Chehel Asrar 24 - Twenty Fourth Ghazal

Ghazal 24

7 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 465

دَر مُحِیطی فِکَنْدِه‌اَم زَوْرَق

dar mohītī fekande-am zowraq

1a  I have launched my skiff upon an ocean

کِه دُو عالَم دَرُوسْت مُسْتَغْرَق

ke do ʿālam dar-ū-st mostaghraq

1b  in which both worlds are submerged.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker begins with a deliberate action: he has launched a small vessel into an ocean whose reach immediately overwhelms that action. The second half enlarges the scene until “both worlds,” plausibly this life and the next, are themselves submerged. The skiff may stand for the individual self or its means of seeking knowledge, but the poem initially leaves that identification open. Mohīt means “ocean” while also carrying the sense of something encompassing; Qurʾān 4:126 uses the cognate Arabic term for God’s encompassing of everything. [2] This is a possible verbal resonance, not a quotation. The opening joins aspiration with disproportion: the seeker moves, yet cannot find a position outside what surrounds him.

نَه زِ زَوْرَق تَوان شِناخْت مُحِیط

na ze zowraq tavān shenākht mohīt

2a  The ocean cannot be known through the skiff,

نَی مُحِیط اَز وُجُودِ آن زَوْرَق

nay mohīt az vojūd-e ān zowraq

2b  nor is the ocean aware of that skiff’s existence. [1]

Commentary on couplet 2

The skiff now fails as an instrument of knowing the ocean; the second half, in the supplied provisional translation, denies the ocean’s awareness of the skiff. Mohīt can mean “aware,” although Persian ordinarily uses it with bar, making the supplied az construction difficult. [3] The existing note therefore remains essential. Supplying the first half’s verbal expression in the second would instead suggest that the ocean cannot be known from the skiff’s existence; this is an alternative parsing, not an established correction.

If the ocean signifies divine reality, the provisional rendering cannot straightforwardly be taken as divine ignorance: Qurʾān 4:126 affirms that God encompasses all things. [2] One possible spiritual reading is that the apparently separate skiff has no independent standing before the ocean. That interprets the image without settling its grammar.

آب شُد زَوْرَق وُ زِ سَیْل آسُود

āb shod zowraq o ze sayl āsūd

3a  The skiff became water and found rest from the flood:

اِینَت مَعْنِیِ مُشْکِل وُ مُغْلَق

īn-at maʿnī-ye moshkel o moghlaq

3b  what a difficult, impenetrable meaning this is!

Commentary on couplet 3

The vessel finds rest by becoming the very water that threatened it. Its safety is expressed through the disappearance of the boundary that made it vulnerable to the flood. The second half interrupts this astonishing image with an admission of difficulty: īn-at marks wonder, while moshkel and moghlaq resist an easy explanation. [3]

Fanā, or passing away, offers a possible Sufi reading: self-preoccupation fades in awareness of God. Al-Qushayrī’s account includes both the removal of harmful qualities and the loss of awareness of oneself; these help distinguish spiritual transformation from a claim of physical fusion. [4] The verse’s impossible transformation remains poetry, whose force exceeds a conceptual paraphrase. It says that the skiff became water, leaving the reader to ponder how disappearance could be experienced as repose.

بِتَفاوُت مَبِین کِه اَصْلِ وُجُود

be-tafāvot ma-bīn ke asl-e vojūd

4a  Do not perceive division, for the essence of existence

نَشَوَد مُخْتَلِف بِهِیچ نَسَق

na-shavad mokhtalef be-hīch nasaq

4b  does not become different in any way.

Commentary on couplet 4

The speaker turns from a startling event to an instruction about seeing. The first half asks the listener to reconsider division; the second grounds that request in the unchanging basis of existence. Asl-e vojūd can suggest the root or fundamental reality of being. The supplied “essence” need not mean that all things have identical characteristics.

This may be read in an Akbarian sense by comparison with Qūnawī, who distinguishes the Real’s undivided being from the diverse relations through which things appear. [5] Here that comparison illuminates a claim about being, beyond the previous couplet’s experience of release. It does not establish the poet’s precise doctrinal intention. The imperative invites a change in how multiplicity is understood: visible differences need not make existence itself a collection of independent foundations.

کُفْر وُ اِسْلام وُ بِدْعَت وُ سُنَّت

kofr o Eslām o bedʿat o sonnat

5a  Unbelief and Islam, innovation and tradition:

اِخْتِلافی‌سْت دَر مِیانِ فِرَق

ekhtelāfī-st dar miyān-e feraq

5b  these are differences among the sects.

Commentary on couplet 5

The abstract language of difference now acquires the charged names through which religious communities distinguish themselves. Sonnat points toward authoritative religious practice, especially Prophetic precedent; bedʿat names innovation in that religious setting. The second half places these oppositions among feraq, groups or sects. Read after couplet 4, the provocation is substantial: communal divisions cannot simply be projected onto the fundamental reality of existence.

The verse does not, however, explain whether every doctrine is equally true or every practice equally warranted. Its challenge becomes sharper when the next couplet identifies self-worship within “we” and “I.” A relevant parallel in Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk joins immersion in divine oneness with the dependent creature’s continuing devotion. [6] That prose passage provides context for retaining both the poem’s challenge to division and its seriousness about spiritual responsibility.

خُودپَرَسْتِی وُ ما وُ مَن گُفْتِی

khod-parastī o mā o man goftī

6a  You worship yourself and have spoken of “we” and “I”—

راه گُم کَرْدِه‌ای زَهی اَحْمَق

rāh gom karde-ī zahī ahmaq

6b  you have lost the way: what a fool!

Commentary on couplet 6

The speaker abruptly addresses someone whose religious or spiritual claims conceal self-worship. The first half exposes the attachment; the second declares its consequence as losing the way. Khod-parastī makes the accusation stronger than ordinary vanity: the self has become the object of devotion. Following the mention of sects, mā, “we,” may suggest collective self-importance as well as the individual assertion carried by man, “I.”

The cutting exclamation zahī ahmaq gives the rebuke its severity. The next couplet’s address to ʿAlī makes an inward direction especially plausible: the poet’s own voice comes under judgment. The passage concerns what speakers claim through their pronouns. Indeed, the poem began with a first-person verb, making its criticism a searching reconsideration of its own opening confidence.

اِی عَلِی لَفْظِ ما وُ مَن حُمْق اَسْت

ey ʿAlī lafz-e mā o man homq ast

7a  O ʿAlī, speaking of “we” and “I” is folly;

چُون زِ ما بِگْذَری چِه مانَد؟ حَقّ

chūn ze mā be-gzarī che mānad? Haqq

7b  when you pass beyond “we,” what remains? The Real.

Commentary on couplet 7

The closing address names ʿAlī, bringing the warning home to the speaking voice. As a poetic signature, the name implicates the poet in the folly he condemns; it cannot by itself authenticate authorship. The second half then answers its own question with the single word Haqq, the Real or Truth, a divine designation also found in Qurʾān 22:6. [7]

The question of what remains recalls Qurʾān 55:26–27, where earthly creatures pass away and the Lord’s Face abides. [7] This is a thematic echo, not a quotation. It can also invite comparison with baqā, abiding through God as self-preoccupation falls away, although the poem names no formal spiritual stage. [4] Passing beyond “we” thus discloses what self-assertion neither produces nor sustains; the final word belongs to the Real.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal asks how a seeker can approach a reality that already encompasses the seeker and every possible destination. Its opening gives us an active first-person speaker and a small vessel, then enlarges the waters beyond the scale of either world. The closing returns to that first person in a changed register: the language of “I” and “we” has become something to pass beyond. Although the couplets need not form a continuous narrative, this verbal movement gives them a shared pressure. The central longing is for an encounter no longer governed by the seeker’s claim to independence.

Three different questions meet within the ocean image. How can the vessel know what exceeds it? How can its dissolution become rest? How can differences exist without dividing the basis of existence? These concern knowledge, spiritual experience, and being respectively. The poem brings them into relation without supplying a systematic account of their connection. Its admission that the meaning is difficult belongs to that encounter. In particular, the uncertain second couplet should retain its instability; neither its grammar nor its personification can securely bear a doctrine of divine ignorance.

The religious vocabulary prevents this meditation from remaining impersonal. Names that separate communities are followed by pronouns through which both communities and individuals assert themselves. The accusation of self-worship suggests that even a claim to religious truth can become entangled with self-importance. Yet the speaker does not finish by establishing a superior group above the others: he addresses ʿAlī. This turn makes the poem’s severity answerable to the person uttering it. Its ethical demand arises within its language of unity, as a scrutiny of the self that speaks.

A documented parallel in Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk helps hold these dimensions together. In the account of prayer consulted through Farooq’s English translation, currents of mercy through creation lead to immersion in divine oneness; recognition of the creature’s dependence then leads into worship. [6] This is a prose parallel, not evidence that the passage explains this ghazal. It nevertheless gives the skiff’s repose a meaningful devotional context. The final Haqq does not celebrate a self that has mastered the ocean: it closes upon the reality that the self can no longer claim as its possession.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 2b: The syntax is compressed and uncertain. Provisionally, mohīt is taken as “aware of,” with an omitted copula, rather than supplying a repeated “can be known.”

Editorial references

2. Qurʾān, al-Nisāʾ 4:126. The divine encompassing of all things provides a possible verbal resonance for mohīt and a necessary qualification when considering the provisional reading of couplet 2.
3. ʿAlī Akbar Dehkhodā, Loghat-nāma, entries mohīt and īn-at, consulted through Vajehyab. Lexical evidence supports the comments on awareness, the usual bar construction, and exclamation; it does not settle the syntax of 2b.
4. Al-Qushayrī, Al-Qushayrī’s Epistle on Sufism, translated by Alexander D. Knysh (Garnet, 2007), chapter 2, discussion of fanā and baqā, printed pp. 89–91. Used as comparative Sufi terminology, without claiming a direct borrowing.
5. Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, the first chapter of Miftāḥ al-ghayb, also included in al-Nuṣūṣ, consulted in William C. Chittick’s translation, “Qūnawī on the One Wujūd”, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. The distinction between undivided being and diverse relations is used comparatively.
6. Hamadani, Dhakhīrat al-mulūk, consulted in Mohammad Umar Farooq, Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani’s Dhakiratul Muluk: An Annotation and Translation (PhD thesis, University of Kashmir, 2009), printed p. 94. The passage was checked in this translation; its Persian wording was not independently collated.
7. Qurʾān, al-Ḥajj 22:6, for al-Ḥaqq as a divine designation; al-Raḥmān 55:26–27, for passing away and the abiding of the Lord’s Face. These are contextual parallels, not identified quotations in the ghazal.

Editorial note: “Riaz 1991, printed p. 465” is retained as supplied. That edition and this ghazal’s attribution have not been independently verified. The supplied wording, transliteration, translation, and reading note remain unchanged.