Chehel Asrar 03 - Third Ghazal

Ghazal 3

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 447

دَرْدِ عِشْقَت کِه دَوَایِ دِلِ شُورِیدِهٔ مَاسْت

dard-e ʿeshqat ke davā-ye del-e shūrīde-ye māst

1a  The pain of loving you is the cure for our distraught heart;

یِک سَرِ مُوی اَز آن، هَر دُو جَهَان نِیم‌بَهَاسْت

yek sar-e mūy az ān, har do jahān nīm-bahāst

1b  both worlds are only half the price of a single hair's breadth of it.

Commentary on couplet 1

The beloved is addressed through a paradox: the pain of love heals the heart that is already distraught. Shūrīde suggests disturbance, scattering, and the lover’s disordered state; the cure need not mean a return to ordinary composure. The second half gives that pain an astonishing value. Both this world and the next would pay only half the price of its smallest measure. A related valuation appears in the Darwīshiyya printed under Hamadani’s name, where a person’s worth is measured by aspiration and the seeker moves beyond attachment to both worlds. [2] Here the image remains more intimate: nothing those worlds contain can adequately purchase the heart’s relationship with ‘you.’

اَز صَفَایِ غَمِ تُو بِی‌بَصَرَان رَا چِه خَبَر؟

az safā-ye gham-e to bī-basarān rā che khabar

2a  What do the sightless know of the purity of sorrow for you?

قَدْرِ اِین تُحْفِه کَسِی دَانَد کَز اَهْلِ صَفَاسْت

qadr-e īn tohfe kasī dānad k-az ahl-e safāst

2b  Only one whose heart is pure knows the worth of this gift.

Commentary on couplet 2

The question asks who can recognize sorrow as a gift. Bī-basarān, ‘the sightless,’ works within the poem as a description of missing discernment: the value of this experience cannot be seen from its painful exterior alone. The repeated safā links the sorrow’s clarity or purity with the quality required in its receiver. Ahl-e safā are those acquainted with such purity; the phrase does not identify a particular institution or order here. Tohfe makes the sorrow a precious offering from the beloved. The two halves therefore concern recognition as well as endurance: what looks like deprivation to an outside observer may become meaningful to a heart whose desires have been clarified.

مُرْدِه اَسْت آنْکِه نَمُرْدِه اَسْت زِ دَرْدَت رُوزِی

morde ast ān-ke na-morde ast ze dardat rūzī

3a  Dead is the one who has never died of your pain;

کُشْتِهٔ تِیغِ بَلَاهَایِ تُرَا مُلْکِ بَقَاسْت

koshte-ye tīgh-e balā-hā-ye to-rā molk-e baqāst

3b  the realm of everlasting life belongs to those slain by the sword of your trials.

Commentary on couplet 3

The repeated forms of ‘dead’ and ‘died’ overturn the ordinary boundary between life and death. One may remain physically alive yet lack the life that love awakens; the beloved’s trials become a sword through which another kind of continuance is received. Baqā means abiding or remaining, and molk gives that abiding the scale of a kingdom. In a comparative Sufi reading, fanā is the passing of self-appropriation, while baqā is abiding through God rather than claiming independent sufficiency. Ibn ʿArabi’s Book of Annihilation in Contemplation helps articulate that distinction. [3] The couplet itself does not set out a technical sequence: its concentrated claim is that love’s undoing can disclose a life ordinary self-preservation misses.

گَر هَمِه خَلْقِ جَهَان اَز سَرِ زَر بَرْخِیزَنْد

gar hame khalq-e jahān az sar-e zar bar-khīzand

4a  Even if everyone in the world should renounce their gold,

دَوْلَتِ وَصْلِ تُو آن یَافْت کِه اَز سَر بَرْخَاسْت

dowlat-e vasl-e to ān yāft ke az sar bar-khāst

4b  the one who gains the joy of union with you is the one who renounces their head.

Commentary on couplet 4

The first half imagines a universal renunciation of wealth, then the second asks for something more intimate than possessions. Sar is repeated across the idiom of giving up gold and the image of giving up one’s head. That verbal turn exposes the possessor who may remain firmly intact after parting with what is possessed. Dowlat combines attainment with fortunate blessing: union is not simply a larger purchase made by a more generous donor. The head can stand for the life, standing, and self-command the lover still claims as his own. The couplet’s escalation thus tests renunciation at its deepest point, where the desire to remain the owner of one’s spiritual achievement must also be surrendered.

لَذَّتِ عُمْر دِل اَز ضَرْبِ بَلَاهَایِ تُو دِید

lazzat-e ʿomr del az zarb-e balā-hā-ye to dīd

5a  The heart found life's delight in the blows of your trials,

زِ آنْکِه اَز دُوسْت جَفَا خِلْعَتِ اَرْبَابِ وَفَاسْت

ze ān-ke az dūst jafā khelʿat-e arbāb-e vafāst

5b  for cruelty from the friend is a robe of honor for the faithful.

Commentary on couplet 5

The heart recognizes delight in the blows of trial because they come from the Friend. Jafā carries the sting of harshness, neglect, or cruelty; the translation’s strong word preserves the difficulty of the image. A khelʿat is a bestowed robe of honor, so what appears to dishonor the lover becomes, within this intimate address, a sign of fidelity being acknowledged. The paradox concerns the faithful lover’s understanding of experience, rather than making harshness a virtue in itself. An Akbarian comparison preserves room for vulnerability: Ibn ʿArabi’s spiritual counsels allow the patient sufferer to complain to God and require attention to the suffering voiced by others. [4] Fidelity need not mean that pain becomes inaudible.

جُمْلِه جَانْهَا سِپَرِ تِیرِ غَمَت سَاخْتِه‌اِیم

jomle jān-hā separ-e tīr-e ghamat sākhte-īm

6a  We have made all our souls shields for the arrow of your sorrow;

تَا کِرَا مِی‌رَسَد اِین دَوْلَت وُ اِین بَخْت کِرَاسْت؟

tā ke-rā mī-rasad īn dowlat o īn bakht ke-rāst

6b  who will receive this blessing, and whose will this good fortune be?

Commentary on couplet 6

The plural voice makes the lovers a company prepared to receive the beloved’s arrow. Their souls become shields, but the following question prevents this readiness from turning into a claim of entitlement: who will actually receive the blessing? Dowlat and bakht both present the outcome as fortunate bestowal. A particularly close parallel occurs in the Darwīshiyya, which describes making one’s life a target of afflictions and a shield against calamities. [2] Its surrounding counsel joins this readiness to purification from pride, greed, and envy, and to remembrance of the Friend. That context suggests a disciplined availability to transformation. The poem’s question leaves the gift beyond the lovers’ power to award themselves.

هَر کَسِی اَز دَرِ لُطْفِ تُو مُرَادِی طَلَبَد

har kasī az dar-e lotf-e to morādī talabad

7a  Everyone asks for a wish at the door of your grace;

نَامُرَادِی چُو مُرَادِ تُو بُوَد مَطْلَبِ مَاسْت

nā-morādī cho morād-e to bovad matlab-e māst

7b  if frustration is your wish, it is what we seek.

Commentary on couplet 7

The door of grace ordinarily receives petitions for fulfilled wishes. The second half turns the word morād against itself: if the beloved desires nā-morādī, the frustration of the lover’s wish, that frustration becomes what the lover seeks. Desire is redirected rather than merely suppressed. The Darwīshiyya offers a close parallel in its image of drawing a line of renunciation across personal desires. [2] In an Akbarian comparison, such surrender still requires discernment: Ibn ʿArabi rejects a supposed surrender that abandons divine limits. [4] The couplet’s conditional wording matters. The lover’s allegiance is to the beloved, so disappointment has no independent sanctity; its value arises within that relationship.

جُز غَمَت نِیسْت مَرَا دَر دُو جَهَان هِیچ مُرَاد

joz ghamat nīst ma-rā dar do jahān hīch morād

8a  In both worlds I desire nothing but sorrow for you,

زِ آنْکِه زِین غَم دِلِ مَجْرُوحِ مَرَا مَرْهَمْهَاسْت

ze ān-ke zīn gham del-e majrūh-e ma-rā marham-hāst

8b  for this sorrow holds balms for my wounded heart.

Commentary on couplet 8

The voice narrows from the lovers’ collective ‘we’ to ‘my wounded heart,’ returning to the medical image of the opening. There, love’s pain was a cure; here, sorrow for the beloved contains many balms. The plural marham-hā suggests repeated or varied forms of healing rather than one final removal of feeling. Ghamat, ‘sorrow for you,’ keeps the grief bound to its particular object: the beloved, rather than sadness itself, gives it significance. The refusal of any other desire in both worlds intensifies this concentration. Yet the heart remains described as wounded. Healing therefore coexists with longing, and the poem does not require their tension to be resolved into painless tranquility.

هَر کَس اَنْدَر طَلَبِ سُود بَرَد سَوْدَایِی

har kas andar talab-e sūd barad sowdāyī

9a  Everyone pursues some enterprise in search of profit;

حَاصِلِ سُودِ عَلَایِی زِ خَیَالَت سَوْدَاسْت

hāsel-e sūd-e ʿAlāʾī ze khayālat sowdāst

9b  ʿAlāʾī's profit from imagining you is love's madness. [1]

Commentary on couplet 9

The closing couplet returns to the language of value through sūd, profit, and hāsel, yield or result. Sowdā first suggests an enterprise, concern, or pursuit, then becomes the consuming fixation rendered as love’s madness. The poet’s pen name makes him answer for this strange balance sheet: what others would count as loss of composure is his entire gain. Khayālat can mean the thought or image of the beloved; the word alone does not establish an Akbarian doctrine of imagination. The ending also unsettles the opening cure. ʿAlāʾī has not been restored to ordinary calculation: the heart’s healing has changed what it values, leaving worldly measures unable to recognize its profit.

Reading notes

[1] 9b: سودا plays on trade or enterprise, obsessive longing, and madness.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal asks how pain can become the heart’s cure without ceasing to be pain. It addresses an unnamed ‘you’ whose sorrow is a gift, whose trials confer honor, and whose desire takes precedence over the lover’s own. The intimate language remains that of love poetry, while both worlds, abiding life, and the surrender of self-directed wishes support a spiritual reading. Its strongest movement is a transformation of value. What would ordinarily count as injury, frustration, or loss becomes precious through the relationship with the beloved.

The images make that transformation concrete. A hair’s breadth of love’s pain exceeds the purchasing power of both worlds; gold can be relinquished while its possessor remains untouched; an apparent blow becomes a robe of honor. The shield image gathers these reversals into readiness for trial, yet the question of who will receive this fortune keeps readiness distinct from entitlement. The Darwīshiyya printed under Hamadani’s name offers closely related language about aspiration beyond both worlds, surrendering personal wishes, and making one’s life a shield against calamity. [2] These are documented parallels, with the attribution qualification explained below, rather than evidence of an existing commentary on this exact ghazal.

The poem’s death and life paradox can be illuminated through fanā and baqā: the passing of possessive self-assertion and abiding in dependence on God. [3] Its treatment of frustrated desire also approaches riḍā, contentment, although that term does not occur in the verse. An Akbarian comparison helps keep such consent precise: Ibn ʿArabi’s counsels retain ethical discernment and the possibility of turning to God for relief. [4] These distinctions clarify the spiritual reading without dissolving the poem’s emotional difficulty. The heart is still wounded, and the lovers still ask who will receive the gift.

The closing signature gives the whole poem a gently unsettling return to its beginning. The promised cure has yielded love’s madness. The individual couplets need not form a sequence of formal spiritual stages for their images to answer one another: price and profit surround wound and balm, while the collective declarations become the confession of ʿAlāʾī’s own heart. His gain is a changed capacity to desire, not a secure possession of happiness. The sorrow heals by turning the heart toward the beloved so completely that it can no longer judge love by the comfort it brings.

Sources and textual notes

Reading note [1] reproduces the supplied note. References [2]–[4] support the new commentary. The Persian readings, translations, and transliterations remain unchanged. The prose parallels and Akbarian comparisons clarify possible readings; they are not presented as an earlier commentary on this exact poem.

2. Darwīshiyya, printed under Hamadani’s name in Muhammad Riaz, Aḥvāl o āsār o ashʿār-e Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, second edition, 1991. Printed p. 497 relates worth to aspiration and distinguishes attachment to the hereafter from relinquishment of both worlds; p. 498 describes renouncing personal desires; p. 499 joins the shield against calamity to purification from faults and remembrance of the Friend. These passages were checked against the scanned pages. Riaz’s introduction, p. 486, defends Hamadani’s authorship against a competing attribution to Sayyid Muhammad Nurbakhsh. Digitized Riaz edition.
3. Ibn ʿArabi, Kitāb al-fanāʾ fī l-mushāhada, translated by Layla Shamash and Stephen Hirtenstein, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. Used comparatively for the relation of effacement and abiding; the translated treatise also distinguishes this realization from an inference of identity between the individual and God.
4. James W. Morris, Introducing Ibn ʿArabi’s “Book of Spiritual Advice”, with translated selections from Kitāb al-Naṣāʾiḥ. The version consulted is the hosted unrevised prepublication PDF, especially its numbered pp. 17–18 on patience, complaint, contentment, and observing divine limits. The corrected publication is Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, XXVIII (2000), pp. 1–18; it was not independently consulted.