Chehel Asrar 25 - Twenty Fifth Ghazal

Ghazal 25

17 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 465–467

اِی گِرِفْتارانِ عِشْقَت فارِغ اَز مال وُ مَنال

ey gereftārān-e ʿeshq-at fāregh az māl o manāl

1a  O you whose captives in love are free of concern for wealth and possessions,

والِهانِ حَضْرَتَت را اَز خُود وُ جَنَّت مَلال

vālehān-e hazrat-at rā az khod o jannat malāl

1b  those lost in wonder at your presence are weary of themselves and paradise.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker addresses a beloved whose divine identity becomes explicit in the later references to Abraham and the Eternal One. Captivity in love brings an unexpected freedom: those held by the beloved cease to be held by their possessions. The second half carries this reversal beyond worldly wealth to the self and even paradise. Its weariness expresses the intensity of wanting the beloved beyond any reward. A relevant distinction appears in Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk: the higher gratitude values the gift for its giver, rather than the giver for the gift. [6] This provides a prose parallel without making the poem’s extravagant language a rejection of paradise or a rule requiring material destitution.

مُفْلِسانِ کُویِ شَوْقَت را غُلامی کَرْدِه چَرْخ

moflesān-e kū-ye showq-at rā gholāmī karde charkh

2a  The heavens have served the paupers in the lane of longing for you;

سالِکانِ راهِ وَصْلَت را دُو عالَم پایْمال

sālekān-e rāh-e vasl-at rā do ʿālam pāymāl

2b  both worlds lie under the feet of those who travel the road to union with you.

Commentary on couplet 2

The heavens become servants of people who possess nothing, while both worlds lie beneath the travellers’ feet. The two halves enlarge the opening reversal: outward poverty acquires a sovereignty greater than ordinary wealth or rank. Moflesān suggests those without resources, but the location of their poverty matters: they belong to the beloved’s lane of longing. Their dignity arises within that relationship. Charkh, the revolving heaven, makes the scale of the reversal immense. What ordinarily stands above human fortune is pictured serving the seekers. The image measures freedom by the collapse of ordinary rank: those the world would overlook are the very people before whom its splendours lose their authority.

عارِفانِ وَصْفِ تُو مَغْبُوطِ اَشْرافِ مَلَک

ʿārefān-e vasf-e to maghbūt-e ashrāf-e malak

3a  Those who know your attributes are envied by the noblest angels; [1]

مُدْبِرانِ دَرْگَهَت سَرْگَشْتِهٔ تِیهِ ضَلال

modberān-e dargah-at sar-gashte-ye tīh-e zalāl

3b  those who turn away from your threshold wander in the desert of error.

Commentary on couplet 3

Those who know the beloved’s qualities stand in a position desired by the noblest angels; those who turn away lose direction in a wilderness. Knowledge and refusal are thus represented as orientation toward, or movement away from, the same threshold. Maghbūt, rendered “envied,” can describe a blessing another wishes to share without wishing its possessor to lose it. [7] The praise therefore need not attribute hostile jealousy to angels. The supplied reading of malak is retained. Knowledge of the beloved’s vaṣf, qualities or description, also leaves room for the confession of unknowing in couplet 7: recognizing what is disclosed does not amount to comprehending the beloved without remainder.

شَمِّه‌ای اَز فَیْضِ لُطْفَت بُوی بُرْدِه نُه فَلَک

shamme-ī az fayz-e lotf-at būy borde noh falak

4a  The nine heavens have caught a mere trace of your overflowing kindness

گَشْتِه سَرْگَرْدان بِگِرْدِ آسْتانَت ماه وُ سال

gashte sar-gardān be-gerd-e āstān-at māh o sāl

4b  and circle your threshold in bewilderment, month after month, year after year.

Commentary on couplet 4

The heavens have received only a fragrance of kindness, yet that slight encounter sets their whole existence circling the beloved’s threshold. Shamme and būy bordan sustain the delicate image of apprehending a trace rather than possessing its source. Against this smallness stand the nine heavens and the repeated passing of months and years. Sar-gardān joins revolving motion with bewilderment, turning celestial movement into the gesture of an astonished lover. Fayz suggests overflowing generosity here, apprehended through a fragrance that awakens desire without becoming the heavens’ possession. The verse measures the beloved’s abundance by its effect: even a trace is enough to keep the heavens endlessly attending.

آتَش اَز لُطْفَت گُلِسْتان گَشْتِه دَر پِیشِ خَلِیل

ātash az lotf-at golestān gashte dar pīsh-e Khalīl

5a  Through your kindness, fire became a rose garden before Abraham; [2]

خُورْدِه نَمْرُودی بِقَهْر اَز نِیمِ پَشِّه گُوشْمال

khorde Namrūdī be-qahr az nīm-e pashshe gūshmāl

5b  through your wrath, a Nimrod was chastised by half a gnat. [3]

Commentary on couplet 5

The speaker places Abraham’s deliverance beside Nimrod’s humiliation, showing kindness and overpowering judgment through opposite reversals. Fire loses its destructive force before the divine friend; a tyrant receives chastisement through an almost negligible creature. Qurʾān 21:69 commands the fire to become cool and safe for Abraham. The garden and the half-gnat belong to the wider literary telling: both motifs occur together in ʿAṭṭār’s opening praise in Manṭiq al-ṭayr. [8] These parallels do not establish direct borrowing. Namrūdī, “a Nimrod,” also allows the tyrant to become a type of arrogant power. The half-gnat intensifies the disproportion between his pretensions and the means of his defeat; the poem supplies no explanation of why the insect is described as half.

بُلْبُلانِ نَغْمِهٔ تَسْبِیح دَر بُسْتانِ غَیْب

bolbolān-e naghme-ye tasbīh dar bostān-e ghayb

6a  The nightingales singing praise in the garden of the unseen

وَحْدِهُ‌گُویان بِزِیرِ گُلْبُنِ باغِ وِصال

waḥdahu-gūyān be-zīr-e golbon-e bāgh-e vesāl

6b  sing “He alone” beneath the rosebush of the garden of union. [4]

Commentary on couplet 6

The scene becomes a garden filled with praise, where the nightingales’ song resolves into a proclamation of divine oneness. Tasbīḥ is praise that declares God free of imperfection; waḥdahu, preserved within the Persian line, concentrates the singers’ attention upon the One alone. The birds can suggest worshippers of the unseen without requiring identification with a particular angelic rank. Qurʾān 17:44, in which creation glorifies God, offers a scriptural context for this imagined chorus. [9] The rosebush and garden give fulfilled nearness a sensuous setting. They make praise seem alive and abundant, while the repeated garden imagery carries forward the transformation of Abraham’s fire in the preceding couplet.

طُوطِیانِ طارَمِ عُلْوی بَرآوَرْدِه زِ جان

tūtīyān-e tāram-e ʿolvī bar-āvarde ze jān

7a  The parrots of the heavenly vault cry out from their souls:

نَعْرِه‌هایِ «مَا عَرَفْنَاکَ»، اِی قَدِیمِ ذُو الْجَلال

naʿre-hā-ye “mā ʿarafnāka,” ey qadīm-e zū-l-jalāl

7b  “We have not known you,” O Eternal One, Lord of Majesty. [5]

Commentary on couplet 7

The heavenly singers now proclaim the inadequacy of their own knowledge. Their exalted location and wholehearted cry make the confession stronger: even these voices cannot finish knowing the One they praise. The parrots’ articulate speech answers the nightingales’ song, but its highest utterance acknowledges a limit. Mā ʿarafnāka is retained as a devotional confession, without assigning it an authenticated Prophetic attribution. Qurʾān 20:110 provides a relevant parallel concerning the inability to encompass God in knowledge. [9] Qadīm here means beginningless, not simply ancient. The verse need not cancel the knowledge praised in couplet 3; it distinguishes recognition of divine qualities from exhaustive comprehension of the Eternal One.

پَرْتَوِی اَز عَکْسِ رُویَت تافْتِه بَر آب وُ خاک

partovī az ʿaks-e rūy-at tāfte bar āb o khāk

8a  A ray of your reflected face has shone upon water and earth;

خاک اَز آن پُوشِیدِه چَنْدِین خِلْعَتِ حُسْن وُ جَمال

khāk az ān pūshīde chandīn khelʿat-e hosn o jamāl

8b  through it, earth has donned so many robes of grace and beauty.

Commentary on couplet 8

A reflected ray reaches the simplest earthly materials, and the earth answers by clothing itself in innumerable forms of beauty. The two halves place a minute illumination beside its abundant effects, continuing the disproportion between a trace of kindness and the circling heavens. Partov and ʿaks, ray and reflection, keep the manifestation mediated: the poem does not present the earth as containing the beloved’s face. Khelʿat evokes a robe of honour, making beauty something bestowed. A spiritual reading can understand the world’s loveliness as a disclosure that directs attention toward its giver. The image retains both the dignity of created beauty and its dependence upon a source beyond itself.

خامِهٔ صَنْعَت چُو بَسْت اِین نَقْشِ تِمْثالِ وُجُود

khāme-ye sanʿat cho bast īn naqsh-e temsāl-e vojūd

9a  When the pen of artistry drew this design, the likeness of existence,

مُهْر شُد بَر تَخْتِهٔ غَیْب اِین مِثال اَز بِی‌مِثال

mohr shod bar takhte-ye ghayb īn mesāl az bī-mesāl

9b  this likeness from the Incomparable was stamped upon the tablet of the unseen.

Commentary on couplet 9

The beloved’s creative artistry appears as writing, drawing, and sealing: existence receives a form impressed upon an unseen tablet. These joined images suggest purpose and intelligibility without giving the reader a literal account of how creation occurs. The decisive wordplay is between mesāl, likeness or exemplar, and bī-mesāl, the One without a like. A produced form can bear witness to its source without becoming an adequate portrait of that source. Qurʾān 42:11 supplies a relevant statement of divine incomparability. [10] Neither the “tablet of the unseen” nor mesāl must automatically be identified with a particular technical cosmology. The verse lets created form signify while preserving the unlikeness of its maker.

عاشِقانِ دَرْگَهَت اَز مَفْخَرِ خاصّان شُدَنْد

ʿāsheqān-e dargah-at az mafkhar-e khāssān shodand

10a  The lovers at your threshold have become a source of pride for the elect;

گُمْرَهانِ آسْتانَت گَشْتِه دَر دُوزَخ نَهال

gom-rahān-e āstān-at gashte dar dūzakh nahāl

10b  those who stray from your threshold are planted like saplings in hell.

Commentary on couplet 10

The threshold again divides two conditions: lovers become a distinction even among the elect, while those who stray acquire a terrible rootedness in hell. The second half darkens the poem’s garden imagery. A sapling ordinarily promises growth and flowering; planted here, it makes estrangement seem established and enduring. The image preserves the force of judgment rather than reducing hell to a harmless figure of speech. At the same time, the poem names no community whose members the reader is invited to condemn. Its concern is the relation to the beloved’s threshold. This repetition of welcome and loss gives the praise moral gravity before the speaker’s own position becomes uncertain at the close.

واصِلانِ بَزْمِ تُو شاهانِ هَر دُو عالَمَنْد

vāselān-e bazm-e to shāhān-e har do ʿālam-and

11a  Those who reach your feast are kings of both worlds;

رانْدِگانِ کُویِ تُو مَهْجُور اَز کُویِ وِصال

rāndegān-e kū-ye to mahjūr az kū-ye vesāl

11b  those driven from your lane are banished from the lane of union.

Commentary on couplet 11

Those admitted to the beloved’s feast receive the dignity of kings, while those expelled remain outside the place of encounter. The feast gathers intimacy, welcome, and abundance into one image; its sovereignty recalls the paupers served by the heavens in couplet 2. Vesāl can here express fulfilled nearness without asserting a fusion of divine and human substances. Al-Qushayrī’s discussion of proximity treats spiritual nearness through the conditions of the heart rather than physical distance. [11] The passive force of “driven” also matters: unlike the people who turn away in couplet 3, these figures experience exclusion. Arrival appears as a welcome that cannot simply be claimed as an entitlement.

هَرکِه بَر خاکِ دَرَت رَه یافْت عِزَّت یافْت اُو

har-ke bar khāk-e dar-at rah yāft ʿezzat yāft ū

12a  Whoever found a way to the dust of your door found such honor

کَز بَیانِ وَصْفِ اُو فَرْسُودِه شُد پَرِ مَقال

k-az bayān-e vasf-e ū farsūde shod par-e maqāl

12b  that the wing of speech wore out trying to describe him.

Commentary on couplet 12

A person reaches the dust at the beloved’s door and receives an honour that speech cannot adequately describe. The first half makes the lowest place the occasion of elevation; the second measures that elevation by language’s exhaustion. The pronoun ū naturally refers to the person honoured, so it is the transformed lover whom speech struggles to portray. Par-e maqāl, the wing of speech, gives language the flight already associated with the poem’s celestial birds. Here that wing wears out. Humility is pictured through access to the threshold, while praise admits its own limits. This inability to complete a description prepares the later uncertainty about what longing can finally attain.

پِیشِ مَجْرُوحانِ هِجْرَت نِیش نُوشی پُرْشِفا

pīsh-e majrūhān-e hejr-at nīsh nūshī por-shefā

13a  For those wounded by separation from you, a sting is healing nectar;

تِشْنِگانِ وَصْل را هَر آتَشی چُون صَد زُلال

teshnegān-e vasl rā har ātashī chūn sad zolāl

13b  for those thirsty for union, every fire is like a hundred springs of clear water.

Commentary on couplet 13

The speaker describes how separation changes the lovers’ experience: a sting becomes restorative sweetness, and fire answers thirst like clear water. Pīsh, “for” or “in the eyes of,” locates these reversals within the condition of those wounded by longing. Nīsh and nūsh bring sting and nectar close in sound, allowing the language itself to perform the transformation. The return of fire recalls Abraham’s deliverance, now transposed into the lover’s inward experience. The verse concerns the pain of separation acquiring meaning through love. It does not prescribe seeking injury or accepting mistreatment. Its paradox is that what exposes the heart’s lack can also keep it turned toward the one it desires.

کُشْتِگانِ تِیغِ عِشْقَت زِنْدِگانِ جاوِدان

koshtegān-e tīgh-e ʿeshq-at zendegān-e jāvedān

14a  Those slain by the sword of your love live forever;

صَیْدِ شاهِینِ غَمَت شاهانِ مُلْکِ بِی‌زَوال

sayd-e shāhīn-e gham-at shāhān-e molk-e bī-zavāl

14b  the prey of the falcon of your sorrow are kings of an imperishable realm.

Commentary on couplet 14

Those struck down by love live enduringly, and those captured by sorrow’s falcon become sovereigns. The second half restates the first reversal through hunting imagery, with shāhīn and shāhān drawing falcon and kings together in sound. The apparent defeat is loss of self-command before the beloved, not a report that the speaker has literally died. Fanā, the passing away of self-preoccupation, offers a possible Sufi comparison, though no formal stage is named. [11] Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk provides a particularly close prose parallel: lovers sustained by remembrance are described as possessing kingship that does not decline, while they remain dependent on God for existence. [6] Endurance here need not mean becoming independent of God.

بادِه‌نُوشانِ غَمَت داوُد وُ مَعْرُوف وُ جُنَیْد

bāde-nūshān-e gham-at Dāvūd o Maʿrūf o Jonayd

15a  The wine-drinkers of your sorrow are Dāwūd, Maʿrūf, and Junayd;

جانْفُرُوشانِ رَهَت عَمّار وُ سَلْمان وُ بِلال

jān-forūshān-e rah-at ʿAmmār o Salmān o Belāl

15b  those who sell their souls on your path are ʿAmmār, Salmān, and Bilāl.

Commentary on couplet 15

The praise acquires human names: three figures associated with early Sufism drink sorrow’s wine, and three Companions give themselves on the divine path. Beside Maʿrūf al-Karkhī and Junayd al-Baghdādī, Dāwūd is probably Dāwūd al-Ṭāʾī. ʿAṭṭār’s portrait of him joins pervasive sorrow with an account of the wine of intimacy, offering a relevant literary parallel. [12] The second group evokes ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir, Salmān al-Fārisī, and Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ. “Selling” their souls means giving themselves in devotion; Qurʾān 9:111 supplies a scriptural background for such language of exchange. [12] The wine describes an overwhelming attachment in this context, while the named exemplars connect the poem’s paradoxes with remembered lives rather than establishing a particular initiatic chain.

ذَرِّه‌ای دَرْدِ تُو دارُویِ دِلِ هَر با خَبَر

zarre-ī dard-e to dārū-ye del-e har bā-khabar

16a  A particle of your pain is medicine for every awakened heart;

زِیوَرِ ذِکْرِ تُو زِیبِ جانِ هَر صاحِبِ کَمال

zīvar-e zekr-e to zīb-e jān-e har sāheb-e kamāl

16b  the jewel of remembering you adorns every soul of spiritual attainment.

Commentary on couplet 16

A particle of longing becomes medicine, and remembrance becomes the soul’s adornment. The first half continues the healing paradox of couplet 13, but now the measure is minute: even a little dard can awaken the heart. Dard-e to is pain occasioned by longing for the beloved, not a claim that God suffers. The second half turns from the ache of absence to the practice of dhikr, remembrance of God. Qurʾān 13:28 offers a relevant context for the heart’s reassurance through remembrance. [13] The language of jewellery also answers the opening dismissal of possessions. What now beautifies the lover is an inward orientation, making remembrance both response to longing and a form of spiritual richness.

دَر تَمَنّایِ وِصالَت شُد عَلایی جان‌فِشان

dar tamannā-ye vesāl-at shod ʿAlāʾī jān-feshān

17a  Longing for union with you, ʿAlāʾī poured out his soul;

تا چِه خواهَد بُرْد آخِر زِین تَمَنّایِ مُحال

tā che khāhad bord ākher z-īn tamannā-ye mohāl

17b  what will he gain in the end from this impossible desire?

Commentary on couplet 17

The closing couplet replaces the earlier companies of lovers with a named, vulnerable figure: ʿAlāʾī, who has poured out his soul in desire. The question that follows refuses to announce his success. Mohāl, “impossible,” may express his inadequacy, the boundlessness of his desire, or the impossibility of possessing the Incomparable; the wording leaves these possibilities unresolved. The signature is preserved without using it to authenticate an attribution. Hamadani’s discussion of spiritual gifts offers a limited parallel: effort cannot command divine bestowal. [6] Yet that prose teaching should not answer the poem’s question for it. After so many assertions of arrival, the speaker remains exposed to a longing whose outcome he cannot secure.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal sustains a direct address to a divine beloved while describing those transformed by love. Its opening paradox supplies the pattern for much that follows: captivity frees, poverty confers sovereignty, and the lowest dust becomes a place of honour. The lovers’ dignity is relational. They are rich because of whom they seek, rather than because they have accumulated possessions, recognition, or even heavenly rewards. Repeated lanes, doors, thresholds, gardens, and a feast turn that relation into a landscape of approach and admission. The heavenly spheres participate in it, making human longing part of a much larger chorus.

The poem repeatedly holds abundance beside limitation. A trace of kindness moves the heavens; a reflected ray clothes the earth in beauty; a particle of pain becomes medicine. These small measures indicate the giver’s inexhaustibility rather than the insignificance of the gift. Yet praise never becomes complete knowledge. Those honoured for knowing divine qualities are followed by heavenly singers confessing that they have not known the Eternal One. Likewise, created likenesses proceed from the Incomparable without adequately reproducing their source. The beloved is encountered through beauty, praise, and transformed experience while remaining beyond the speaker’s power to encompass.

Its delight is crossed by severe images of exclusion, judgment, wounds, and death. These prevent the gardens from becoming merely decorative. Abraham and Nimrod display contrasting outcomes of divine kindness and overpowering judgment; the lovers experience stings and fire through a longing that changes their significance. Later, the named Sufis and Companions give this language a remembered human setting. Remembrance then emerges as a practice within the praise. Hamadani’s prose supplies relevant parallels in love directed toward the giver, remembrance associated with enduring kingship, and gifts that cannot be secured by effort alone. These are documented affinities through a consulted translation, not proof of this poem’s authorship or an explanation of every image. [6]

The final signature alters the emotional balance. ʿAlāʾī has praised those who arrive, yet cannot confidently place himself among them. His “impossible desire” leaves a tension between the nearness celebrated throughout and the uncertainty of his own attainment. The couplets resonate through that tension without requiring a continuous spiritual itinerary. The closing question also returns to the opening freedom from acquisition: what can the lover expect to gain? The poem leaves desire alive at the point where the speaker can no longer guarantee its reward.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 3a: Malak is read as “angel,” collectively, rather than molk, “kingdom.”

[2] 5a: Khalīl, “the intimate friend,” is Abraham. The fire recalls Qur’an 21:69; its becoming a garden belongs to the wider poetic tradition.

[3] 5b: Pashshe, “gnat,” is restored from the 1968 edition. The line alludes to the traditional tale of Nimrod’s defeat by a tiny insect.

[4] 6b: Waḥdahu is Arabic for “him alone”; here it functions as an abbreviated proclamation of divine oneness.

[5] 7b: Mā ʿarafnāka is an Arabic devotional confession: “We have not known you.” It is not a Qur’anic quotation.

Editorial references

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 pp. 330–331, gift and giver; p. 338, love, remembrance, and enduring kingship; p. 414, effort and divine bestowal. These passages were verified in the English translation; their Persian wording was not independently collated.
7. Dehkhodā, Loghat-nāma, maghbūt, consulted through Vajehyab, for the distinction between wishing to share a blessing and wishing its removal.
8. Qurʾān, al-Anbiyāʾ 21:69; ʿAṭṭār, Manṭiq al-ṭayr, opening praise of divine oneness, for flowers upon fire and the half-gnat. The literary parallel supports the motifs, not a claim of direct borrowing.
9. Qurʾān, al-Isrāʾ 17:44, for creation’s praise; Ṭā Hā 20:110, for the limits of encompassing knowledge. These are contextual parallels to couplets 6–7.
10. Qurʾān, al-Shūrā 42:11, for divine incomparability, used as context for the wordplay in couplet 9.
11. Al-Qushayrī, Al-Qushayrī’s Epistle on Sufism, translated by Alexander D. Knysh (Garnet, 2007), chapter 2: printed pp. 103–105, proximity and distance; pp. 89–91, fanā and baqā. Used comparatively, without identifying a completed spiritual stage in the poem.
12. ʿAṭṭār, Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, account of Dāwūd al-Ṭāʾī, for sorrow and the wine of intimacy; Qurʾān, al-Tawbah 9:111, for giving lives and possessions in exchange for paradise. The identification of the poem’s Dāwūd remains probable.
13. Qurʾān, al-Raʿd 13:28, for the heart’s reassurance through remembrance, used as a contextual parallel to couplet 16.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991 reference, the reported restoration from the 1968 edition, and the signature ʿAlāʾī are retained unchanged. Those editions and the attribution of this ghazal have not been independently verified. The commentary’s prose and literary parallels do not authenticate the poem or resolve its final question.

The manuscript line order below differs from the Riaz sequence on my blog: it runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 6, 7, 11, 8, 9, then 12–17 straight through. All seventeen couplets are present though: