Chehel Asrar 07 - Seventh Ghazal

Ghazal 7

8 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 450–451

آنْکِه اَز سَایِهٔ لُطْفِ تُو نِشَانِی یَابَد

ān-ke az sāye-ye lotf-e to neshānī yābad

1a  Whoever gains a trace of the shade of your grace—

هَر کِه بِینَد رُخِ اُو تَازِه رَوَانِی یَابَد

har ke bīnad rokh-e ū tāze ravānī yābad

1b  everyone who sees their face finds fresh life.

Commentary on couplet 1

Grace passes through one person to reach others. The face in the second half belongs to the person touched by the beloved’s favor: merely seeing that transformed person brings fresh life. ‘A trace’ and ‘shade’ make the initial gift seem slight, yet its effect overflows the first recipient. Luṭf carries gentleness and gracious care, while shade suggests shelter. A related pattern appears in the Darwīshiyya printed under Hamadani’s name, where divine care brings a seeker into an experienced guide’s company and instruction cultivates inward renewal. [2] The poem leaves the relationship more open than that formal setting. Its distinctive claim is that received grace becomes perceptible, and life-giving, in the presence of its recipient.

وَ آنْکِه بَر خَاکِ سَرِ کُویِ تُو مَنْزِل سَازَد

v-ān-ke bar khāk-e sar-e kū-ye to manzel sāzad

2a  And whoever makes a home in the dust at the entrance to your lane

عَیْشِ صَد سَالِه دَر اِین رَاه زَمَانِی یَابَد

ʿaysh-e sad sāle dar īn rāh zamānī yābad

2b  finds a hundred years of joy in a moment on this path.

Commentary on couplet 2

The lover settles in dust at the entrance to the beloved’s lane, and this humble dwelling contains an abundance that ordinary time cannot measure. A hundred years of joy become available in a moment. The disproportion between dust and delight gives the couplet its surprise: what appears outwardly meager becomes inwardly sufficient. Manzel, a lodging or stopping place, also belongs to the vocabulary of travel, so making a home and following a path remain joined. In a devotional reading, nearness changes the value of a moment. The verse expresses the fullness of an encounter through temporal compression, allowing a brief experience of belonging to outweigh a long life spent elsewhere.

تِشْنِهٔ وَصْلِ تُو چُون رَاهِ خَیَالَت سِپَرَد

teshne-ye vasl-e to chūn rāh-e khayālat separad

3a  When one thirsty for union with you follows the path of your image,

نُزْلِ رَه هَر نَفَسِی مُلْکِ جَهَانِی یَابَد

nozl-e rah har nafasī molk-e jahānī yābad

3b  they find a world's kingdom at every breath as provisions for the road. [1]

Commentary on couplet 3

Thirst for union sends the lover along the path of the beloved’s image. Khayāl keeps the beloved inwardly present while the journey continues; each breath receives provisions worth a world’s kingdom. As the supplied note explains, nozl is hospitality or a traveler’s provision, so even these vast gifts remain refreshment along the way. An Akbarian comparison clarifies the image’s power: Ibn ʿArabi describes seeing or hearing of a beloved as giving rise to an image within the lover’s imagination. [3] The comparison concerns love’s inward experience. Here the image sustains movement toward the desired encounter, and the breath gives that continuing movement an intimate rhythm. Abundance accompanies thirst without bringing the journey to an announced end.

لَذَّتِ دَرْدِ تُو هَر مُرْدِه‌دِلِی کِی یَابَد؟

lazzat-e dard-e to har morde-delī key yābad

4a  What deadened heart could ever taste the delight of your pain?

دَوْلَت آن یَافْت کِه اَز دَرْدِ تُو جَانِی یَابَد

dowlat ān yāft ke az dard-e to jānī yābad

4b  The one who finds life through your pain has found good fortune.

Commentary on couplet 4

The question distinguishes a heart dulled to love from one awakened through it. The pain belongs to the relationship with the beloved, and its ‘delight’ consists in the life that this relationship makes possible. Dowlat means fortunate attainment here: the successful lover has become responsive. A Qur’anic context for inward renewal is 6:122, which depicts one brought from death to life and given light among people; the couplet offers a thematic resonance, without quoting that verse. [4] More specifically, the Darwīshiyya under Hamadani’s name describes remembrance, love, and knowledge of God as nourishment whose sweetness a sickened heart can lose. [2] This helps explain why the capacity to taste, even painfully, marks a living heart.

دِل گُمَان بُرْد کِه ذَوْقِی زِ غَمَت یَافْتِه اَسْت

del gomān bord ke zowqī ze ghamat yāfte ast

5a  The heart supposed it had tasted some delight in sorrow for you;

اِین نَه گَنْجِی اَسْت کِه هَر کَس بِگُمَانِی یَابَد

īn na ganjī ast ke har kas be-gomānī yābad

5b  this is no treasure anyone can find by guessing.

Commentary on couplet 5

The heart’s claim is immediately subjected to doubt. It supposes that it has tasted delight, but gomān returns in the second half to expose the insufficiency of supposition. The treasure is too substantial to be secured by guessing. Zowq, taste, gives knowledge the immediacy of something undergone; yet even an assertion of tasting can conceal uncertainty about what has actually happened. By comparison, Ibn ʿArabi distinguishes descriptions of love from knowing it through tasting. [3] The ghazal turns this distinction into an examination of the speaker’s own heart. Its challenge falls on premature confidence: the heart must answer for the difference between speaking as though it possesses a treasure and having found it.

وَصْفِ سُوزِ غَمِ هِجْرِ تُو کَسِی رَا شَایَد

vasf-e sūz-e gham-e hejr-e to kasī rā shāyad

6a  Only someone is fit to describe the burning sorrow of separation from you

کِه بِهَر مُوی اَز اِین شِیوِه زَبَانِی یَابَد

ke be-har mūy az īn shīve zabānī yābad

6b  who can find, in this way, a tongue for every hair.

Commentary on couplet 6

The next couplet asks who is qualified to speak about separation. Burning sorrow demands a witness whose whole being can testify: every hair must acquire a tongue. The extravagant multiplication of voices makes bodily experience the measure of adequate description. A single fluent tongue seems insufficient for what has entered the lover so completely. Following the previous couplet’s challenge to supposition, this image raises the stakes of poetic speech. Language should bear the pressure of what it claims to express. Yet the impossible number of tongues also suggests that separation continually exceeds its description. The poem speaks of that excess by imagining a body in which even the smallest part has become articulate.

هَر کِه دَر مُلْکِ غَمَت نِیسْت نَدَارَد عَیْشِی

har ke dar molk-e ghamat nīst na-dārad ʿayshī

7a  Whoever is outside the realm of sorrow for you has no joy;

اِی خُوش آن دِل کِه دَرِین کُوی مَکَانِی یَابَد

ey khosh ān del ke darīn kūy makānī yābad

7b  how happy the heart that finds a place in this lane!

Commentary on couplet 7

The beloved’s sorrow becomes a country in which the heart longs to reside. Molk, dominion, expands the experience into an encompassing place, while the second half makes that vastness intimate again as a lane with room for one heart. The opening claim that joy belongs only within this sorrow is the lover’s emphatic expression of attachment: delight has become inseparable from caring for the beloved. The return to a dwelling in the lane recalls couplet 2 and gives longing a sense of habitation. Happiness lies in having a place within the relationship, even when that relationship is experienced through absence. The heart celebrates belonging without claiming that separation has ceased to hurt.

گَر کُنِی بَر دِلِ پُرْدَرْدِ عَلَایِی نَظَرِی

gar konī bar del-e por-dard-e ʿAlāʾī nazarī

8a  If you cast a glance on ʿAlāʾī's pain-filled heart,

اَز جَفَاهَایِ فَلَک یِک رَه اَمَانِی یَابَد

az jafā-hā-ye falak yek rah amānī yābad

8b  it will at last find refuge from the cruelties of the heavens.

Commentary on couplet 8

The final conditional plea brings the poem’s general assurances to the named heart of ʿAlāʾī. Earlier, anyone touched by grace could give fresh life to others; now the speaker asks whether the beloved will direct even a glance toward this particular sufferer. Nazar, a look or regard, makes relief depend on being noticed. The cruelties of falak, the revolving heavens, evoke the changing adversities of worldly fortune, while amān asks for safety and refuge. This request preserves the difference between sorrow that binds the heart to the beloved and affliction from which it seeks shelter. The supplied signature remains ʿAlāʾī: the ending’s force lies in its personal vulnerability after the poem’s expansive claims.

Reading notes

[1] 3b: نزل means hospitality or provisions offered to a traveler.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal praises a love whose smallest gifts can renew a life, while questioning how such renewal is known. Its recurring yābad, ‘finds’ or ‘may find,’ gathers a series of discoveries: fresh life, concentrated joy, provisions, fortunate attainment, a treasure, a voice, a dwelling, and refuge. The beloved is addressed throughout as ‘you,’ but most couplets speak about an unnamed seeker. Only the close brings those possibilities to the particular heart signed ʿAlāʾī, whose need has not disappeared behind the poem’s praise.

Shade, dust, the lane, and the traveler’s provisions give longing a setting of shelter and hospitality. A moment near the beloved outweighs a hundred years elsewhere; an inward image sustains a journey with gifts at every breath. Yet these gifts coexist with thirst, sorrow, and separation. The poem’s joy arises within the relationship that makes the heart vulnerable. Its last plea for refuge consequently matters: the pain of loving and the cruelties of worldly fortune are not treated as one undifferentiated blessing.

The middle couplets turn from abundance to discernment. A living heart can taste what a dulled heart cannot, but even the claim to have tasted must face examination. The returning gomān challenges the heart’s self-assurance, and the many imagined tongues demand that speech be answerable to lived experience. In the Darwīshiyya printed under Hamadani’s name, remembrance, love, and knowledge nourish the heart, while experienced guidance helps its capacities grow. [2] These are useful prose parallels for the poem’s renewal and discernment. Comparatively, Ibn ʿArabi’s discussion of love gives inward images a role in loving and distinguishes verbal accounts from direct tasting. [3] Neither comparison resolves the ghazal into a single doctrinal formula.

The closing glance completes a pattern begun with the shade of grace. At the opening, favor radiates outward through a transformed face; at the end, the speaker hopes that favor will reach an exposed heart. The poem can therefore affirm love’s abundance without pretending that the speaker has mastered or secured it. Its final discovery remains conditional on the beloved’s attention: the heart that speaks so richly of love still waits to be received.

Sources and textual notes

Reading note [1] reproduces the supplied note. References [2]–[4] support the new commentary. The Persian readings, translations, transliterations, and closing signature ʿAlāʾī remain unchanged. Prose parallels and Akbarian comparisons are distinguished from a commentary on this exact poem; the signature alone is not used to settle authorship.

2. Darwīshiyya, printed under Hamadani’s name in Muhammad Riaz, Aḥvāl o āsār o ashʿār-e Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, second edition, Islamabad, 1991. Printed p. 490 describes remembrance, love, and knowledge of God as nourishment of the heart and spirit, and illness as the loss of their sweetness and taste. Printed pp. 492–493 describe divine care bringing a seeker to an experienced guide, whose instruction and the disciple’s practice cultivate good actions, spiritual states, and inward clarity. 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; the commentary retains this qualification. Digitized Riaz edition.
3. James W. Morris, Ibn ʿArabi’s “Short Course” on Love, Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, 50 (2011). The translated selections from al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, chapter 73, Question 116, discuss the beloved’s image in the lover’s imagination and distinguish descriptions of love from knowing through tasting. Used comparatively in couplets 3 and 5.
4. Qur’an 6:122, al-Anʿām, on being brought from death to life and given light among people. Used as a thematic context for inward renewal in couplet 4, without identifying the couplet as a direct quotation.

The leaf runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 5, then 6, 8. Couplet 7 sits between 4 and 5. All eight are present. That makes four reordered leaves against three that follow the print.

One more thing, offered tentatively since it turns on a few strokes at this resolution: the couplet-6 line appears to read سوز شب هجر تو where the printed text has سوز غم هجر تو, and the opening word of that line carries وصف written above it as a correction. Both are worth checking directly against Riaz p. 450.