Chehel Asrar 11 - Eleventh Ghazal

Ghazal 11

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 454

بَر جانِ مُسْتَمَنْدان داغِی زِ غَم نَهادَنْد

bar jān-e mostamandān dāghī ze gham nahādand

1a  They placed a brand of sorrow on the souls of the afflicted,

کَز سُوزِ اُو دُو عالَم دَر حَیْرَت اُوفْتادَنْد

k-az sūz-e ū do ʿālam dar hayrat ūftādand

1b  whose burning cast both worlds into bewilderment.

Commentary on couplet 1

The poem begins with an act of marking: sorrow leaves a burning brand on afflicted souls, and its effect spreads through both worlds. The second half makes apparently private suffering a source of cosmic astonishment. Dāgh is both a wound and an enduring mark, suggesting that the encounter cannot simply be put aside. The unnamed plural subject leaves the act’s agency unstated; the verse does not supply a narrative explaining who inflicted it. Hayrat, bewilderment, describes the response to a burning whose significance exceeds familiar measures. This opening presents love through its effects before naming the beloved’s beauty. The afflicted become bearers of an intensity that unsettles the surrounding order, without the poem yet explaining how they will live with it.

چُون بَر دَرِ جَلالَش عالَم جُوِی نَیَرْزَد

chūn bar dar-e jalāl-ash ʿālam jowī nayarzad

2a  Since the world is worth no grain of barley at his majestic door,

بَر هَر گَدایِ مُفْلِس اِین دَر چِرا گُشادَنْد؟

bar har gedā-ye mofles īn dar cherā goshādand?

2b  why have they opened this door to every penniless beggar?

Commentary on couplet 2

At the door of majesty, the whole world fails to equal even a grain of barley, yet the door stands open to penniless beggars. The question keeps grandeur and apparent accessibility in unresolved relation. It may express wonder at generosity that requires no worldly payment; it may also challenge an easy assumption that an open door guarantees realized admission. The later criticism of those who have caught no scent of this threshold makes that second possibility worth retaining. Qur’an 35:15 supplies a relevant context by describing humanity’s need of God and God’s freedom from need.[3] This comparison illuminates spiritual poverty, but does not settle the question’s tone or turn destitution into an automatic qualification for intimacy.

بُوئِی زِ زُلْفِ آن مَه بِگُذَشْت بَر دُو عالَم

būyī ze zolf-e ān mah be-gozasht bar do ʿālam

3a  A scent from that moon’s tresses passed through both worlds;

ذَرّاتِ کَوْن اَز آن بُو مَسْتِ مَیِ وِدادَنْد

zarrāt-e kown az ān bū mast-e may-e vedād-and

3b  from that scent, every atom of creation is drunk on the wine of affection. [1]

Commentary on couplet 3

One passing fragrance intoxicates every particle of creation. The beloved appears as a moon with scented tresses: beauty remains sensuous, while the scale of its influence becomes cosmic. A trace is sufficient; neither unveiled sight nor possession of the beloved is required for this response. Vedād, affection, names the wine, as the supplied reading note specifies. The intoxication pictures creation’s responsiveness, with no need to give the curls a single fixed doctrinal meaning. An Akbarian comparison is especially close: a Futūḥāt passage translated by Chittick describes every existent as a lover, while particular attachments can veil awareness of love’s divine object.[4] This helps distinguish universal participation in affection from the conscious recognition that the later couplets demand.

چَنْدِین هِزار بِی‌دِل بَر بُویِ آن سَعادَت

chandīn hezār bī-del bar bū-ye ān saʿādat

4a  Many thousands who had lost their hearts, hoping for that bliss,

دِل‌ها نِثار کَرْدَنْد جان‌ها بِباد دادَنْد

del-hā nesār kardand jān-hā be-bād dādand

4b  scattered their hearts as offerings and cast their lives to the wind.

Commentary on couplet 4

The cosmic response now appears in the costly conduct of innumerable lovers. Already bī-del, without their hearts because love has taken them, they nevertheless scatter hearts as offerings and surrender their lives. That apparent excess is part of the verse’s emotional force: love gives again what it has already lost. Bar bū-ye means hoping for something, while preserving a suggestion of scent that answers the preceding fragrance. Nesār evokes a scattering offered in honor, making surrender an act of homage. The thousands intensify the scene without providing a literal count. Hearts and lives measure the depth of commitment in this poetic portrait; the violence of the language does not itself prescribe bodily harm or establish suffering as a goal.

مَسْتانِ حَضْرَتَش را آرامْگَه بَلا شُد

mastān-e hazrat-ash rā ārāmgah balā shod

5a  Affliction became the resting place of those drunk in his presence;

با صَد هِزار مِحْنَت بَر یادِ دُوسْت شادَنْد

bā sad hezār mehnat bar yād-e dūst shād-and

5b  amid a hundred thousand troubles, they rejoice in the friend’s remembrance.

Commentary on couplet 5

Those intoxicated by presence come to rest in affliction, and their joy persists amid an immense number of troubles. The halves explain the paradox through remembrance: hardship remains, but attention to the Friend gives the heart another source of life. Yād can include recalling, keeping someone inwardly present, and devotional remembrance; the wording does not specify a particular recitation. Darwīshiyya, printed under Hamadani’s name in Riaz’s edition, calls remembrance, love, and knowledge of God nourishment for the heart and spirit.[2] That documented parallel supports the life-giving role of remembrance here, rather than making distress itself the nourishment. The work’s attribution qualification is recorded below. The verse’s repose belongs to sustained relationship within trial, without requiring the troubles to be imaginary or painless.

قَوْمِی کِه پَی نَبُرْدَنْد بُویِی زِ خاکِ آن دَر

qowmī ke pay nabordand būyī ze khāk-e ān dar

6a  Those who never caught a scent of the dust of that threshold

دَر راهِ کَشْف و تَحْقِیق آن‌ها کَم اَز جَمادَنْد

dar rāh-e kashf o tahqīq ān-hā kam az jamād-and

6b  are less than lifeless matter on the path of unveiling and realization.

Commentary on couplet 6

The poem sharply confronts people who have missed even the scent of the threshold’s dust. Their failure is measured against matter, which the earlier cosmic image has already included within affection. Kashf, unveiling, concerns what becomes evident when an obstruction lifts; taḥqīq, realization, suggests establishing something as true through actual understanding. These terms give the comparison a specific setting: receptivity on the spiritual path. Qur’an 17:44 offers a related context in which everything praises God, although people do not comprehend that praise.[5] The comparison can therefore challenge the assumption that human sophistication guarantees inward awareness. Its cutting judgment should remain audible, while being read as a provocation about failed recognition rather than a general scale of people’s worth.

چُون دِیدِ آن نَدارَنْد تا رُویِ دُوسْت بِینَنْد

chūn dīd-e ān nadārand tā rū-ye dūst bīnand

7a  Since they lack the sight to behold the friend’s face,

اَز مادَرِ طَبِیعَت گُویِی مَگَر نَزادَنْد

az mādar-e tabīʿat gūyī magar nazādand

7b  you would think that Mother Nature had never borne them.

Commentary on couplet 7

The preceding failure of receptivity is intensified through the image of a birth that seems never to have occurred. Without the sight to behold the Friend, these people appear not to have emerged from Mother Nature. Gūyī, ‘you would think,’ marks the force of the statement as a comparison, preserving its rhetorical rather than literal character. Birth suggests the coming into exercise of a capacity: mere arrival in the world has not become awakened perception of what is loved. This can support a reading of spiritual maturation without requiring a separate doctrine of rebirth. Mother Nature is personified as the source of embodied life; the verse challenges the incomplete realization of that life, with the Friend’s face naming the missed encounter.

سَرْگَشْتِگانِ راهَش بَر نَفْس اَگَر سَوارَنْد

sargashtegān-e rāh-ash bar nafs agar savār-and

8a  Though the wanderers on his path ride upon the self,

هَرْگِز عِنانِ هِمَّت دَر دَسْتِ اُو نَدادَنْد

hargez ʿenān-e hemmat dar dast-e ū nadādand

8b  they have never put aspiration’s reins into its hands.

Commentary on couplet 8

The path’s bewildered wanderers remain capable riders. They travel upon the self, yet refuse to hand it the reins that determine their direction. The contrast distinguishes using the self’s energies from allowing its impulses to govern aspiration. Himmat means the heart’s concentrated spiritual purpose; nafs, the self, is figured here as a mount that must not become its own rider. Darwīshiyya offers a close ethical context through impartial self-examination, resistance to pride, greed, and envy, and a warning against bondage to the commanding self.[2] Bewilderment therefore coexists with vigilance. The verse does not require travelers to possess a complete map of the path before they can take responsibility for what guides their conduct.

شُورِیدِگانِ عِشْقَش بَر چار سُویِ غَیْرَت

shūrīdegān-e ʿeshq-ash bar chār sū-ye ghayrat

9a  Those maddened by his love, at the crossroads of jealous devotion,

پَیْوَسْتِه چُون عَلایِی با خِویش دَر جِهادَنْد

payvaste chūn ʿAlāʾī bā khīsh dar jehād-and

9b  are always at war with themselves, like ʿAlāʾī.

Commentary on couplet 9

The lovers’ apparent madness culminates in continuing struggle with themselves. Chār sū, a crossroads or central crossing, places them where directions meet; ghayrat, jealous devotion, suggests a commitment that resists competing claims upon the heart. The final name includes ʿAlāʾī within this labor, rather than placing the speaker above it. Here jehād means strenuous struggle, and its object is explicitly inward: bā khīsh, with themselves. The preceding image of the reins helps specify what is contested—who governs aspiration and desire. Darwīshiyya similarly directs scrutiny toward one’s own faults and makes remembrance of the Friend a companion in that work.[2] Payvaste, continually, denies an easy finish: intense love is accompanied by repeated responsibility for the self’s direction.

Reading notes

[1] 3b: ودادند is read vedād-and, “are [drunk on the wine of] affection”; وداد is one word.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal asks how a person responds to an attraction that already touches the whole creation. The beloved is approached through effects and traces: a burning brand, an open door, a passing fragrance, the dust of a threshold, and a face not everyone perceives. The speaker first describes groups of sufferers, lovers, and unresponsive people, before entering the portrait through the name ʿAlāʾī. The poem’s movement is therefore also a movement toward accountability: the voice that judges failed recognition finally acknowledges its own continuing struggle.

Its strongest tension lies between universal affection and uneven awareness. Every particle is drunk on the beloved’s scent, yet some people have not caught even a trace. The Akbarian comparison helps distinguish participation in love from recognition of its divine object; the ghazal expresses that difference through fragrance and perception.[4] The majestic door also remains a question. Its opening may astonish through generosity, while the later verses caution against assuming that apparent access equals realization. These images resonate without requiring each couplet to record a successive stage or resolve every uncertainty of the preceding one.

Sorrow, intoxication, and bewilderment do not remove the question of conduct. The afflicted find joy through remembrance; the bewildered keep hold of aspiration’s reins. The self is a mount whose direction requires attention, and the lovers’ final struggle is explicitly with themselves. Darwīshiyya provides relevant parallels in its account of remembrance as nourishment and its instructions for honest scrutiny of inward faults.[2] These connections support a reading in which intense feeling and disciplined responsibility sustain one another. They also keep the poem’s severe judgments from becoming an excuse to direct scrutiny only at other people.

The ending returns the opening wound to lived practice. A brand that bewildered both worlds becomes a demand continually renewed in one person’s relation to desire, pride, and aspiration. The poem has not withdrawn its extravagant language: hearts are still scattered, lives surrendered, and lovers maddened. Yet its final emphasis gives those images a demanding direction. The beloved’s attraction may reach everywhere, while conscious fidelity requires the lover to keep answering for who holds the reins.

Sources and textual notes

Reading note [1] reproduces the supplied note on vedād-and. References [2]–[5] support the new commentary. All supplied Persian readings, transliterations, translations, numbering, and the closing name ʿAlāʾī remain unchanged. The contextual parallels do not establish that these sources explain this exact ghazal; the question in couplet 2 retains its interpretive openness.

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 for heart and spirit. Printed p. 499 directs impartial self-examination, attention to inward faults, and companionship with remembrance of the Friend, contrasting these with bondage to the commanding self. These passages were checked against the scans. Riaz’s introduction, printed p. 486, defends Hamadani’s authorship against a competing attribution to Sayyid Muhammad Nurbakhsh; that qualification is retained. Digitized Riaz edition.
3. Qur’an 35:15, Fāṭir. Humanity is described as needing God, who is free of need. Used as a thematic context for spiritual poverty in couplet 2, without determining the tone of its question.
4. William C. Chittick, The Religion of Love Revisited, Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, 54 (2013), “Basic Tenets.” Used for the translated Futūḥāt passage on every existent as a lover and on particular attachments veiling recognition of love’s divine object. This is an explicitly Akbarian comparison, not an attribution of a specific intention to the poet.
5. Qur’an 17:44, al-Isrāʾ. Everything praises God, while human hearers do not comprehend that praise. Used as a related context for the comparison between human unresponsiveness and matter in couplet 6; the couplet is not presented as a direct quotation.