draws to itself, and in each draw a tug

1355 Of mortal agony: the cause whereof

Is but my spirit calling back to mind

Its essence true as from her spirit breathed When she inspired it. So my spirit yearned To hear the allocution all alone

While in the barrier of this dust confined And each was tugging, tugging at my reins. An infant will inform thee of my state, Though he grow up a stupid, by some sort Or revelation inspirational And native insight; in his swaddling-clothes Tight-wrapt he whimpers, longing fretfully To be delivered from excessive pain; Soothed by soft lullabies, he lays aside All weariness that had afflicted him And listens to his soother silently Harking; the sweet speech sways him to forget His bitter grief, recalling to his mind That secret utterance ages long ago.

So by his state he illustrates the state Of mystic ecstasy, proof positive Confirming to the dance the negative Of imperfection; when the lullaby Stirs him to yearning, till he fain would fly Unto his primal home, rocked to and fro He is appeased, the while his nurse’s hands Swing him a-cradle. I myself have felt In ecstasy that agonizing tug (As when the chanter’s modulated tones Bring her to mind, or the shrill singer’s notes) He knows, who in life’s final agony Is cruelly wracked, the messengers of death Dragging unto themselves his soul a-gasp. So he who being driven to depart Suffereth anguish, comparable pain Knoweth to his distressful ecstasy Who yearneth for his comrades; as the soul Of that one leaneth after that whereby It manifested, so my spirit soared To its high origins. My spirit passed The gate that barred my trespassing beyond

Union, and soared whither no union’s veil Remaineth. Whoso chooseth in my train That gate to be his quest, let him like me Ride resolute in purpose masterful.

1400 How many an unfathomable deep

I plunged into (ere I did penetrate

That gate), whereof the meanly suppliant

For wealth was never sprinkled by so much As one short gulp! Now I will show thee it 1405 Within the mirror of my words, if thou

Art resolute: give heed to what I say:

Unstop the hearing of the inward eye.

And I spat out all boastful utterance

(For jealous scruple), all self-interest 1410 In whatsoever action, all regard

In any deed for goodly recompense,

All preservation of my ghostly states

From stain of self-adornment, all my fine Sententious eloquence—I banished all

1415 With true resolve disinterestedly,

As likewise my rejecting all regard

For my rejecting in whatever part.

Therefore my heart a temple is, wherein

I dwell; before it, as from out of it, 1420 The manifesting of my attributes

(As of my occultation), and of these

My right hand is a pillar, kissed within

Myself and, for wise purpose, in my mouth

The kiss proceeding from my qibla falls.

1425 About myself in spirit and in truth

My circumambulation is; I run

From my Safa unto my Marwa, all

My face’s sake; within a sanctuary

(That is my inward) all my outward part

1430 Is safe, what though my neighbours round about Are in dire danger to be snatched away.

By solitary fasting from all else

But me my soul was purified, and gave

As alms my grace’s superfluity.

1435 The doubling of my being in my state Contemplative became, when I awoke Out of my slumber, in my unity Single; as in the duties general Of Holy Law my travel is, so too

1440 Is the night-journey of my inmost soul

Unto myself from truth’s particular.

For all my godhead I do not neglect The ordinances of my theatre,

Neither forget I in my manhood him 1445 Who made my wisdom manifest. From me

The bonds were firmly knotted on the soul, By me the boundaries of sense set up.

There came to me a messenger from me Sore troubled by my wilfulness, concerned 1450 Compassionately for my well-being;

Therefore I executed the command Given me by my soul upon my soul Which, taking over charge of its affairs, Turned not its back. Since that primeval time 1455 Of the High Covenant, before the age

Of my created elements, before

The warning was delivered men should be Ready for resurrection, to myself

I was a messenger myself dispatched 1460 Unto myself, my essence being led

By my own signs to me. When I transferred The soul from the possession of its earth (By right of purchase from her) to the realm Of Paradise—and well the soul had fought 1465 And died a martyr’s death for the beloved And, having paid in full, had won the joy Of covenanted contract—then my soul

Soared with me (since my union was complete) Beyond its heavenly immortality

1470 (Neither was I content to lean towards The earth of my vicegerent) ; how indeed Should I consent to enter underneath My own possession, like my kingdom’s friends, My followers, my party, my true train ?

1475 For neither is there heaven, but therein An angel from the light within my heart Bestoweth guidance by my sovereign will, Nor any territory, but thereon Out of my outward’s superfluity

1480 Falleth a drop, from whence the clouds outpour. Beside my dawn the far-diffusing light Is but a flash; great Ocean like a drop Beside my fountain-head. All me all me Each seeks the other and is turned toward;

1485 Part me part me is drawing as with reins.

He who is over under, over all Under him being, to his guiding face Is all direction turned submissively;

Earth’s under is the ether’s over since

1490 That I did cleave is closed-, and cleavage of The closed is but the outward of my way. Confusion is not, since that union is Certainty’s essence; nor direction is, For space is separation’s difference;

1495 Nor number is, since numeration cuts

Like a sword’s edge; nor time, for limiting Is polytheism of determinant;

Nor any rival, this world or the next, Dooming destruction unto that I built

1500 And whose commandment ruleth my command In exercise of judgement; opposite

None in both spheres of life, for thou shalt see Among created beings not a sign

Of incongruity in equal shape

1505 And form of being. From myself appeared As to myself what I unto myself Rendered ambiguous, and whatsoe’er Appeared through me from me to me was made To come reverting; in myself I saw

1510 Those bowed in worship to my theatre, And so I realized myself to be The very Adam unto whom I bowed; Among High Heaven’s angels I discerned The spiritual rulers of the earth

1515 Equal alike in rank. My comrades craved From my horizon nigh their guidance true. Yet from my second separation was The union of my unity shown forth;

And in the swoon whereby my sense was crushed 1520 My soul fell down before me, to revive

Ere Moses’ penitence. There is no there After reality is realized,

Since I recovered out of drunkenness

And since the cloud that veiled reality

1525 By new sobriety was cleared away: The end of self-effacement after which Was my conclusion being as the first Of a sobriety, both circumscribed By a like finitude. In one same scale

1530 I measured one obliterated (rapt), Erased, annihilated, against one Cut off and severed in sobriety (Of sense): the dot upon the ghain of ghain (The cloud) was wiped from my sobriety,

1535 The vigilance of 'ain (the eye) of 'ain (The essence) cancelled out my blotting-out. Whoever in sobriety doth miss, In blotting-out discover, is not apt (Due to his alternation) to be fixed

i54° In true propinquity. Equal alike

The drunk and sober are, as qualified Respectively by mark of presence or By brand of hemming; not my folk are they On whom successive fall the attributes

1545 Of ambiguity, the vestiges

Of any remnant; who inherits not

From me perfection, he imperfect is, A turner-back, and bound for chastisement. Naught is in me conducive to disguise

1550 Of any remnant, shadow none is mine To doom me to returning: and yet what May heart deliver in the form of thought Or tongue give mouth to in the mould of speech? Extremes all reconciled were met in me,

1555 The carpet of all other evenly

Rolled up by rule of all-equality;

Annihilated the duality

Of being existential, so became

My existentiality (in the

1560 Continuance of my unicity)

Being contemplative. What is above (The Primal Emanation) reason’s range Is like to what remaineth underneath (The final fistful) dogma’s Sinai:

1565 It was for this the Best of all mankind

Forbade us to prefer him (worthy though He was) to Jonah. I have signified

By all the means expression yields; and what Was covered up, I have made wholly clear

1570 By the last subtlety. The Am I not

Of yesterday not other is to him

Who cometh on tomorrow, since my dark Became my dawning and my day my night: The mystery of Yea—to God belongs

1575 The glass of its unveiling, as to affirm

Union’s reality is to deny

All withness. Now no darkness covers me, No wrong have I to fear: the bounty of

My light hath quenched the fire of my revenge.

1580 And time is not, except where time is not (As time is reckoning by crescent moons), Ready to reckon up the being of My being; one imprisoned in the bounds Of Time beholdeth not what lies beyond

1585 His Hellish dungeon in the Paradise

Of immortality. The heavens turn

On me: stand thou, and marvel at their Pole Encompassing them, not a central point (No more) as poles materially are!

1590 No Pole was there before me unto whom

I should succeed (transcending three degrees), What though the Poleship of the Pegs derives From Rank of Substitution. Trespass not Beyond my straight-drawn line, for mysteries

1595 Lurk in the angles: seize this fairest chance.

From me in me love’s loyalty appeared Within the seed; for me of me the milk Of union’s breasts was poured abundantly.

And the most wonderful of all I saw

1600 In the beloved’s presence (and it sore

Amazed me) (and my heart’s amazement sprang From the inbreathing of the Holy Ghost) (And she had shown her beauty to my gaze So that I was confounded of my mind

1605 Nor did maintain through my bewilderment My outward ornaments) most wonderful I say of all I saw was this: that I

Through her became oblivious of myself, To such a point that I presumed myself

1610 Other than me, nor sought the path direct Leading to my presumption of myself.

And my (in her) oblivion baffled me, And I recovered not my consciousness Nor followed my desire, because of my

1615 Presumption; I became distraught for her, Engrossed with her; and whomsoe’er she makes Distraught in occupation with herself She renders too unmindful of himself.

So occupied was I, that I forgot

1620 My first preoccupation to forget Myself: if I had perished for her sake I would not have so much as been aware Of my transition. Of the marvels of That ecstasy distracting in desire

1625 Bewildering my reason this is one: Enslaving robbery oblivion-like.

I asked her of myself, whenever I Encountered her, and inasmuch as she Bestowed on me my guidance, she misled

1630 My questing steps; I sought her from myself, Though she was all the while beside me; I Marvelled how she was hid from me by me. And I ceased not from going to and fro With her within me; for my senses were

1635 Intoxicated, and the wine they drank Her beauties; still I travelled on and on Through certainty’s degrees—its knowledge first, Second its essence, third the truth thereof— Reality my trail and travail’s end.

1640 I quested me from me, that I might guide Myself upon my tongue to that which sought Guidance of me, in my unceasing quest;

I begged myself to shift the barrier By lifting up the veil, for I myself

1645 Found in myself my only means to come Unto myself; I looked into the glass Of my own beauty, that I might behold

The loveliness of my own being in My contemplation of my countenance.

1650 And if I mouthed my name, I leaned towards Myself attentive, silent, all desire

For who might make me hear my name pronounced By my own utterance; I clapt my hands Upon my bowels, that perchance I might

1655 Embrace her in my laying on of hands Self-clasping; I ran eagerly towards My very breaths, that haply I might find Myself (and I desirous they should pass Me by) within them, since they passed my way.

1660 Until at last there flashed upon my sight From me a lightning-gleam; my dawn shone forth In splendour; all my darkness fled away.

Here I attained a height the intellect Recoils before, and here my junction was,

1665 And my uniting, to myself from me.

I beamed with joy (for I had reached myself) Full of a certainty protecting me From the necessity to bind my pack And saddle to a journey. I myself

1670 Guided me to myself (as of myself

Had been my quest) and unto me my soul Showed me the way by means of my own self. The curtains of the shroud of sense when I Uncovered (and it was the mysteries

1675 Of my fore-ordinance had rung them down) I shifted the soul’s barrier from her By lifting up the veil, and she it was Answered my quest. The cleansing of the glass Of my own essence (polishing away

1680 Of my own attributes the rust) was I Myself, the rays encompassing that glass Likewise from me proceeding. I myself Made me behold myself, since there was naught

Beside me in my being, to decree

1685 Intrusion of my being’s unity.

And when I named my name, my namer made Me hear it; and my soul (with banished sense) Listened attentive, and pronounced my name.

And I embraced myself, yet not by way

1690 Of limbs attached to ribs; nay, I embraced My own identity. I made myself Perceive my spirit, and the fragrance of My exhalation did perfume the breaths Of the bruised ambergris. The whole of me

1695 Transcended all association in

The quality of sense, yet in myself Stood my transcendence, since I unified My essence: to applaud my attributes Because of me assists my praiser to

1700 Extol me, for my attributes to praise My self is to condemn me. Therefore who In my companion sees my quality, And thereby sees me, never shall alight At my abode; for I do veil myself.

1705 Likewise through me to recollect my names Is waking vision; to remember me Through them, the dream of night light-slumbering.

So he who through my actions knoweth me Knoweth me not, but he who knoweth them

1710 Through me possesseth knowledge of the truth. Accept thou then the knowledge of the signs Of these the attributes most principal (Attached to outward waymarks) from a soul Well versed in it; take the intelligence

1715 Of those the names of the essence (that reside In the inward worlds) a spirit offereth That giveth indication of the same Thereby. As metaphorically said The manifesting of my attributes

1720 Out of my members’ names (whereas my soul By true arbitrament is named thereby) Is marks of knowledges traced on the veils Of forms, illuminating what resides Beyond the sense-perception in the soul.

1725 Again, the manifesting of the names (Said actually) of my essence from My heart’s ribs’ attributes, for mysteries Whereby the spirit was rejoiced, is hints Of treasures shadowing the inward truths 1730 Of mystic reference, set all about

By secrets hidden in the heart’s profound. And their effects in all the world at large Together with their knowledge (and the things Existent by possession of the same 1735 Not independent are of those effects)

Are item that there is a gathering Of fair renown through powers of control, Item the spectacle of reaping praise For favours universal. Theatres

1740 Are these for my displaying: I appeared In them (though never from myself was I Hidden) before the physical abode Of my epiphany. For be it speech (And all of me a tongue that tells of me),

1745 Or sight (and all of me in me an eye

For observation meant), or ear (and all Of me an ear attentive to the call By vocative) (and all of me a hand Strong to repel destruction)—all these four 1750 Were inward meanings of such attributes

Establishing what lies beyond the garb, Names of an essence that divulged abroad What sense reported. The control of these By one who guarded first the Covenant 1755 (That with a soul that watches over them

With loyal love) is proved in catchers Of vaunting song, in necks outstretched to rouse From slumber, in signs manifest of joy, In rainclouds charged with hoped-for bounteousness. Their dedication by the one who last

Tied firm the Compact, with a soul that scorned The arrogance of scorn, is brought to light By gems of information, radiances Of junction, outward tidings, vanquishers Of violence. Their outward making known From one who sought for prudence illustrates The nature of a spirit generous With its own being: doubled litany, Meanings of true nobility, abodes Of deep enigmas, bases of a fact. Their exaltation inwardly by one Sincere of purpose proves the turning back Of a soul well-content to contemplate: Noblest of signs, marvels of purity, Most coveted of goals, battalions Of martial valour. To the garb of flesh From them (by virtue of attachment in The station of Islam arising from Islam’s sage ordinances) there ensue Arrows of ordinances, subtleties Of wisdom, reinforcing verities, Diffusion’s delicacies. To the sense From them (by virtue of true-proving in The station of true faith arising from Faith’s active signs) are given cloistered cells For meditations, flashing lights of thought, Temples enshrining traces visible, Subduers of unthinking. To the soul From them (by virtue of assumption in The station of good deeds arising from Traditions of the Prophet) are vouchsafed

Nice informations, bounties generous, All scrolls informative, successors to Godly regard. To the all-unity

1795 (From the beginning ‘As if thou’ unto The end ‘If thou dost not’ arising from The sign of visionhood) eventuate Showers of grace reactionary, troops Of high transcendence, unions’ incidence,

1800 Lions of battle-order. Their resort

In the world visible (that makes demand Upon the sense) is what the soul of me Perceives: as chapters of expressive speech, Receipt of greeting, taking in of hints,

1805 Roots of donation. In the world unseen Their rising-place is the repeated gifts Of bounty from myself unto myself I have discovered: joyous tidings of Confession, intuitions of regard,

1810 Secrets of outward traces, treasuries Of propaganda. In dominion’s world Their locus is my being rapt by night Particularly (what no other was Of all my family): academies

1815 Of Holy Scripture, emulation’s keeps, Seed-beds of exegesis, cavaliers Invincible. Their lighting area Uprising out of revelation’s east (A revelation dazzling to the sight)

1820 ■ Within the world of high omnipotence Is thrones of Unitarian belief, Attainments of approximation, paths Of glory-crying, angels strong to aid. Their fountain-head of overflowing grace

1825 In every world, to fill a spirit’s need Rich in recovery, is benefits Of inspiration, seekings after ease,

Profits of benefaction, tables spread With generous abundance of good things.

1830 The whole of me performing what the Path Provideth, in the manner that the Truth Of me required, when I had joined the rift So that the cracks that split the unity (Through difference of attribute) (no more

1835 Dispersed) were closed, and naught remained (to cause Estrangement) as between myself and my Firm trust in love’s familiarity,

I realized that we in truth were one And the sobriety of unison

1840 Confirmed the blotting-out of scatteredness.

My all: a tongue, an eye, an ear, a hand: To speak, to see, to hear, to seize withal.

Mine eyes conversed, the while my tongue beheld, My hearing uttered, and my hand gave ear;

1845 My hearing was an eye considering

Whate’er appeared, mine eyes an ear to heed Silently if the folk broke forth in song;

Upon my benefits my tongue became

A hand, as too my hand became a tongue

1850 For converse and for preaching; so my hand Became an eye, to see whate’er appeared, Mine eye a hand outspread wherewith to strike; Mine ear became a tongue in my address, My tongue an ear for silent listening;

1855 The smell too had its rules agreeable

To general analogy as in

The fusion of my attributes, or by Reversal of the case. No limb in me Was specialized as being singled out

i860 To the exclusion of the rest for one

Description, as to wit a seeing eye: My every atom, notwithstanding its Own singularity, itself comprised

The sum of all the organs’ faculties,

1865 Whispering and attending, consequent On contemplation of one taking charge (By virtue of a hand omnipotent) Disposing of his whole totality

In one brief moment. So it is I read

1870 The various knowledge of all learned men Summed in one word, and with a single glance Reveal to me all beings in the world: I hear the voices of all men at prayer, And every language, in a space of time

1875 Less than an instant’s flash: I summon up Before me, what could scarcely be conveyed From its far distance, ere mine eye can wink: So in one inhalation I breathe in

The perfumes of all gardens, and the scent

1880 Of every herb clutching the breezes’ skirts: And I review all regions of the earth

Before me in one thought, and with one bound Traverse the seven layers of the skies.

Bodies of those in whom no more remains

1885 The barest remnant, unified with me, Become as light as spirits, being all Encompassed by that union; whosoe’er Is sovereign, or charitable, or Mighty in onslaught, only through my aid

1890 And subtle contact to that power attains;

Nor walked he on the waters, neither flew In air, nor plunged his body in the flames, Save by my will possessing him; and he Whom I have aided of my very self,

1895 Through such a subtle contact, in a trice Disposes of his own totality.

Thus, he who with his whole totality Followed my union, in an hour or less Recited the Koran a thousand times

içoo From end to end: had but a breath of grace From me possessed one dead, straightway his soul Would have been given back, restored to him. Such is the soul: if it throw off desire Its faculties are multiplied, and give

1905 To every atom its activity.

Let union then suffice thee—not by way

Of separation bi-dimensional, Videlicet space measured, finite time. Thus Noah rode the tempest, and was saved

1910 With such his kinsmen as with him escaped In the Ark; for him the flooding waters sank Responsively, and he their billows clave To Mount al-Judi, where the vessel berthed. Thus Solomon with his two armies swept

1915 Above the face of earth, the wind’s broad back Beneath his carpet; and before the eye Might quiver, Bilkis’ throne from Sheba far Was wafted to his presence toillessly.

Thus Abraham subdued his foeman’s fire

1920 That by his radiance was transformed for him Into a flowering field of Paradise;

And when he called the birds (and they had been Slaughtered) from every mountain-peak, they came To him obediently. Thus Moses’ rod

1925 Cast from his hand swallowed those terrors of Enchantment that pressed hard upon his soul; And at a blow therewith out of the rock He made those fountains gush that watered all Continuously flowing, to the sea

1930 Cleaving their course. Thus, when the messenger Cast Joseph’s shirt upon old Jacob’s face Declaring he should come to him again, He saw him with those eyes that sorely wept (Ere his approach) in longing for his son

1935 Till they were blinded. Thus among the folk

Of Israel a table was sent down From heaven (Jesus praying), and was spread; He made the blind to see, and healing hands Laid upon leprosy’s contagion, and

1940 Turned with a breath the clay into a bird. (The secret of that inward potency To which reacted outward things is this My fashioned words (permitted as by God) Communicated to thy heedful ear.)

1945 And in the time when prophecy had failed The secrets of all these another brought To us revealing, and to be a seal On them; nor any one of them, but called His people by our Prophet’s grace, and as

1950 Our Prophet’s follower, unto the Truth. Our doctor is a prophet such as they, And he among us who his fellows calls Unto the Truth in true apostleship Labours: in this our time Ahmadian

1955 Our gnostic is as one of them, endued With firmness, holding to God’s ordinance. And what in them was called a miracle After our Prophet’s age became a grace Bestowed on his vicegerents and his saints.

i960 His family sufficed the race of man, With his companions, and their followers The leaders of the faith in after time, So that they needed not new Messengers. Their graces were a part of his bequest

1965 To them, exclusively, to be their share In every excellence. Of such as rose (After the Prophet’s death) to the defence Of true religion: Abu Bakr made war Against that false Hanffa’s family;

1970 And Sâriya by Omar was besought (Although the Dwelling was by no means nigh)

To refuge in the mountain; and Othmân

Was not distracted from the Book he read

What though the people passed to him the cup 1975 Of death to drain; and Ali set out clear

What texts were difficult to comprehend

By exegesis, that in virtue of

A knowledge won him as executor;

And all the rest like stars, whoever chose 1980 To follow any of their guiding lights

Was led to safety by his counsel wise.

Saints who believed on him, although their eyes Never beheld him, are elect in true

Affinity, as kin of brotherhood;

1985 Their spiritual nearness unto him

Is as his yearning after them in form— Then marvel at a presence that prevails In absence! Those the people who received The Spirit, called the peoples in my name 1990 To tread my road, and thereby overcame

All who derided and denied my proof:

They all, dependent on my prior truth,

Revolve upon my circle, or descend

Along the pathway of my watering-place. 1995 And though in outward form I be a son

Of Adam, yet within him is a truth

Bearing me witness to my fatherhood.

My spirit, being voided of the bar

To showing forth in all maturity,

2000 Was nurtured in illumination’s breast:

My cradle-meditation was upon

The Prophets', while my elements were formed

My tablet was Preserved, my favourite text

The Victory, ere I was weaned (and yet 2005 A little while and the religious dues

Should bind my outward form) I set the seal

On the expositors of every law

Religious by my code—for they, and those Who held their doctrines, were upon my track Nor any way transgressed the path my steps Now trod: the blessedness of those who called The former generations unto me Lieth in my right hand, as in my left The ease of them who followed latterly.

Think not the matter stands without me: none

Ever attained to leadership of men Except he joined my service. But for me No being existential would have been Brought into being, none contemplative Existed, never loyal covenants

Would have been known. None lives, except his life Derives from mine; and every willing soul Obeys my will. None speaks, except his tale Is fashioned of my words; none sees, except With my eyes’ sight; none listens silently Except he heareth with my ears; none grasps Save with my strength and might. In all the world Created nothing speaks or sees or hears

Save me alone. In this compounded realm

I manifested a reality

In every form, that thereby was adorned In beauty; and where my phenomena Revealed not such reality, therein I yet was imaged incorporeally;

And what clairvoyantly the spirit sees Unveiled, there I was subtly hidden from The overburdened thought. In merciful Expansion I am all desire, whereby The hopes of all who dwell upon my earth Are wide-expanded; but in terrible Contraction I am reverential awe

Entire, and wheresoe’er I turn mine eye All things revere me; yet where these twain states

Unite, I am all nearness. Wherefore come, 2045 Draw nigh to these my bounteous qualities!

And in that place where in is at an end I cease not to discover of myself Through the perfection of my natural Predisposition all the majesty

2050 Of my self-contemplation; in that place Where in is not I ever contemplate The beauty of my existential self Yet not with vision ocular. If thou

Be mine, seek union with me, and blot out

2055 The separation of my fragmenting, Nor unto nature’s darkness swerve aside. Receive the signs my wisdom hath inspired To shift from thee the vain imaginings Of sensual conjecture. Be thou free

2060 Of him who to metampsychosis holds (Albeit proving in his proper self Souls may migrate to occupy the flesh Of animals), and hold thyself aloof From his false theories; leave him to his claim

2065 That human spirits do inhabit plants— If it were true souls move to minerals, Such would be his appropriate habitat In every cycle everlastingly!

Now this my coinage of parables

2070 Time and again, to illustrate my state For thee, a favour is I thee accord. Consider as-Sarûji’s picaresque Makàmas-, ponder well how he disguised Himself, and thou wilt surely find it good

2075 To take my counsel; thou wilt recognize Whatever outward shape or form the soul Assumes, the soul is inwardly disguised In sense. If as-Sarûji’s author wrote Fictitiously, yet truth speaks parables

2o8o Thereby, what though the soul be frivolous. Wherefore be understanding; justice do Unto thy soul, whilst with thy sense regard Thy acts phenomenal. If thou wouldst have Thy soul unveil itself, then contemplate

2085 What thou beholdest indisputably Shown in the burnished mirrors: is it else Than thou appears in them, or dost thou look Upon thyself through them, the visual rays Being reflected ? Listen how thy voice

2090 After it dies to silence is returned

To thee anew by lofty castle-walls: Is it another that there talks to thee, Or hearest thou words from thy echo voiced? Tell me, who passed his learning unto thee

2095 The while thy senses had been lulled in sleep ? Ere thy today, thou knewest not what chanced Upon thy yesterday, nor what shall hap Tomorrow; yet this mom thou art possessed Of knowledge what befell men long since gone

2100 And mysteries of others yet to come, And boastest of thy ken. Supposest thou It was another that conversed with thee In slumber’s sleep upon the divers kinds Of noble knowledge ? Nay, ’twas but the soul

2105 Busied with her own world, oblivious

To mortal being’s theatre the while: Itself unveiled itself unto itself In the unseen: assumed a sage’s guise Who guided it to comprehension of

2110 Ideas most wondrous. For the sciences Were graven on the soul, and it was taught Their names aforetime, and therewith inspired By ancient fatherhood: the soul was not Blessed by such knowledge as deriveth from

2115 Otherness’ separation, but enjoyed

2120

2125

2130

2135

2140

2i45

2150

The things itself dictated to itself.

And if the soul ere sleeping had been stript Thou wouldst have contemplated it, like me, With a true eye: its normal stripping (first) Confirms its being (secondly) stript off, To wit, in the hereafter: so hold fast, Be not of those much study hath made mad, Sapping their reason, and unsettling it. For far beyond all lore traditional There lies a knowledge, that is far too fine For soundest understandings to attain In their remotest reach; which I myself Received from me, and from myself derived, My soul with my own gift supplying me. And be thou not all heedless of the play: The sport of playthings is the earnestness Of a right earnest soul. Beware: turn not Thy back on every tinselled form or state Illogical: for in illusion’s sleep

The shadow-phantom’s spectre brings to thee That the translucent curtains do reveal.

Thou seest forms of things in every garb Displayed before thee from behind the veil Of ambiguity: the opposites

In them united for a purpose wise:

Their shapes appear in each and every guise: Silent, they utter speech: though still, they move: Themselves unluminous, they scatter light. Thou laughest gleefully, as the most gay Of men rejoices; weep’st like a bereaved And sorrowing mother, in profoundest grief; Mournest, if they do moan, upon the loss Of some great happiness ; art jubilant, If they do sing, for such sweet melody.

Thou seest how the birds among the boughs Delight thee with their cooing, when they chant Their mournful notes to win thy sympathy, And marvellest at their voices and their words Expressing uninterpretable speech.

2155 Then on the land the tawny camels race Benighted through the wilderness; at sea The tossed ships run amid the billowy deep. Thou gazest on twain armies—now on land, Anon at sea—in huge battalions

2160 Clad all in mail of steel for valour’s sake

And fenced about with points of swords and spears. The troops of the land-army—some are knights Upon their chargers, some stout infantry;

The heroes of the sea-force—some bestride

2165 The decks of ships, some swarm the lance-like masts. Some violently smite with gleaming swords, Some thrust with spears strong, tawny, quivering;

Some ’neath the arrows’ volley drown in fire, Some burn in water of the flaming flares.

2170 This troop thou seest offering their lives

In reckless onslaught, that with broken ranks Fleeing humiliated in the rout.

And thou beholdest the great catapult

Set up and fired, to smash the fortresses

2175 And stubborn strongholds. Likewise thou mayst gaze On phantom shapes with disembodied souls Cowering darkly in their dim domain, Apparelled in strange forms that disaccord Most wildly with the homely guise of men;

2180 For none would call the Jinnis homely folk. And fishermen cast in the stream their nets With busy hands, and swiftly bring forth fish;

And cunning fowlers spread their gins, that birds A-hunger may be trapped there by a grain.

2185 Ravening monsters of the ocean wreck

The fragile ships ; the jungle-lions seize Their slinking prey; birds swoop on other birds

Out of the heavens; in a wilderness Beasts hunt for other beasts. And thou mayst glimpse Still other shapes that I have overpassed To mention, not relying save upon The best exemplars. Take a single time For thy consideration—no long while— And thou shalt find all that appears to thee And whatsoever thou dost contemplate The act of one alone, but in the veils Of occultation wrapt: when he removes The curtain, thou beholdest none but him, And in the shapes confusion no more reigns. And thou dost realize when he reveals That in thy darkness thou wast guided by His light to view his actions. Even so I too was letting down the curtain of The spirit’s obscuration in the light Of shadow as between myself and me, That in my work creative now and now Again I might appear by slow degrees To my sensation, to accustom it;

Conjoining to my task the play thereof That to thy understanding I might so Bring nigh the targets of my far-off aims. A mutual resemblance links us twain In our two theatres, although in truth The showman’s case resembles not my own. His figures are the media (with the screen) Whereby his action is made manifest: When he appears, they vanish and are naught. So in its acts my soul resembles him;

My sense is like the figures; and my screen The body’s vesture. So, when I removed The curtain from myself, as he raised his, So that my soul appeared to me unveiled—• And now already risen was the sun

Of the contemplative, and full of light

2225 The existential; now already loosed By me the knots of my soul’s tethering— I slew that lad, the soul, whiles setting up The wall to guard my laws, and staving in My ship; I turned with my replenishment

2230 O’er all created life at every while According to the actions then required. But for my veiling in my attributes, The things wherein my essence is displayed Were burned to ashes in my glory’s gleam.

2235 The tongues of every being (if but thou Hast ears to hear) bear witness I am one In ceaseless eloquence. There hath come down (Touching my oneness) a Tradition sure In whose transmission by successive mouths

2240 No shadow of infirmity resides, Telling God loves His creatures, after they By labours supererogatory

Or due performance of religious rite Draw nigh to Him; the point that reference

2245 Bids men observe is clear as noonday’s sun In the Divine T am to him an ear’.

I used all means to that uniting, till

I found myself united; and indeed The intermediation of the means

2250 Was one among my guides; I unified Thereafter touching those the means, and so I lost them; and the link of unity Of all approaches did avail me best.

And then I stripped my soul of both, and it

2255 Became a unit (that had never been In truth at any time aught else but one).

I dived into the seas of union-—nay

I plunged in them, in all my loneliness, And brought to surface every peerless pearl,

22ôo That I might hear my acts with seeing ears And look upon my words with listening eyes. So if the nightingale amid the grove Lamenteth, and the birds in every tree Warbling respond to her; if flautist play

2265 Upon the pipe harmonious to the strings Swept by the singing-girl, the while she chants Tenderest verses, and at every trill The spirits thrilled ascend to Paradise— Then I delight me in each masterpiece

2270 Of my creative art, declaring free

My union and sweet intercourse from all Association with all otherness.

The gathering of recollective praise Through me converteth to a reader’s ear;

2275 For me the vintner’s tavern gapeth still Open as a scout’s eye; no hand but mine Tied virtually the girdle infidel, Or be it loosened in acknowledgement Of me, my hand performed the loosening.

2280 And if the mosque’s mihrab be lighted up By the Koran, no church’s massive pile Is wasted with the Gospel open there, No synagogue wherein the Torah’s scrolls Moses delivered to his chosen folk

2285 Are nightly read by rabbis at their prayers. And if in idol-house the devotee

Bows down to stones, rush not in zealous rage Beyond the disavowal faith requires: Many a one unspotted by the shame

2290 Of polytheist idol-mongering

In spirit worships Mammon. Every man With ears to hear, to him my warning voice Hath come; in me the pleas of every sect Are proved acceptable. The eyes strayed not

2295 In any faith, the thoughts ran devious

In no denomination. Those who yearned Heedlessly for the sun lost not the way Seeing its shine deriveth from the light Of my unveiled effulgence. Or if fire The Magians worshipped (and, as tales report, Its flames were quenched not in a thousand years), They meant not aught but me, what though their quest Went other ways, and manifested not A vowed endeavour: they had once beheld The radiance of my light, and did suppose It was a fire, and so they went astray From the true guidance, following its rays. But for the veil that wraps existence round I would have said—But my observance of The laws that govern all phenomena Keepeth me silent. ’Tis no idle sport', The creatures were not made, to wander off At random, though their actions go not straight; According to the branding of the names Run their affairs; the wisdom that bestowed Upon the essence divers attributes Drives them conformably to God’s decree, T care not, and I care not’—by these words Disposed into two handfuls, one for bliss, The other unto misery consigned.

So let the soul be known for what it is Or not: the clear discrimination in This issue is recited every morn. Indeed, the knowledge of the soul derives Out of itself: so did my soul dictate Unto my senses all I hoped to know. Had I declared all one, I would have swerved And sloughed my union’s signs, my handiwork Associating equally with me.

I am not blameworthy, if I proclaim My gifts, and on my followers bestow

My grand endowment: that dispenser of The mystic union, when he greeted me At Yea or nearer, pointed me a bond

2335 Of spiritual kinship. From his light

The lantern of my essence shone on me;

My eve in me was radiant as my morn.

And I was made to see myself, myself

Yet here; and I was he; and I beheld

2340 That he was I, that light my radiance.

In me the holy vale was sanctified, Where I bestowed my putting off of shoes On my companions, an unstinted gift.

And I beheld my beams, and was their guide— 2345 O wondrous soul, that shines upon that light!

I founded firm my Sinais, and there

Prayed to myself, and all my wants fulfilled:

My essence was my interlocutor.

My moon set not; my sun ne’er sank from sight;

235° By me are guided all the shining stars

Upon their courses; all the planets swim About my heavens as my will controls All things I own; my angels prostrate fall Before my sovereignty. And in the world

2355 Of recollection still the soul doth own

Its ancient knowledge my disciples pray That I bestow on them. Haste then to my Eternal union, wherein I have found The greybeards of the tribe as little babes!

2360 For these my fellows living in my age

Drink but the dregs that I have left; and those Ahead of me, the merits men in them Applaud are but my superfluity.

NOTES

'And when thy Lord took of the sons of Adam from their loins their seed, and made them to witness against themselves, Am I not your Lord? They said, Yea, we witness it . . .’ (Koran vii. 171).

For the Muhammadan mystic after the teaching of al-Junaid (who died in a.d. 910) and of his later contemporary al-Hallaj (whom the lawyers crucified in a.d. 922) the spiritual life of the individual began before the dimensions of space and time were ever fixed, at the first projection by God from Himself of a category of being external to Him­self, subsistent in and through Himself. So the Sufis interpreted the words of the Koran which have been quoted above : on that pre-etemal occasion Man entered into a covenant with God to acknowledge Him as his only Lord, and to deny all other masters and loyalties.

Thereafter God created the Idea of Muhammad, a Sufi counterpart of the First Intelli­gence of the philosophers; a Tradition affirmed that Muhammad was in existence at a time when Adam was as yet ‘between water and clay’, that is to say, unfashioned in the physical world. Out of the Idea of Muhammad, the Reality of Realities, the entire material universe was created ; in that Idea, all things external to God have their being.

The Sufi’s great quest is to realize in this limited world and this life of finite being his identity with the Spirit of Muhammad ; once that quest has been achieved, he inevitably passes away from his creaturely attributes and attains to full recognition of the Unity and Unicity of God. This completes the cycle of his individual history ; he has then returned to ‘the state in which he was before he was’. Yet he is not annihilated as an individual; rather his individuality has become transformed; whereas formerly it was a temporal attribute, thenceforward it is as eternal as the Attributes of God. It is not the case that God dwells in him ; that view would be condemned as incamationism ; on the contrary he dwells in God, and is aware that he subsists only through God.

This union with God does not, however, continue with the mystic throughout the remainder of his earthly life as a continually conscious experience ; it is a brief moment of glory, a sudden glimpse of celestial bliss won in ecstasy. If the body could perish in that instant, the soul might survive at once and for ever united with its Creator ; but the body does not die, and the flesh reassumes its dominion over the spirit inhabiting it. The lover is separated a second time from his Beloved, and all the rest of his days he is yearning passionately for renewed, eternal union.

Such in brief is the background to the opening scene of this poem. The mystic, sur­rounded in the circle of meditation by his fellow Sufis, focuses his thoughts upon the incomparable beauty of the Beloved. The inward eye of contemplation, in that interplay of the internal organs of spiritual sensation which is a favourite theme of the poet, becomes a hand to pour into his soul the wine-fever of ecstatic love ; the bowl containing the wine is the Beloved’s beauty. He reveals the nature of his emotions to his friends, pictured conventionally as handsome youths, trusty guardians of the secret of his tremendous passion; yet it is not the kind of beauty they understand and represent, physical beauty, but the perfect spiritual beauty of Muhammad which is the true cause of his rapture (1-15).

As his spiritual inebriation more and more masters his self-control, he puts fear aside and, with all consciousness of his companions’ presence blotted out, addresses himself directly and nakedly to the Beloved; but as yet he has not wholly passed away from awareness of his own individuality, which ever and again obtrudes itself to stand between him and complete self-surrender (16-28).

In this state of violent agitation he begins his colloquy. He begs the Beloved to look just once upon him, that he may now be assured of Her regard for him before he is annihilated. This lover’s prayer, imitating the stock vocabulary of the erotic poets (who are ever fearful of wasting away to death ere knowing that their passion is reciprocated), recalls to his mind a like plea addressed to God by Moses, who did not indeed see the Creator but was rejoiced to hear His Voice declaring ‘Thou shalt not see Me’ (Koran vii. 139) as if in a momentary recovery of consciousness, before the blinding light of the Divine Presence shattered Mount Sinai (29-40). The poet declares that the burden of his lover’s suffering would have crushed the mountains even before God’s revelation destroyed them. Bethinking him of his surging tears and burning sighs (which, by a favourite poetic figure, in the conflict of the elements cancel out each other’s destructive qualities), he compares the former with the Flood of Noah and the latter with the fire into which (according to Koran xxi. 68) Abraham was cast by the idolaters. In this same mood of scriptural reminiscence he likens his grief to that of Jacob bereaved, as he supposed, of his beloved Joseph (Koran xii. 84), and his torment to the sufferings of Job ; and of all those lovers famed in Arab story as having died of their unrequited passion (41-58).

His distress is similar to that of travellers stranded in a desert and refused a place in the departing caravan. So emaciated is he as a result of his sufferings-—a familiar theme of poetic hyperbole—that the deepest recesses of his inmost heart stand revealed ; in the intoxication of overpowering grief he discloses his lover’s secret to his most dangerous enemy, the Spy. (Thus the poet introduces the first of the traditional dramatis personae of erotic verse.) That passion which his true friends had loyally kept guarded (as we remember from lines 13-15) thus became known and notorious to all the tribe: the poet weaves an intricate pattern of metaphysical subtlety to describe how the Spy has won intimacy with all his thoughts, and how it is his passion itself which has betrayed him (59-103)-

But matters have gone farther than this ; the lover claims to have passed entirely away, so that even death would not be able to find him if purposing to slay him. Neither has he any longer any desire to be restored to himself ; nor has he any longer the power to describe his innumerable pains. The traditional Visitors (another stock figure), even though they read upon the celestial Tablet of Destiny the truth of his case, would find no more of him than a ghost (104-37). In this condition of utter obliteration he fails even in his wildest imaginings to discover any trace of his individual existence in the world of phenomena; he has returned to that state ‘in which he was before he was*, when his spirit was indeed in being, before the creation of the physical universe and of his own perishing body (138-46).

Using a succession of favourite conceits and figures, the poet justifies this recital of his agony, giving thanks to the Beloved for the woes he patiently endures : the Beloved’s gift of tribulation is indeed to be reckoned by the lover as a great benefaction and abounding grace (147-73). Remembering the Covenant into which he entered before time was (Koran vii. 171), he is grateful to be the target for the malice of those two familiar characters of the love-play, the Railer and the Slanderer—the former seeking in the guise of a sincere friend to dissuade and divert him from his passion, the latter jealously carrying lies about his sincerity to the Beloved. He indeed resists the Railer, but pretends agreement with the Slanderer in order that others may not pry into his secret joy (174-86). He endures not so as to win applause, but as a necessary condition of adoring the Beloved’s beauty, once more named as the cause of his cherished affliction (187-200). The lover of beauty must be ready to die for love’s sake, and he, as a true and loyal lover, rejects all lesser loves in entire surrender to the Beloved (201-25).

It was a convention of erotic writing that the poet should at this stage swear by all that he holds most dear that his declaration of love is sincere and true. Ibn al-Farid follows the custom in a series of solemn oaths, in the course of which he remembers once more the Pre-etemal Covenant, and also the ‘latter bond’ accepted as a follower of the revealed religion of Islam (229-38). He swears too by the threefold Divine Attributes of Perfection, Majesty, and Loveliness, each of which has its apparent effect in the phenomenal world, as also by that Spiritual Beauty which is too subtle to be apprehended by the outward vision, that his Beloved is his one and only quest (239-61). He is prepared to suffer the obloquy of men in his utter abandonment of reserve, and to cast off the last shreds of modesty (as the conventional lover does in extremis) : while those of lesser passion love the Beloved for part only of Her Attributes (the poet means the Attribute of Mercy, to the exclusion of the Attribute of Wrath), he loves Her for Her Whole Self: She is the entire and only cause of his lover’s bewilderment (262-82).

The Beloved is made to reply to this impassioned declaration, and does so tauntingly after the fashion of those lovers* dialogues which were a familiar feature of erotic poetry. She roundly denies the lover’s claim to worship Her exclusively, accusing him of lying imposture. As readily might his deluded spirit find the narrow way leading to true love, as a man bom blind perceive the dim and distant star Suhâ. His pretences far exceed his capacity to attain. Referring obliquely to God’s obscure prohibition against ‘entering upon your houses netherwards’ (Koran ii. 185), which the poet interprets as meaning to seek admission to the Beloved’s Presence by false claims of worthiness, She adds further (with the same Scriptural passage in mind) that the doors to that Presence are also barred against the like of him (283-305).

The truth is, She declares, that the lover refuses to surrender the least part of his self­regard. Using the language of the alphabet, she says that had he but humbled himself to become as it were the thin stroke marking the vowel i beneath the dot of the letter b (the commentators offer a metaphysical explanation of this, but perhaps the reference is rather to the opening vowel of the phrase bismi llâhi, Tn the Name of God’, with which every Sura but one of the Koran begins), this act of self-abasement would have exalted him far higher than all his pretentious ambitions. The road to attainment runs straight enough, but men’s eyes are blinded by their selfish desires (306-27).

The lover’s claim to love the Beloved is easily disposed of. His boasted love is mere self-love, as is demonstrated by the fact of his suffering even the least remainder of his individuality to survive. Total passing-away from self is proved by that mystical trans­figuration in which the lover is seen to be clothed only in the Attributes of the Beloved; the poet doubtless has in mind the classic definition of spiritual union as ‘passing away from human attributes into the Divine Attributes’. The Beloved therefore bids the lover have done with false pretences: the choice before him is simple—either let him die to self, that ‘state more excellent’ (Koran xxiii. 98) and the only condition of true love, or let him abandon the quest and trouble the Beloved no more (328-42).

The lover refuses to accept this rebuke. He begs the Beloved at once to take his soul to Herself : he knows that true love means death to the lover, and his only ambition is to win the classic epitaph, ‘He died of love’. If he may not attain this highest honour of all, yet he will be content to be suspected of loving Her; still more, he will rejoice to die unhonoured, not even to wear the martyr’s crown (to which according to an apocryphal Tradition the mystic lover dying of his love would be entitled), provided the cause of his death—the fullness of his devotion—is known to the Beloved. His life is in any case too mean a thing even to be mentioned as being expended, in comparison with that prized union with the Beloved which he hopes to purchase thereby; and if the Beloved makes this the price to be paid for the supremest honour lover can dare to covet, She indeed enhances his market-value (343-76). Death holds no terrors for him: let the Beloved work Her will. As the old love-poets used to say, such a threat from the Beloved is accepted by the lover as a most fair promise. Other men shrink from death: he welcomes it, as the gateway to immortal life in union with the Beloved (377-85).

This concludes the dialogue. The poet now dilates further upon the themes of the lover’s address to the Beloved. Many others have been Her victims before him, among the tribe of devoted mystics, who died without her even glancing upon them (compare line 31). To be slain by Her would indeed be the pinnacle of renown. If he dies in loving Her, he will have won by the exchange ; for he will have attained union, and the restoration of his spirit’s life into the bargain (386-402). By devoting himself to Her service he has gained the contempt and ridicule of his fellows, but he is well content with his abasement (403-27).

Love has crazed and wasted him, and brought him to such a pass that his spirit was fearful of his mind, lest his mind knowing of his secret passion should release the tears which would reveal it to others. His spirit therefore concealed its emotions from his heart ; and concealed them so well that his consciousness was rendered unaware even of his spirit’s will to conceal (428-46). How sweet then are the lover’s sufferings, which the Beloved causes him to be alike conscious and unconscious of! The poet meditates upon this subtlety at length ; the Beloved has set one part of him to guard against the rest, to preserve him whole for Her sake. Veneration combats desire ; speech and hearing wrestle with each other; humility strives with jealousy (447-76).

So at last his soul is rapt in ecstasy ; though he is still aware of a desire stirring within him. He is in a state of continuous union with the Beloved ; whenever Her name is men­tioned, or the recollection of Her is stirred (even by the conventional ‘ghost of reproach’ visiting the lover as he tosses sleepless through the night), his spirit is transported with joy and emulation. When he prays, he leads all mankind in prayer; the Object of his prayer being within him, the imams who lead the faithful turn towards him as the qibla or direc­tion of prayer; all six directions which make up space point to him. It is to him (he being now united with the Beloved) that the rites of the greater and the lesser Pilgrimage are performed : at the Station of Abraham (near the Kaaba at Mecca) he prayed to the Beloved and She prayed to him (477-505).

The poet halts momentarily this onrush of verbal intricacy, and turning back (as every now and again) to the Pre-etemal Covenant proclaims it is high time for him to rend the veil still dividing him from complete unity, that remnant of desire which he has mentioned as yet stirring within him (in lines 479-80) and which he now acknowledges as a gift bestowed on him by the Beloved before Time was, even before the Covenant was sworn— the disposition to say ‘Yea’ to God’s challenging demand (506-12). His present loyalty is not an ‘earning* (the term used by the Sufi theorists to describe the subjective ‘stages’ of the path in which the mystic still exercises his own will), or a natural ‘attraction’ (such as the philosophers urged as the cause of love), but rather that same passionate distraction, that intoxication with the Beloved which governed him in the World of Command (the immaterial universe) before the World of Creation (the material universe) came into being and he himself was bom into it. Love has now annihilated all creaturely attributes in him, which did not exist in the pre-etemal world and therefore could not divide him there from the Beloved (513 22). These attributes being rejected, they are transmuted into the Attributes of the Beloved, which are and always were in reality the lover’s: the attributes veiled him from his realization of identity with the Beloved, just as the Attributes veiled him from his realization of continued individuality. The Object of his love had always been Himself ; as a mortal being he had been distracted and unaware of this tremendous truth, but in the contemplation proper to his immortal soul he had ever been apprised of it (523-34)-

The poet here pauses, as if conscious of the extreme obscurity of his last few highly concentrated utterances, and proposes to expatiate at greater length on their contents, while reducing his complex argument to simpler terms. He takes up anew the parts of the Slanderer and the Railer (compare lines 176-83), whom he now finds both to be his allies, and in fact to be mere aspects of the single Beloved-lover relationship. He has now abandoned all self-interest and selfish desires ; even poverty is an attribute, therefore he has cast it away along with riches, together with the thought of merit in so doing ; and so the Beloved has become his Prize (535-68).

The transformation of the lover into the Beloved has consequently endowed the lover with the Beloved’s right and power to guide other lovers who have strayed from the true path of love. The poet exploits this point brilliantly to introduce a conventional transition : he offers counsel derived from his own experiences to an unnamed companion, no doubt to be identified with any disciple who may read his poem. The relative simplicity of this passage affords a welcome relief from the long-sustained tension of the preceding scenes. The neophyte is bidden to give himself up wholly to the Beloved’s will; to be truly peni­tent (the first stage in the Sufi scheme of regeneration) ; not to put off his reformation to the morrow, but to resolve today ; and to labour boldly and without flagging. Let him not make weakness or sickness an excuse ; the race, if swiftly run, will itself provide him with respite (569- 601). In this fashion he runs through the usual themes beloved by the Sufi

moralist. Riches do not win the Beloved’s favour, nor poverty deny it; poverty must not be an excuse for self-regard, and this peril is to be eluded by complete sincerity in serving the Beloved. The disciple must practise godly silence, as all gnostics have found the greatest mysteries of love to be inexpressible in speech ; at the same time he should beware of seeking in silence only that dignity which silence bestowed on the handful of true mystics who observed its rules (602-34). He must become a passive instrument in the Beloved’s hands; not seeing, but sight; not hearing, but an ear; not speaking, but a tongue ; seeing, speaking, and hearing not wilfully, but as the Beloved directs those facul­ties to act. This is the direct path which leads to union ; to follow the soul’s whims is to go hopelessly astray (635-43).

After this interlude, the poet resumes the narrative of his own progress. Hitherto his soul had still been ‘reproachful’ (a Sufi technical term borrowed from Koran Ixxv. 2, and used by them to mean that state of inner conflict in which the mystic wrestles with his wayward impulses). He therefore set about schooling it with hard discipline: the poet has in mind that phase of the mystic’s training which the theorists called riyâdat an-nafs, ‘disciplining the carnal soul’. In this way he converted his soul from being ‘reproachful’ to being ‘at rest’ (another Sufi term taken from Koran Ixxxix. 27, indicating the state in which all inner conflict has been resolved). He made every ‘station’ upon the mystic path an ascetic exercise, performed in absolute submission to the Beloved’s will ; until at last he gave up the selfish passion of seeking the Beloved for himself, and found himself transformed from being desirous to being himself desired (644 65).

This new climax brings the poet to another long passage of involved elaboration upon the theme of the lover’s union and identity with the Beloved, which, though in places extremely subtle, can be followed without much difficulty and adds little fresh to what has been analysed already. Ibn al-Fârid is at pains to make clear the distinction between ‘being’ (individual existence in the phenomenal world) and ‘beholding’ (unitive existence in the spiritual world), a thread of meditation which runs through the whole poem (666-94). He illustrates the Beloved-lover equation with a series of eloquent examples. When the Beloved’s name is called, the lover answers ; when the lover is summoned, the Beloved cries Labbaika (‘Here am I’); when the Beloved and the lover converse together, they do not use the second person singular form but only the first person singular, for in the mystery of mystical unity the two are One (695-720).

Feeling this statement to need further explanation, the poet proposes to cite two in­stances (one drawn from the sensation of hearing, the other from sight) to show how in certain circumstances duality is readily proved to be an illusion ; arguing his case as against a stubborn opponent whom he accuses of ‘secret polytheism’. A woman in a state of catalepsy utters trance-statements not of her own volition (though it is certainly her vocal chords that produce the sounds) but at the direction and under the control of the super­natural being possessing her. This is example number one (721-50); and the poet admits that previously he was in the same confusion as his opponent, when he was in a state of alternating ‘loss’ and ‘discovery’, oscillating between ‘being’ and ‘beholding’. He had thought the sensation of annulment induced by spiritual intoxication to be the farthest point attainable in the mystical ascent (he is using the analogy of the Prophet’s Ascension referred to briefly in Koran xvii. 1 ; the ‘lote-boundary’ is a quotation from Koran liii. 9, 80

a passage taken by the Sufis to describe a mystical experience) ; but the state of sobriety- after-drunkenness (that ‘twice sobering* mentioned in line 38) found him re-established in his transformed identity, his union with the Beloved being henceforward a true Unity (751-70). This mention of unity leads the poet on as ever to a fresh outburst of passionate subtlety : when he stood (on Mount Arafat at the Pilgrimage) he stood before Himself, and when he prayed He was his own Kaaba. He urges his opponent to give up the ‘error of separation’, to follow the right way of the Sufis who emulated one another in their quest after ‘oneness*, and boldly to proclaim that Beauty is absolute, and not made finite by the mortal elements in which from time to time it stands revealed. Every human lover dis­traught with passion for every human beloved yearns in reality for the Beloved, Who at once displays and hides Herself in the beautiful shapes She temporarily informs. In a long passage of sustained eloquence the poet makes this point over and over again, recalling the instances of love-poets famous in literary history for their celebration of the beautiful maidens they adored : lover and beloved, viewed as theatres of Divine manifestation, were in every instance identical with the Lover and the Beloved, themselves One Essence self­loving and self-beloved (771-854).

Why then, if the lover has realized his identity with the Beloved, and was aware that nothing else existed in all the world but the Beloved, did he submit thereafter to observe the ceremonies and requirements of formal religion ? Not out of fear for the shame which other men’s condemnation might bring upon him did he neglect his duties, nor out of a desire for a reputation of saintliness, but only in order to rescue his ‘succouring friends’ (see lines 13-14) from the attacks of the wily adversary who would aim to mislead them in their lower degree of attainment by quoting the example of the lover’s own apparent ungodliness (855-92). This was another motive for that hard self-discipline to which he had already referred (in lines 644- 65). Nevertheless, despite his outward profession of formal orthodoxy, he had never recanted the statement ‘I am She’ (893-9).

But neither had he at any time been guilty of the foolish heresy of incamationism, pre­tending that the Beloved ‘came to dwell in me’ (the poet uses the technical term for incarnation condemned by the orthodox theologians). To prove this he now quotes the second example which he had promised (see lines 724-5). It was well known that Gabriel, the bearer of God’s inspiration, appeared to Muhammad several times in the guise of a certain Dihya; yet the Prophet never confused Dihya with Gabriel—he saw the angel, where the other bystanders saw the man. Holy Scripture described this phenomenon as a ‘covering* (a reference to Koran vi. 9)—a term which the poet uses elsewhere to connote that ‘ambiguity’ whereby the phenomenal world appears endowed with spiritual attri­butes (899-926).

This mention of Gabriel’s appearance to Muhammad introduces a dramatic change in the narrative; the poet now speaks as the Beloved, clearly identified as Muhammad him­self. The fount of Sadda (a well proverbial for the sweetness of its water) draws upon the same source as his own abounding flow—a figure for Divine inspiration, contrasted with the mirage of intellectual conjecture. Whereas the earlier prophets adventured no farther than the shore, Muhammad plunged deeply into the ocean of complete and final revelation reserved for him the ‘orphan’ (a reference to Koran xciii. 6) whose ‘property’ of esoteric knowledge was shared only by the ‘youth’—Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law,

8l                                          L

believed by the Sufis to have received secret mystical teaching from the Prophet (927-42).

Resuming the part of spiritual preceptor, the poet addresses once more the unnamed disciple (see lines 569-643), whom he urges to follow strictly in his path. He himself has transcended even love, as an emotion to be obliterated in complete union. Love indeed is the starting-point of the ascent which yet lies ahead; the disciple may therefore rejoice in it, as giving him supremacy over the rest of God’s servants, the ascetics, the theologians, and the philosophers. Kinship based upon the loyalty of love secures that highest heritage of all, the mystic gnosis derived from the Prophet, whose care it was that his Divine know­ledge should be of benefit to mankind (943-72). So mounting, the disciple may at length attain the lover’s goal of Unity, which the poet once more exalts in eloquent metaphor (973-84)-

The true lover may well boast his superiority over the toiling ascetic still the prey of hope and fear. By this subtle transition the poet is brought to change his address to the unattaining straggler, whom he charges with having advanced beyond his proper sphere (a reminiscence of the reproach offered by the Beloved to the lover in lines 286-302): let him therefore stay where he is, for any further progress will lead to his annihilation (985-1001 ). He alone (speaking as one who has achieved union with the Spirit of Muham­mad) has reached the supreme rank of sobriety-after-union: his ear is that of Moses (who heard God speak), his eye the eye of Muhammad (who, according to some, saw God on the night of his Ascension). In his capacity as First Intelligence and Reality of Realities, his Spirit is the Spirit of all spirits (this line especially made Ibn al-Fârid the target of ortho­dox disapprobation), his Beauty the source of all beauty. He possessed the prerogative of Divine knowledge before his fellow prophets ever knew of his existence-to-be. No names or epithets are appropriate to address him by; the ‘bandying of names’ is forbidden by Holy Scripture (a reference to Koran xlix. 11). His least follower possesses a degree of gnosis enabling him to answer the most abstruse questions in language of profound subtlety (1002- 34). Even the term ‘brought nigh’ (used in several passages in the Koran of the angels and the blessed in Paradise, see iv. 170, lvi. 87, Ixxxiii. 28) does not apply to him, for near­ness itself implies separation ; he has transcended all such discriminations as junction and separation, nearness and farness, love and aversion. If he is to be alluded to at all, then only metaphorical terms of address may be employed (1035-52). He has surmounted the highest pinnacle of Unity, and only returned from his spiritual Ascension in order to propagate the ordinances of his religion: a reference to the legend that the Prophet was instructed on the night of the Heavenly Journey how many times daily his followers should pray. He has grasped the principle enunciated in the Sura Taha (which, see Koran xx. 7, declares, T am God, there is no god but I, so worship Me and institute the prayer for My remem­brance’). In greeting the Beloved, he is only greeting himself (1053-75).

So the mood changes once more, and the poet is reminded how at the beginning of the history of his passion he greeted the Beloved with a joyous Hymn to Love, which he pro­ceeds to quote, recapitulating in still more splendid eloquence the tale of his lover’s anguish, playing with consummate mastery the entire repertory of his poet’s themes and variations. This long passage of sustained ardour contrasts delightfully in its simplicity with the intricacy of the metaphysical argument preceding and following it, and cils for little elucidation. It may only be remarked in passing that the ‘miraculous Night of Power* (lines 1144, 1185) is traditionally said to be 27 Ramadan (the phrase is taken from Koran xcvii, where the night is described as ‘better than a thousand months—the angels descend in it, and the Spirit, by their Lord’s leave free from every charge : greeting it is until the uprising of dawn’), and upon this night the whole Koran was first revealed. The ‘Furthest Mosque’ (line 1157, see Koran xvii. 1) is the Temple at Jerusalem, to which the Prophet was miraculously transported on the night of his Ascension. Those familiar characters the Slanderer, the Railer, and the Spy are mentioned once again (lines 1169-75). Joseph (line 1210) is referred to (as conventionally in mystical love-poetry) as the highest exemplar of human beauty. The interlude rises in a crescendo of rapture to the final declaration that the lover’s passion, like the Beloved’s beauty, is universal (1076- 1229).

The poet resumes his preoccupation with the mystery of Unity. The Slanderer and the Railer are remembered from a previous mention (see lines 542-6) as the lover’s truest allies rather than his enemies. In the state of sobriety-after-union there were revealed to him mysteries too great to be spoken, though allusion to them will be understood by other mystics; a clearer definition would expose the poet to condemnation by the narrowly orthodox. (This silence regarding the mysterium tremendum of the supreme mystical ex­perience is a familiar theme in Sufi literature, especially after the execution of al-Hallaj.) In reality the four characters of the love-play—Beloved, Lover, Slanderer, and Railer—are one, the two first being a single Essence and the two last the attributes of that Essence. The Slanderer is a manifestation of the Spirit, seeking to lure the spirit of the lover back to its origin ; the Railer is concerned to urge the soul back to the lover’s fellow men in the material universe (1230-77).

At this point the poet again speaks as if by the mouth of the Prophet (see lines 927-42). The Universal Soul was the source from which all the forms of material existence derived, while the Universal Spirit created the spirits which inhabit the immaterial universe (1278-88). But the lover immediately takes up once more his personal story: the twofold draw of the Slanderer-Spirit (towards the eternal) and the Railer-Soul (towards the tem­poral), a characteristic of mystical ecstasy, is proved by the interplay of man’s ‘external’ and ‘internal’ senses. Beautiful sights and sounds, perceived by the outward eye and ear, cause the inward eye and ear to apprehend the Beloved’s beauty, and a state of uncon­trollable joy ensues. This fine point is developed with a rich abundance of illustration, as the poet gives rein to the wide scope of his ranging fancy ; as ever when carried away by his artistic imagination he writes with masterly simplicity, and this central passage, superbly beautiful, needs no comment (1289-1407).

Rapidly Ibn al-Farid increases the tension of his thought after this extended relaxation, as he meditates once more upon the mysteries of the Unity of Lover and Beloved. He himself contains his own temple housing the Kaaba of his spiritual worship ; he circum­ambulates himself (as the Mecca pilgrims do the Holy House) ; he runs from his internal Safa to his internal Marwa (the mountains without Mecca between which the pilgrims race). The Lover-Beloved duality, the accompaniment of his mystical dream (as the Prophet was carried ‘between sleeping and waking’ upon his Ascension), has been trans­formed into a single Unity in the sobriety-after-union (1408-41).

Though now arrayed in the Attributes of Godhood, he (as self-identified with the Pro­phet) remembers his obligations to the phenomenal world, the ordinances of his religion (see lines 1055-8). In his dual nature, Divine and human, he pictures himself as an apostle sent by Himself to himself before Adam was bom ; and on the other side as an incarnate being created later in time, rising out of himself to Himself in renewed Unity of the per­sons; this thought is elaborated in a series of subtle images (1442-85). The ‘cleaving’ of heaven and earth (taking the language of Koran xxi. 31 as a reference to the act of creation) has now been ‘closed’. The categories of space and time have passed away, for dimensions imply ‘otherness’ and therefore polytheism. God’s creation has no incongruity (Koran Ixvii. 3), for the opposites have been resolved. He is at one with that Adam to whom the angels bowed at God’s command (see Koran xv. 28-30). His fellow mystics thought to find the truth at the ‘nigh horizon* (the first vision of reality, as contrasted with the ‘higher horizon’ of complete revelation, see Koran liii. 7), that is to say in the ecstasy of spiritual intoxication, but the true union of Unity is only proved in the sobriety-after-union, the ‘second separation’ (1486-1518); he uses again the symbolism of Moses at Sinai (Koran vii. 139), an experience with which he, as the Spirit of Muhammad, was intimate long before Moses was born or turned to God at all. The language of the alphabet is again found appropriate to express the idea of the blotting-out of ‘otherness’ (individual exis­tence) in the all-embracing Unity of supreme attainment: the dot distinguishing the letter ghain (which is also a word meaning ‘cloud’) is expunged, giving the letter 'ain (a word meaning ‘eye* and ‘essence’) which uniquely subsists after the erasure has taken place (1486-1536).

Unity transcends all difference: it is a total obliteration of every kind of separateness. The mystic has realized the identity of his ‘being’ with his ‘beholding’: Muhammad referred to his priority over all the prophets when he asked his companions (according to a Tradition) whether they did not think him superior to Jonah. The poet uses the language of God’s challenge and man’s response (Koran vii. 171) to re-emphasize this constantly repeated point (1537-77). A Tradition quotes God as affirming, ‘My Mercy was before My Wrath’, which confirms the mystic in his certainty of Paradise; Hell will declare to every true believer (again according to a Tradition), ‘Thy light hath quenched my fire’ ; and the poet combines these two thoughts in a single concordance of esoteric interpretation (1578-86). Using the terminology of the Sufis, he declares himself (as Spirit of Muhammad) to be the Pole upon which the heavens revolve, the Pole which never passed through the subordinate degrees of Substitute and Peg, for he was not successor to any prior Pole but himself the First Pole (1587-98).

In very subtle language the poet describes the lover’s bewilderment at first encountering the Beloved, an oscillation between unconsciousness of self and consciousness of Self. He passed through the three grades of certainty (as named by the Sufi theorists), until he reached complete Unity of the persons ; a state which he illustrates with a further range of figures which again are not essentially difficult to comprehend (1599-1710). The tension is increased more and more, as the poet meditates upon the profound mysteries of Unity, until he finally delivers himself of a series of lines highly mannered and ornamented in an almost complete incoherence of sensual ecstasy (1711-1829). (Incidentally, the refer­ence in lines 1795-6 is to a Tradition according to which God said, ‘Worship Me as if thou

seest Me, for if thou dost not see Me, I see thee*.) Some idea of the intricate verbal pattern of this passage may be conveyed by a transcription of a few lines.

fa-marji'uhâ lil-hissi fï 'alami s-saha -dati 1-mujtadï ma n-nafsu minnï ahassatf fusülu 'ibârâtin wusülu tahïyatin husûlu isârâtin usülu 'atïyatf wa-matla'uhâ fï *âlami 1-gaibi ma wajad -tu min ni'amin minnï 'alaiya stajaddatl baSâ’iru iqrârin basâ’iru 'ibratin sarâ’iru âtârin dahâ’iru da'wati wa-maudi'uhâ fï 'âlami 1-malakùti ma husistu mina 1-isrâ bihï dûna usratï madârisu tanzïlin mahârisu gibtatin magârisu ta’wïlin fawârisu man'ati wa-mauqi'uhâ fï ‘âlami 1-jabarüti min masâriqi fathin lil-basâ’iri mubhitf arâ’iku tauhîdin madâriku zulfatin masâliku tamjïdin malâ’iku nusratf wa-manba'uhâ bi-l-faidi fï kulli 'âlamin li-fâqati nafsin bi-l-ifâqati atrati fawâ’idu ilhâmin rawâ’idu nfmatin 'awâ’idu in'âmin mawâ’idu na'mati

Resuming in a somewhat lower key, the poet refers again to the ‘joining of the rift’ (compare lines 1490-1), and illustrates the effect of the supreme Unity upon the senses which no longer keep their distinct functions but are fused together in a concord of total consciousness (1830-69). This phenomenon is given as the explanation of various miracles (1870-1908). Noah was thus brought safely to berth upon Mount al-Judi (the Ararat of Koran xi. 46); Solomon was borne with his army of men and spirits upon the wind (Koran xxi. 81-82), and Bilkis, the Queen of Sheba, was transported to him upon her throne (Koran xxvii. 40-42); Abraham was saved from the fire into which his enemies cast him (Koran xxi. 69), and brought the four slain and dismembered birds together and to life from the far mountains (Koran ii. 262) ; Moses’ rod swallowed up the serpents of Pharaoh’s enchanters (Koran x. 80-81), and caused twelve fountains to gush out of the rock (Koran vii. 160) ; Jacob was healed of his blindness when Joseph’s shirt was laid upon his face (Koran vii. 96) ; at Jesus’ prayer a table was sent down from heaven upon the Israelites (Koran v. 114-15), and he healed the blind and the leper, and made a living bird out of clay (Koran iii. 43) (1909-44).

The familiar miracles of the heroes of early Islam—equal to the prophets of old since Muhammad sealed the office of apostleship—also prove the transforming power of Unity. Abu Bakr overcame the false prophet Musailama of the Banu Hanifa ; Omar saved Sâriya in battle by calling to him to take refuge in the mountain when he was many miles away in Medina; Othman was not diverted from reading the Koran when he was murdered; Ali possessed the esoteric interpretation of the Holy Writ (1945-78). So it was and is with 85 the right-guided and right-guiding saints after them; all are the Prophet’s spiritual kindred, and the lover, through the miracle of love at one with the Spirit of Muhammad, is the father of Adam himself. Being born pure of contagion with otherness, his cradle­meditation was upon the Sura called ‘The Prophets’ (Koran xxi), the tablet upon which he learned to write was the Preserved Tablet laid up in heaven, his favourite reading in childhood was the Sura called ‘The Victory’ (or in Sufi parlance ‘The Revelation’, Koran xlviii). The religious code he instituted fulfilled and sealed all other systems (1980-2008). He, as Reality of Realities, is the source of all being and all activity ; he in fact is the only agent in all the created world. The poet contrasts again in new interpretation the Divine attributes of Mercy and Wrath (see lines 1577-8), which he equates with the Sufi technical terms ‘expansion’ and ‘contraction’ (see Koran ii. 246); where the two states unite, there is total ‘nearness’ (2009-44).

The mention of Unity provokes the customary increase of tension and involution of thought, the Lover-Beloved addressing the disciple in a series of brilliant images. The poet compares this ‘coinage of parables’ with those diverse parts which al-Harïrî portrays the hero of his Maqàmât as playing ; the play is not to be disregarded, for the story it tells shadows the truth. The natural phenomena of the image in the mirror and the voice’s echo are cited as further examples. The transmission of knowledge and the disposition of the mind to know make the same point; the poet calls in the Platonic theory of ‘recollection’ to assist his argument (2045-129). As the tension relaxes, he is carried forward to a new passage of refreshing lucidity, in which he describes the scenes of the oriental shadow-play as illustrating his point that the ‘play’ of natural phenomena is not to be disregarded ; the sleep of illusion brings with it the veridical dream of reality. The poet offers esoteric inter­pretations of the strange acts performed by Moses’ mysterious companion—the slaying of the lad (Koran xvi. 73), the setting-up of the wall (ibid. 76), and the staving-in of the ship (ibid. 70), (2130-237).

The poet refers to the Tradition beloved of the Sufis, that God said, ‘My servant ceases not to draw nigh Me by works of supererogation until I love him; and when I love him, I am his ear so that he hears by Me, and his eye so that he sees by Me, and his tongue so that he speaks by Me, and his hand so that he grasps by Me’. This Tradition is a further proof of the truth of mystical Unity; the ‘means’ (the physical attributes) are themselves the means of achieving that Unity, and Unity being once attained the means disappear (2238-53).

All natural beauty delights the mystic, for in it he contemplates the perfection of His own creative art. All religions contain indications to the truth of Unity; the ‘eyes strayed not’ (see Koran liii. 17) in any faith. Men were not created as an ‘idle sport’ (Koran xxiii. 117), or ‘to wander off at random’ (Koran Ixxv. 36). In all things God’s eternal Will is fulfilled, as when He said (according to the Tradition) creating Adam, ‘These (the saved) are in Paradise, and I care not ; and these (the damned) are in Hell, and I care not’ ; and this is confirmed amply by the Koran which men recite every morning. There is no room for pantheism in this doctrine of absolute Unity (2254-329).

So Ibn al-Farid passes into the final scene of his drama, speaking as with the voice of Muhammad, and referring to the vision of the Spirit hinted at in the Scriptures (Koran liii. 9), and Moses’ putting-off of shoes in the holy valley (Koran xx. 12) ; his sun and moon 86

set not as did those heavenly bodies which Abraham rejected as objects of worship (Koran vi. 76). The heavens are in his control, and the angels acknowledge his sovereignty. The eternal wisdom still abides unchanged in the world of Spirit ; this is the secret know­ledge for which the Sufis pray, but those now living drink but the dregs of the cup of knowledge (so at the last the poet returns to the image with which he began), while even the boasted wisdom of the ancients was but the overflow of his abounding and infinite grace (2330-63).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dïwân of Ibn al-Fârid. Manuscript in the possession of A. Chester Beatty, Esq. Undated, earlier than 1292.

Dïwân of Ibn al-Fârid. Lithographed edition. Beirut, 1851.

Dïwân of Ibn al-Fârid. Printed edition. Beirut, 1899.

Dïwân of Ibn al-Fârid. Edited with brief notes by Mahmûd Taufîq. Cairo, ca. 1945.

Jala" al-ghâmid of Amïn Khun. The text of the Dïwân of Ibn al-Fârid, edited with annotations. Beirut, 1910.

Muntahâ al-madârik of Sa'îd ad-Dïn al-Farghânï. An extensive commentary on the Nazm as-sulük of Ibn al-Fârid. Cairo (?), 1876.

Kashf al-wujüh al-ghurr of 'Abd ar-Razzâq al-Kâshânî. A commentary on the Nazm as-sulük of Ibn al-Fârid. Printed on the margins of Sharh Dïwân Ibn al-Fârid. Cairo, 1901.

J. VON Hammer-Purgstall, Das arabische Hohe Lied der Liebe. Wien, 1854.

S. I. di Matteo, Ibn al-Fârid: il gran poema mistica. Roma, 1917.

R. A. Nicholson, ‘The Odes of Ibnu ’l-Farid’ in Studies in Islamic mysticism, pp. 162-266. Cambridge, 1921.

C. A. Nallino, Tl poema mistico arabo dTbn al-Fârid in una recente traduzione italiana*, ‘Ancora su Ibn al-Fârid e sulla mistica musulmana’, ‘Frammento di traduzione dell’ at-Tâ’iyyah al-kubrà di Ibn al-Fârid’ in Raccolta di scritti editi e inediti (edited by Maria Nallino), vol. ii, pp. 191-386. Roma, 1940.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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