Chehel Asrar 26 - Twenty Sixth Ghazal

Ghazal 26

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 467

اِی راحِ رُوح‌پَرْوَر وُ اِی رِیحِ رُوح‌نام

ey rāh-e rūh-parvar o ey rīh-e rūh-nām

1a  O soul-nurturing wine, O breeze named spirit, [1]

بُویِ حَیات اَز نَفَسَت مِی‌وَزَد مُدام

bū-ye hayāt az nafas-at mī-vazad modām

1b  the scent of life blows constantly from your breath.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker greets a refreshing presence through two images: wine that nourishes the soul and a breeze whose breath carries life. The close sounds rāḥ, rīḥ, and rūḥ bring wine, wind, and spirit into a single musical movement; rāḥ is an attested word for wine, distinct from the Persian rāh, “road.” [3] The second half develops the breeze through scent and breathing, allowing renewal to be sensed before its source is seen. The unusual rūḥ-nām remains provisional, as the supplied note explains. It should not settle the addressee’s identity as a particular spiritual being. The following couplets develop this presence as a possible visitor to the Friend and bearer of the speaker’s message.

هَر صُبْحْدَم زِ مَجْلِسِ رُوحانِیانِ قُدْس

har sobh-dam ze majles-e rūhāniyān-e qods

2a  Each dawn, from the gathering of the spirits of holiness,

مُسْتَسْقِیانِ عِشْقِ تُو را شَرْبَت وُ مُدام

mostasqiyān-e ʿeshq-e to rā sharbat o modām

2b  come draughts and wine for those athirst with love for you.

Commentary on couplet 2

Each dawn brings refreshment from a holy gathering to those made thirsty by love. The first half establishes the source and time; the second names the recipients and their drink. Mostasqiyān presents lovers as people seeking water, making need itself the condition in which the gift is received. Modām now means wine, while at the end of couplet 1 it meant continually: the repeated sound links sustained renewal with the draught that renews. [3] Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk offers a relevant prose parallel in its account of a divine breeze and refreshing water that quiet troubled passions. [4] The holy gathering remains poetically suggestive without being assigned a particular angelic membership.

بَر خاکِ کُویِ دُوسْت گُذَشْتی مَگَر سَحَر

bar khāk-e kū-ye dūst gozashtī magar sahar

3a  You must have passed over the dust of the Friend’s lane at dawn,

کَز لُطْفِ جان‌فَزای هَمِه راحَتی وُ کام

k-az lotf-e jān-fazāy hame rāhatī o kām

3b  for through your life-giving grace you are all ease and delight.

Commentary on couplet 3

The speaker infers the breeze’s journey from the delight it brings: such freshness seems evidence that it has touched the dust of the Friend’s lane. Magar gives this claim the quality of a conjecture rather than an eyewitness report. The Friend is spoken of in the third person and remains distinct from the breeze being addressed. A close literary parallel occurs in Ḥāfiẓ’s appeal to the morning breeze for fragrance from the beloved’s path. [5] Here, even the dust becomes a bearer of life. Kām, delight, is positive in this encounter; its return as constraining desire in couplet 6 will show how differently pleasure can work within the poem.

گَر دَر سُرادِقاتِ جَلالَش رَسی دَمی

gar dar sorādeqāt-e jalāl-ash rasī damī

4a  If for a moment you reach the pavilions of his majesty,

زِین جانِ مُسْتَمَنْد رَسانی یِکی پَیام

z-īn jān-e mostamand rasānī yekī payām

4b  carry a message from this wretched soul:

Commentary on couplet 4

The praise of the breeze turns into a request: if it gains access to the Friend’s majestic pavilions, it should carry the speaker’s message. The conditional opening matters. This is an imagined delivery, with no assurance that the messenger has reached the court. Sorādeqāt evokes an imposing enclosure of pavilions, giving majesty an architectural form and placing the petitioner at a distance from it. On a devotional reading, the image expresses awe and difficult access without mapping a physical location for God. Against this grandeur stands “this wretched soul.” Mostamand suggests need and affliction; the speaker approaches through acknowledged vulnerability, asking that his words travel where he cannot.

کِین مُفْلِسِ شِکَسْتِهٔ مَهْجُورِ آن جَناب

k-īn mofles-e shekaste-ye mahjūr-e ān janāb

5a  this destitute, broken outcast from that court

بَر خاکِ راهِ حَیْرَت وُ مِی‌گُویَدَت سَلام

bar khāk-e rāh-e hayrat o mī-gūyad-at salām

5b  lies in the dust of bewilderment’s road and sends you greetings.

Commentary on couplet 5

The proposed message begins by describing its sender from the outside: destitute, broken, and separated from the court, he remains in the dust of bewilderment’s road. This third-person presentation allows the breeze to speak on his behalf. The second half then directs a greeting toward the intended recipient. Salām preserves a simple act of relationship within a scene of exclusion. The speaker has neither arrived nor received an answer, but he can still address the Friend. Ḥayrat, bewilderment, here belongs to a traveller unable to find his way; it need not name an attained spiritual station. The dust recalls the Friend’s lane, although its meaning has shifted from transmitted freshness to the petitioner’s abasement.

عُمْرِیسْت تا زِ سِدْرِهٔ قُرْبَت فُتادِه اَسْت

ʿomrī-st tā ze sedre-ye qorbat fotāde ast

6a  An age has passed since he fell from the lote tree of nearness [2]

با دِیوِ نَفْس دَر قَفَسِ طَبْع وُ بَنْدِ کام

bā dīv-e nafs dar qafas-e tabʿ o band-e kām

6b  into nature’s cage and desire’s chains, with the demon of the self.

Commentary on couplet 6

The message explains the petitioner’s estrangement as a fall from exalted nearness into confinement. The lote tree recalls sidrat al-muntahā in Qurʾān 53:14–16, but those verses do not narrate this speaker’s fall from it. [6] The poem adapts a heavenly image to express lost intimacy; it does not establish a literal history of his soul before birth. The second half turns that distance into an inward predicament. Nafs means self or soul; its demonic personification here emphasizes an obstructive appetite. Tabʿ suggests natural disposition, pictured as a cage when desire holds it captive. The delight called kām in couplet 3 has become a chain, distinguishing refreshing contact with the Friend from confinement within one’s own cravings.

نَی پایِ سَیْر وُ نَه رَهِ مَقْصُود، نَی قَرار

nay pā-ye sayr o na rah-e maqsūd, nay qarār

7a  He has no feet to travel, no road to his goal, no rest,

نَی صَبْر وُ نَی اُمِید مَگَر رَأْفَتِ کِرام

nay sabr o nay omīd magar raʾfat-e kerām

7b  no patience and no hope except the mercy of the generous.

Commentary on couplet 7

The repeated negatives strip the traveller of movement, direction, rest, patience, and finally hope. Each loss makes the next more severe: even the inward resources that might endure a blocked journey seem exhausted. Then magar, “except,” leaves one opening in the accumulating refusal. Mercy may arrive from beyond the capacities he has just declared absent. Kirām is plural, referring to generous or noble ones; the wording does not identify a particular company or reduce it to a singular divine name. The appeal retains the possibility of help mediated through others. Although the speaker describes himself as unable to proceed, he is still framing an appeal to a recipient.

دَرْگاهِ جُود را چِه زِیان کَرْدِه مِی‌شَوَد

dargāh-e jūd rā che ziyān karde mī-shavad

8a  What loss could the court of generosity suffer

کارِ دُوکَوْن اَگَر کُنی اَز یِک نَظَر تَمام

kār-e do-kown agar konī az yek nazar tamām

8b  if with a single glance you completed the work of both worlds?

Commentary on couplet 8

The petitioner now appeals to the court’s abundance: how could its generosity be diminished by fulfilling so much through a single glance? The two halves place the affairs of both worlds beside the smallest gesture of attention. Nazar, a glance, conveys favour concentrated into an instant; completing their work expresses the scope of the fulfilment sought. Read as an appeal to divine generosity, the couplet has a relevant parallel in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2577a, where granting the requests of all humans and jinn does not diminish divine resources, illustrated through the image of a needle dipped into the sea. [7] This is a thematic comparison, not an identified quotation. The petitioner argues from generosity without claiming authority over its response.

دَرْیایِ فَضْل مَوْجِ کَرَم مِی‌زَنَد هَر آن

daryā-ye fazl mowj-e karam mī-zanad har ān

9a  The sea of grace sends out waves of generosity at every moment;

مَرْکَب عَلاییا! مَگَر آنْجا کُنی لِگام

markab ʿAlāʾī! magar ānjā konī legām

9b  O ʿAlāʾī, perhaps you can rein in your steed there.

Commentary on couplet 9

The sea is already sending out waves, and the speaker turns to ʿAlāʾī with a tentative instruction to rein his mount there. Har ān, every moment, recalls the opening’s continual breath of life. The motion of giving persists even when the traveller cannot advance. Reining the mount may suggest directing or settling attention toward grace; the verse does not announce an achieved arrival or a plunge into the water. Hamadani’s prose similarly joins continually offered spiritual refreshment with the seeker’s inability to command it. [4] Magar, “perhaps,” preserves uncertainty while allowing a renewed orientation. The closing is self-exhortation, not a received answer from the Friend, and the signature alone cannot establish authorship.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal turns an encounter with freshness into a message of need. Its opening addressee is presented through wine, breeze, breath, and spirit; the Friend whose presence might explain that freshness is initially spoken of in the third person. The distinction gives the poem its structure of mediation. The speaker senses something life-giving nearby, infers a contact he has not witnessed, and asks the breeze to carry his words onward. The vocabulary of holiness, majesty, and nearness supports a devotional reading, while the Friend remains unnamed. The poem preserves the emotional form of a lover speaking across a distance.

Its images repeatedly oppose free movement to confinement. Breath blows, dawn brings drink, and the breeze crosses a beloved place; the petitioner lies in dust, enclosed by disposition and desire, unable to travel. The fall from the lote tree gives this estrangement a vertical dimension, but its spiritual force does not depend on accepting a literal account of a soul falling from heaven. Even the same word changes its value: kām is delight in the breeze’s company and a binding desire in the captive’s condition. The problem is not simply that pleasure exists, but that the speaker experiences his own cravings as obstructing the nearness he seeks.

The proposed message does more than describe helplessness. Its greeting keeps relationship possible, and its appeal to generosity gives hope a basis beyond the sender’s resources. A useful parallel in Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk connects a divine breeze with the illumination of the heart and the quieting of passions, then distinguishes spiritual gifts from what a seeker can acquire by effort. [4] Consulted through Farooq’s English translation, this passage illuminates the relation between refreshment and readiness without explaining the ghazal’s uncertain wording or proving its attribution.

The closing brings the named speaker back into view. A person who has declared himself without travelling feet is now addressed through the image of a mount that might be guided or steadied. This need not resolve the preceding incapacity into a completed journey. The sea’s generosity is affirmed; the traveller’s response remains tentative. The couplets thus move toward hope without reporting either delivery of the message or union with its recipient. What can change at the end is the direction of attention: the exhausted seeker may still turn toward a giving that has not ceased.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 1a: Both printed editions have the unusual rūḥ-nām. It is retained and provisionally understood as “named spirit”; the wording remains uncertain.

[2] 6a: The lote tree recalls the heavenly sidrat al-muntahā of Qur’an 53:14–16; here it evokes nearness to the divine.

Editorial references

3. Dehkhodā, Loghat-nāma, entries rāḥ, modām, and mostasqī, consulted through Vajehyab, for wine, continuity, and seeking water. These lexical checks do not resolve rūḥ-nām.
4. 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. 413–414: the refreshing breeze, the heart, and divine gifts beyond the seeker’s control. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
5. Ḥāfiẓ, ghazal 249 in Ganjoor’s numbering, especially its opening appeal for fragrance from the beloved’s path. This is a literary parallel for the breeze’s mediating role, without a claim of direct borrowing.
6. Qurʾān, al-Najm 53:14–16, for sidrat al-muntahā. The poem’s “lote tree of nearness” adapts this image; the speaker’s fall is not part of those Qurʾānic verses.
7. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2577a, Book 45, hadith 70, reported by Abū Dharr: the divine saying concerning requests and undiminished giving, illustrated by a needle dipped into the sea. Used as a thematic parallel to couplets 8–9.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991 reference, the report about both printed editions, and the signature ʿAlāʾī are retained unchanged. Those editions and the attribution of this ghazal have not been independently verified. The unusual rūḥ-nām remains unresolved; the commentary distinguishes the requested message from a completed delivery or a received reply.