Chehel Asrar 02 - Second Ghazal

Ghazal 2

11 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 446

گَر بَرْاَنْدَازَد زَمَانِی اَز جَمَالِ خُود نِقَاب

gar bar-andāzad zamānī az jamāl-e khod neqāb

1a  If the beloved lifts the veil from that beauty for a moment,

اَز خِجَالَت دَر کُسُوف آرَد رُخِ خُود آفْتَاب

az khejālat dar kosūf ārad rokh-e khod āftāb

1b  the sun will hide its face in eclipse from shame.

Commentary on couplet 1

The beloved’s unveiling reverses the ordinary hierarchy of light: the sun, usually the measure of radiance, becomes the one who must conceal its face. Eclipse is personified as embarrassment before a beauty it cannot rival. The momentary condition matters: even the briefest disclosure would overwhelm the brightest familiar object. Jamāl names beauty, while neqāb gives that beauty a veil whose removal remains the beloved’s act. In a devotional reading, the image suggests tajallī, divine self-disclosure, through which familiar measures of splendor lose their authority. Yet its immediate language remains that of a lover admiring a face. Neither the beloved’s identity nor a complete metaphysics is stated in this opening.

وَر نَسِیمِی اَز رَهِ لُطْفَش بِدُوزَخ بُگْذَرَد

var nasīmī az rah-e lotfash be-dūzakh bogzarad

2a  And if a breeze of that grace should pass through hell,

بَنْدِیَانِ حَبْسِ آتَش ذَوْق یَابَنْد اَز عَذَاب

bandiyān-e habs-e ātash zowq yāband az ʿazāb

2b  the captives in its fiery prison will find delight in torment.

Commentary on couplet 2

A passing breeze is enough to transform the experience of those confined within fire. The verse does not say that the prison disappears: its startling claim is that grace makes delight possible within torment. Zowq means taste or savor, giving that transformation an inward, experiential emphasis. A close parallel is reported by Pablo Beneito from the work he identifies as Hamadani’s Ḥaqāʾiq al-asmāʾ, where punishment becomes sweet to those experiencing it. [6] This is a scholarly-reported textual parallel, with an attribution qualification noted below. The ghazal itself remains conditional: its image magnifies the beloved’s grace without specifying the eventual fate of every soul or a timetable for the afterlife.

وَر بِهِشْت اَز جِلْوِهٔ حُسْنَش شَوَد خَالِی دَمِی

var behesht az jelve-ye hosnash shavad khālī damī

3a  And if paradise lacks the radiance of that beauty for a moment,

سَلْسَبِیل وُ سَایِهٔ طُوبَیٰ شَوَد اَنْدَر حِجَاب

Salsabīl o sāye-ye Tūbā shavad andar hejāb

3b  Salsabīl and the shade of Ṭūbā will fall behind a veil. [1]

Commentary on couplet 3

This couplet answers the preceding one by imagining the reverse condition: paradise without the beloved’s radiance loses its accessibility and delight. The spring and shade are still named, but fall behind a veil. Salsabīl is explicitly the name of a paradisal spring in Qur’an 76:18. Ṭūbā occurs as a blessing in Qur’an 13:29; its identification as a tree belongs to the transmitted tradition, including a report collected by Ibn Ḥibbān. [7] Water and shade make paradise sensuously present before the poet subordinates them to beauty. The counterfactual measures the lover’s desire: heavenly surroundings cannot substitute for the beloved’s presence. It need not assert an actual withdrawal of God from creation.

بَا صَفَایِ لَذَّتِ دَرْدَش نَعِیمِ خُلْد هِیچ

bā safā-ye lazzat-e dardash naʿīm-e khold hīch

4a  Beside the pure delight of this pain, heaven's bliss is nothing;

بَا خَیَالِ دَوْلَتِ وَصْلَش هَمِه عَالَم سَرَاب

bā khayāl-e dowlat-e vaslash hame ʿālam sarāb

4b  beside the thought of the joy of union, the whole world is a mirage.

Commentary on couplet 4

The comparisons grow more demanding: even love’s pain outweighs heavenly pleasure, and merely imagining union exposes the world’s attractions as a mirage. Dardash is pain bound to the beloved, not a claim that suffering of every kind is good. Khayāl here can mean the thought or image of union; the word alone does not require Ibn ʿArabi’s technical account of imagination. The Darwīshiyya, as edited under Hamadani’s name by Riaz, distinguishes one who exchanges this world for the next from a seeker who relinquishes attachment to both. [8] That passage closely illuminates the couplet’s priorities: the lover seeks the beloved beyond the calculation of personal compensation, even compensation in paradise.

قَطْرِه‌اِی اَز جَامِ وَصْلَش گَر بِکَامِ جَان رَسَد

qatre-ī az jām-e vaslash gar be-kām-e jān rasad

5a  If a drop from the cup of union reaches the soul's lips,

تَا قِیَامَت مَسْت اُفْتَد بَر نَدَارَد سَر زِ خَواب

tā qiyāmat mast oftad bar na-dārad sar ze khāb

5b  it will lie drunk until the Resurrection, never raising its head from sleep.

Commentary on couplet 5

The imagined bliss of union becomes a cup from which the soul receives a single drop. Be-kām-e jān places the experience at the soul’s mouth or palate, carrying forward the language of taste. The tiny quantity produces an immeasurable duration: intoxication lasts until the Resurrection. Sleep here dramatizes being overcome and losing ordinary self-command; it need not signify ignorance or a literal account of a saint’s bodily condition. Nor is this a complete description of the spiritual path’s mature outcome. Within the poem, it first magnifies the power of encounter, then prepares the next couplet’s distinction between passing intoxication with an aftermath and a transformed life that does not depend on recovering another fleeting taste.

بِی‌خُمَار اَر مَسْتِئِی خَواهِی زِ هَسْتِی گُوشِه‌گِیر

bī-khomār ar mastī-ī khāhī ze hastī gūshe-gīr

6a  If you want intoxication without a hangover, withdraw from your own existence; [2]

وَر حَیَاتِ جَاوِدَان خَواهِی طَلَب کُن زِ آن شَرَاب

var hayāt-e jāvedān khāhī talab kon ze ān sharāb

6b  and if you want eternal life, seek some of that wine.

Commentary on couplet 6

The poem now addresses the seeker directly. Khomār is the discomfort or craving that follows intoxication; the desired wine would leave no such reversal. Hastī means existence or being, while gūshe-gīr asks one to withdraw or take a secluded position. In this context, withdrawing from ‘your own existence’ can mean relinquishing the claim to possess being independently, anticipating the final fanā. The Darwīshiyya similarly describes effacing the trace of otherness and directing aspiration beyond habitual attachments. [8] Eternal life therefore changes the significance of intoxication. Qur’an 56:19 provides a related image of paradisal drink without headache or loss of reason, although this poem positively values ‘drunkenness’ in its own symbolic language. [9]

بَادِهٔ غَم نُوش اَگَر خَواهِی رَهَایِی زِین خُمَار

bāde-ye gham nūsh agar khāhī rahāyī zīn khomār

7a  Drink the wine of sorrow if you want release from this hangover;

رَاهِ رِنْدَان گِیر اَگَر جُویِی تُو قُرْبِ آن‌جَنَاب

rāh-e rendān gīr agar jūyī to qorb-e ān-janāb

7b  take the libertines' path if you seek nearness to that exalted presence.

Commentary on couplet 7

The promised remedy is paradoxical: drink sorrow to recover from the aftermath of intoxication. The lover must receive longing itself instead of treating love only as a source of agreeable states. The second command gives this orientation a social figure, the rind. ‘Libertines’ preserves the supplied translation’s provocative force, but contemporary English can narrow a poetic character who also challenges respectable pretension. In Persian ghazal conventions, the rind’s disrepute can become the vehicle of an unsettling claim to sincerity. [10] Here the stated aim is qorb, nearness to the beloved’s exalted presence. The couplet makes grief and disrepute part of that aspiration without providing a general ethical rule that misconduct produces nearness.

رُوزْبَازَارِی کِه رِنْدَان رَاسْت هَر دَم دَر غَمَش

rūz-bāzārī ke rendān rāst har dam dar ghamash

8a  The prosperity the libertines enjoy each moment in this sorrow— [3]

زَاهِد اَنْدَر عُمْرْهَا هَرْگِز نَه بِینَد آن بِخَواب

zāhed andar ʿomr-hā hargez na bīnad ān be-khāb

8b  the ascetic never sees it even in a dream through many lifetimes.

Commentary on couplet 8

Rūz-bāzār turns the lover’s sorrow into a flourishing market: what appears to be loss proves prosperous by another measure. The supplied note explains the compressed grammar rendān rāst, ‘belongs to the libertines.’ Their possession is immediate and recurrent, ‘each moment,’ whereas the ascetic’s deprivation extends through imagined lifetimes and even dreams. The contrast targets a mode of religious striving that cannot recognize love’s inward abundance; the verse does not explain every ascetic’s motives or dismiss all discipline. Its force also depends on the preceding couplet: the rind’s wealth is specifically found in sorrow for the beloved. Prosperity has been redefined through the relation of love, rather than through comfort, reputation, or visible achievement.

مُهْرِ مِهْرِ اُو بَس اَسْت اِی دِل، دَم اَز وَصْلَش مَزَن

mohr-e mehr-e ū bas ast ey del, dam az vaslash ma-zan

9a  The seal of that love is enough, heart; do not speak of union. [4]

سَایِه رَا خُورْشِید جُسْتَن کِی بُوَد رَایِ صَوَاب؟

sāye rā khorshīd jostan key bovad rāy-e savāb

9b  When was it wise for a shadow to seek the sun?

Commentary on couplet 9

The heart is suddenly told to stop speaking of the union just praised. Mohr, ‘seal,’ and mehr, ‘love’ and also ‘sun,’ compress affection, an enduring mark, and light into an audible and written play. Love’s seal is sufficient; turning it into a claim to possess the beloved risks misunderstanding one’s condition. A shadow depends on illumination yet cannot approach the sun while simply retaining its identity as shadow. The question thus checks the lover’s presumption without cancelling longing. A useful Akbarian comparison is Ibn ʿArabi’s insistence that contemplative realization never encompasses God. [11] The seal and shadow suggest intimacy received together with a limit to what the receiver can claim.

دَر پِیِ عَنْقَا چِه پُویِی آخِر اِی مُورِ ضَعِیف؟

dar pey-e ʿanqā che pūyī ākher ey mūr-e zaʿīf

10a  Why chase the ʿanqā, you feeble ant? [5]

مَجْلِسِ جَانَان چِه جُویِی آخِر اِی خَانِه‌خَرَاب؟

majles-e jānān che jūyī ākher ey khāne-kharāb

10b  Why seek the beloved's gathering, you ruined soul?

Commentary on couplet 10

The rebuke sharpens through a mismatch of scale and capacity: a feeble ant pursues the elusive ʿanqā. The mythical bird retains the supplied note’s sense of the unattainable; no particular technical cosmological identification is required. In the second half, the ‘ruined soul’ seeks admission to the beloved’s gathering. Khāne-kharāb literally evokes a ruined house, allowing personal desolation to be felt as the loss of a place to stand. The repeated questions continue the correction of self-confident pursuit, although their intensity also exposes how deeply the speaker longs to enter. This is love arguing with its own aspiration. It should not be flattened into either a simple prohibition on seeking or a triumphant announcement of attainment.

گَر جَهَانِی چُون عَلَایِی هَر دَم آنْجَا شُد فَنَا

gar jahānī chūn ʿAlāʾī har dam ānjā shod fanā

11a  If a whole world, like ʿAlāʾī, perishes there at every moment,

قَطْرِه دَر دَرْیَا فُتَاد وُ بَاز شُد آبِی بِآب

qatre dar daryā fotād o bāz shod ābī be-āb

11b  a drop has fallen into the sea: water has become water again.

Commentary on couplet 11

The closing couplet names ʿAlāʾī and expands his disappearance to a whole world: even that immense loss becomes only a drop entering the sea. Fanā is passing away or effacement. The second half makes the paradox sharper by saying that water becomes water again; what seemed separately bounded does not introduce a second substance into the ocean. The image reaches beyond modesty toward the question of independently asserted being. Read comparatively with Ibn ʿArabi’s Book of Annihilation in Contemplation, such effacement need not mean that the individual has become identical with God. [11] The poem leaves the force of the water image beside the earlier shadow’s disproportion: the claim of separateness dissolves without becoming a boast of personal divinity.

Reading notes

[1] 3b: Salsabīl is a spring of paradise (Qurʾān 76:18); Ṭūbā is traditionally its blessed tree.

[2] 6a: Printed مستئی is read as مستی‌ای, “an intoxication.”

[3] 8a: روز بازار is read as روزبازار, prosperity or flourishing fortune; راست contracts را است.

[4] 9a: مهر plays on mohr, “seal,” and mehr, “love”; mehr also means the sun invoked in the next line.

[5] 10a: The ʿanqā is an elusive mythical bird, an image of the unattainable.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal explores what happens when the beloved becomes the measure of every other good. The sun’s radiance is insufficient, hell’s torment can be sweetened, and paradise’s spring and shade become veiled without that beauty. These are deliberately conditional and extravagant comparisons. Their force lies in making the reader experience how love changes value: a breeze, a moment, or a drop outweighs the most imposing conditions of ordinary and otherworldly life. The beloved remains unnamed, but the poem’s treatment of paradise, eternal life, and fanā gives its language of desire a sustained spiritual reach.

Its central difficulty is that the longing for union may itself become another form of self-interest. The cup first promises overwhelming delight, yet the seeker must then accept sorrow and relinquish attachment to separate being. The rind’s prosperity is hidden within grief, while the ascetic’s long endeavor cannot grasp it. A close contextual parallel appears in the Darwīshiyya printed under Hamadani’s name: its seeker moves beyond bargaining this world for the next, and verses quoted within the treatise connect the pain of the path with relinquishing reputation and personal gratification. [8] The poem’s reversals can therefore be read as a testing of desire, rather than a simple preference for pleasure over discipline.

The final three couplets make that test unsettling. The heart is told that love’s seal suffices; the shadow cannot claim the sun, and the ant cannot capture the ʿanqā. Yet the closing drop returns to water. These images pull in different directions: acknowledged disproportion and the disappearance of separately asserted identity. The tension should remain audible. Ibn ʿArabi’s distinction between contemplative effacement and a claim to encompass or become God offers a comparative clarification. [11] Beneito’s report of a Hamadani passage about torment becoming sweet also gives the earlier mercy image a specific textual context, while remaining evidence mediated by a scholar rather than a manuscript independently consulted here. [6]

The ghazal’s couplets retain their individual force even as their images answer one another. The closing use of the pen name places the poet himself within the surrender he describes. Love’s delight is not simply withdrawn after being promised; the imagined owner of that delight is called into question. The movement from a coveted cup to a drop in the sea suggests the poem’s most searching insight: union cannot become the possession through which the lover secures a more impressive self.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes [1]–[5] reproduce the supplied notes. References [6]–[11] support the new commentary. All supplied Persian readings, translations, and transliterations are retained. Scriptural resonances, documented textual parallels, and comparative Akbarian interpretations are distinguished in the explanations.

6. Pablo Beneito, The Presence of Superlative Compassion (Rahamût), notes 30 and 38. Beneito identifies Ḥaqāʾiq al-asmāʾ as Hamadani’s while noting attribution to Qunawi in MS Asir Efendi 431; he reports the relevant passage at fol. 37a. The present commentary relies on his published report; that manuscript was not independently consulted.
7. Qur’an 76:18 names Salsabīl; Qur’an 13:29 uses ṭūbā as a blessing. The identification of Ṭūbā as a paradisal tree is present in the report from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī collected in Ibn Ḥibbān, no. 7413 in the numbering reproduced by Dorar’s record and source extracts. No independent assessment of its transmission is made here.
8. Darwīshiyya, as edited under Hamadani’s name in Muhammad Riaz, Aḥvāl o āsār o ashʿār-e Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, second edition, 1991, pp. 497–498. The scanned passages distinguish aspiration beyond both worlds, relinquishment of attachments, and effacement of otherness; verses quoted in the treatise connect pain with the surrender of reputation and gratification. Those quoted verses are not independently attributed to Hamadani here. Riaz’s introduction, p. 486, defends Hamadani’s authorship of the treatise against a competing attribution to Sayyid Muhammad Nurbakhsh. Digitized Riaz edition.
9. Qur’an 56:19, on the absence of headache and impairment from paradisal drink. This is a contextual comparison with the poem’s wine imagery, not an identified verbal quotation.
10. Ehsan Yarshater, Ḡazal ii. Characteristics and Conventions, Encyclopaedia Iranica, especially “The Rends, Qalandars and their Ilk.” Used for the literary context of the rind and the reversal of conventional reputations. The article is not a commentary on this poem; its broader historical and metaphysical generalizations are not adopted here.
11. Ibn ʿArabi, Kitāb al-fanāʾ fī l-mushāhada, translated by Layla Shamash and Stephen Hirtenstein, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. The translated treatise distinguishes contemplative effacement from an inference of identity and rejects the claim to encompass God. It is used comparatively; no claim is made that it explains Hamadani’s exact images.