Chehel Asrar 20 - Twentieth Ghazal

  

Ghazal 20

6 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 461–462

اَی شُدِه نُورِ خُدا اَز مَهِ رُویِ تُو پَدِید

ay shode nūr-e Khodā az mah-e rū-ye to padīd

1a  You, through whose moonlike face God's light has appeared—

خُرَّم آنکَس کِه دَرین عِید مَهِ رُویِ تُو دِید

khorram ānkas ke dar īn ʿīd mah-e rū-ye to dīd

1b  happy the one who saw the moon of your face at this festival. [1]

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker celebrates a face through which divine light has become visible and blesses whoever has seen it at the festival. The moon joins beauty to a shared moment of joyful recognition. The Eid association in the supplied note has a clear background in crescent sighting: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1909 connects the beginning and ending of the Ramadan fast with seeing the crescent.[3] The poem turns that communal expectancy toward a beloved presence. Its closing language of master and disciple makes a spiritual guide a plausible addressee, although no individual is named. Divine light appearing through the face describes a disclosure received through a person; the verse does not itself identify that person with the divine essence.

بِخَراباتِ فَنا مَحْو شَوَد دَر لَمَعات

be-kharābāt-e fanā mahv shavad dar lamaʿāt

2a  In the tavern of self-effacement, one dissolves in flashes of light—

اَز مَیِ عِشْقِ تُو یِک جُرْعِه هَرآنکَس کِه چَشید

az may-e ʿeshq-e to yek jorʿe har ānkas ke chashīd

2b  anyone who has tasted a single sip of the wine of your love.

Commentary on couplet 2

A single sip of the beloved’s love leads to effacement amid flashes of light in the tavern of fanā. The second half identifies the person undergoing what the first announces, making the whole couplet one continuous statement. The wine’s meaning is already qualified by love, while the tavern gives that love an atmosphere of abandoned self-possession. Fanā names passing away; maḥv intensifies the sense of erasure. A relevant Akbarian comparison is Ibn ʿArabi’s account of the transient standpoint passing away as luminous understanding opens, accompanied by a warning against inferring undifferentiated identity.[4] Here self-effacement can describe absorption in the beloved’s disclosure. The flashes suggest an overwhelming encounter, without requiring physical destruction or a creature’s conversion into God.

توتِیا خاک شَوَد دَر نَظَرِ هِمَّتِ اُو

tūtiyā khāk shavad dar nazar-e hemmat-e ū

3a  Precious eye-salve becomes mere dust in the lofty sight of the one

آنکِه دَر دِیدِه زِ خاکِ دَرِ تُو سُرْمِه کَشِید

ānke dar dīde ze khāk-e dar-e to sorme kashīd

3b  who has lined his eyes with dust from your doorway.

Commentary on couplet 3

The person who has used the beloved’s threshold dust as kohl regards precious eye-salve as ordinary dust. The second half reveals whose lofty estimation is meant in the first: the devotee’s, rather than the master’s. Tūtiyā belongs to the vocabulary of eye preparations, with established poetic associations between the beloved’s dust and enhanced sight.[5] This couplet reverses the valuation: what is ordinarily prized becomes negligible beside what is ordinarily trodden underfoot. Hemmat, aspiration or the heart’s directed purpose, makes the judgment spiritual as well as visual. A changed attachment changes what counts as precious. The doorway’s dust thus joins humble approach to a new power of discernment, preparing for the master’s gaze in the close.

چُون مَهِ نَو شَوَد اَنگُشْت‌نُما دَر هَمِه‌جا

chūn mah-e now shavad angoshtnomā dar hamejā

4a  Like the new moon, it becomes a sight that everyone points to:

پُشْتِ هَرکَس کِه بِبوسیدَنِ پایِ تُو خَمِید

posht-e harkas ke be-būsīdan-e pā-ye to khamīd

4b  the back of anyone who bent to kiss your foot.

Commentary on couplet 4

The first half promises a new crescent that attracts everyone’s pointing finger; the second reveals it as the back bent to kiss the beloved’s foot. This delayed identification makes an act of lowering oneself appear as a sign raised into public view. Angoshtnomā means conspicuous or pointed out and can carry different social tones; here the surrounding praise favors distinction and wonder. The crescent also recalls the opening festival, bringing joy into the bowed body itself. The homage remains physical in the poetic scene, while its significance lies in the reversal between low posture and high regard. Rather than losing dignity through devotion, this figure becomes recognizable through the very shape of humble approach.

شُدِه اَز طالِعِ فَرْخُنْدِه سَرافْرازِ جَهان

shode az tāleʿ-e farkhonde sarafrāz-e jahān

5a  An auspicious fortune has raised above the world

آنکِه اَز صِدْق وُ اِرادَت بِرِکابِ تُو دَوِید

ānke az sedq o erādat be-rekāb-e to davīd

5b  the one who ran beside your stirrup with sincerity and devotion.

Commentary on couplet 5

A fortunate person stands with head raised above the world, and the second half identifies that person as the devoted attendant running beside the beloved’s stirrup. Courtly service supplies the picture: closeness to a mounted superior requires effort, loyalty, and accepting a subordinate place. Sedq adds truthfulness or sincerity, while erādat gives the movement its willing devotional purpose. Sarafrāz, literally with head raised, answers the bent back of the preceding couplet. In this poetic valuation, humility and elevation reinforce one another. A relevant parallel appears in the Darwīshiyya printed under Hamadani’s name, where conduct at a royal court illustrates the importance of experienced guidance and proper comportment on the spiritual path.[6] The comparison concerns the formative quality of service.

بِه عَلی یِک نَظَرِ لُطْف کُن اَز راهِ کَرَم

be ʿAlī yek nazar-e lotf kon az rāh-e karam

6a  Out of generosity, cast one kindly glance upon ʿAlī;

کِه بِجائی نَرَسَد بِی‌نَظَرِ پِیر، مُرید

ke be-jāyī narasad bī-nazar-e pīr, morīd

6b  without the master's gaze, a disciple gets nowhere. [2]

Commentary on couplet 6

The final couplet turns general praise into a request: let one kindly glance fall upon ʿAlī. The second half gives the reason through the relation between pīr, spiritual master, and murīd, disciple or committed seeker. Nazar carries both looking and attentive regard; the supplied note’s spiritual sense makes the gaze a vehicle of kindness and guidance. The plea rests on generosity, not a declaration that the speaker has earned advancement. In the Darwīshiyya associated with Hamadani, experienced guidance and the daily cultivation of the disciple’s heart give a concrete context for such dependence.[6] The poem intensifies that relationship into one transformative glance, leaving the master’s historical identity unstated and the requested favor still to be given.

Reading notes

[1] 1b: The festival and moon evoke the sighting of the crescent that marks Eid.

[2] 6b: The master's nazar is the spiritual attention or grace conveyed by his gaze.

Understanding this ghazal

This short ghazal celebrates the transforming force of devotion before making that celebration personal. It begins with a direct address to a luminous beloved and closes by naming the relation of spiritual master and disciple. The closing terms encourage a reading of the beloved as a guide through whom divine generosity becomes perceptible, while preserving the breadth of the intervening love imagery. The poem identifies no historical recipient. Its assured declarations of happiness and attainment prepare the final request: the speaker asks to receive the kindness whose effects he has already praised.

The eye organizes much of the poem’s movement. The fortunate observer sees a moonlike face; the drinker encounters flashes; the devotee’s eyes are lined with threshold dust; the bowed back becomes a crescent visible to everyone. At the close, the direction of looking reverses. The speaker who has praised what others see now asks to be seen. Likewise, the smallness of one sip anticipates the sufficiency of one glance. These links allow the couplets to illuminate one another without making them stages of a single narrated initiation.

The poem repeatedly changes the value of things by changing their relation to the beloved. Dust surpasses prized eye-salve, a bowed back becomes conspicuous like the moon, and an attendant at the stirrup rises in honor. The Darwīshiyya transmitted under Hamadani’s name provides a relevant context in its account of experienced guidance, disciplined companionship, and inward cultivation, though its attribution is disputed.[6] The Akbarian comparison in the second couplet helps clarify how effacement and illumination can belong together.[4] Neither comparison makes the entire ghazal a coded statement of one metaphysical system: its bodily images also express affection, loyalty, and the felt dignity of service.

The signature ʿAlī changes the scale from whoever receives these gifts to this particular petitioner. Praise becomes an acknowledgment of need. The speaker’s sincerity and aspiration matter, yet the appeal finally names the beloved’s generosity as the source of a hoped-for advance. That ending gives the poem its particular balance: the seeker approaches, serves, and learns to see differently, while remaining dependent on a regard that cannot be claimed as a possession. The radiant face first encountered as a festival becomes, in the closing plea, a presence asked to notice the one who celebrates it.

Sources and textual notes

The supplied Persian, vocalization, transliteration, translation, numbering, bibliographical line, and reading notes are preserved. The couplet commentaries and overview are editorial additions. The crescent and festival are treated as a literary evocation, without assigning the poem a dated occasion. The closing master–disciple vocabulary supports the interpretation of a spiritual guide as addressee but supplies no historical name. The Akbarian comparison clarifies a possible meaning of self-effacement; no direct borrowing or explanation of this exact ghazal is asserted.

3. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1909, Book of Fasting, in-book reference Book 30, Hadith 19, narrated by Abū Hurayra. The report links beginning and ending the Ramadan fast to crescent sighting. It supplies context for the Eid association in reading note [1], rather than wording directly quoted in the poem.
4. Ibn ʿArabi, Kitāb al-fanāʾ fī-l-mushāhada, translated by Layla Shamash and Stephen Hirtenstein, “The Book of Annihilation in the Contemplation”, Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society 9 (1991). The first doctrinal paragraph after the invocation and the following discussion of one and the numbers connect contemplation with effacement while criticizing an inference of undifferentiated identity. This supports the limited comparison in couplet 2, not an identification of its precise tavern imagery with this treatise.
5. ʿAlī-Akbar Dehkhodā, Loghat-nāma, entry tūtiyā, consulted through Vāzhehyāb. The entry documents the term’s association with kohl and eye preparations and supplies literary examples connecting the beloved’s dust with sight. This lexical context supports couplet 3; its reversal of customary valuation is an interpretation of the supplied verse.
6. Darwīshiyya, printed under Hamadani’s name in Muhammad Riaz, Aḥvāl o āsār o ashʿār-e Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, second edition, Islamabad, 1991, printed pp. 492–493; consulted scan. The passage concerns an experienced guide, conduct illustrated through a royal court, and the cultivation of the disciple’s heart through counsel and discipline. Its continuation distinguishes guides from impostors. Riaz discusses attribution to Nūrbakhsh and argues for Hamadani on printed p. 486; the comparison therefore retains an authorship reservation. These passages do not specify a physical mechanism for the spiritual gaze.