Chehel Asrar 27 - Twenty Seventh Ghazal

Ghazal 27

5 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 468

گَشْتِه تا مَحْوِ تَجَلّایِ جَمالَش جانَم

gashte tā mahv-e tajallā-ye jamāl-ash jān-am

1a  Since my soul was effaced in the radiance of his beauty,

دِیدِه‌اَم حُسْن وُ جَمالی کِه دَرُو حَیْرانَم

dīde-am hosn o jamālī ke dar-ū hayrān-am

1b  I have seen a loveliness and beauty that leave me bewildered.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker describes his soul as effaced by beauty, then names the consequence: a vision that leaves him bewildered. Maḥv, effacement, suggests the loss of the soul’s accustomed prominence before what it encounters. Yet the speaker continues to see and speak; the image conveys an overwhelming experience without requiring bodily disappearance. Tajallā means disclosure or manifestation, here made luminous through the beauty disclosed. The later vocabulary of spiritual transformation supports a reading in terms of divine beauty, while the language retains the intimacy of a beloved’s attraction. Ḥayrān, bewildered, keeps the encounter open: seeing has intensified the speaker’s astonishment rather than given him an account that exhausts what he sees.

تا شُد اَز صَفْحِهٔ دِل مَحْو نُقُوشِ کَوْنَیْن

tā shod az safhe-ye del mahv noqūsh-e kownayn

2a  Since the forms of both worlds were erased from the page of my heart,

خَطِّ رُخْسارِ تُو هَر لَحْظِه دَرُو مِی‌خوانَم

khatt-e rokhsār-e to har lahze dar-ū mī-khānam

2b  at every moment I read the script of your face upon it. [1]

Commentary on couplet 2

The heart becomes a page cleared of the forms of both worlds, ready for continual reading of the beloved’s face. The shift from “his” to “your” brings that beloved into direct address. Khatt sustains the supplied double meaning: written script and the fine down upon a cheek. The face remains sensuous even as it becomes something inwardly legible. Both worlds can encompass worldly and otherworldly concerns; their erasure describes the heart’s changed attention rather than a destruction of creation. Hamadani’s prose closely parallels the cleared tablet by describing lovers whose hearts lose other impressions and hold love of God. [2] Here the cleared page immediately acquires a new reading, renewed at every moment.

رُوزْگارِیسْت کِه هَم طالِب وُ هَم مَطْلُوبَم

rūzgārī-st ke ham tāleb o ham matlūb-am

3a  For a long time I have been both seeker and sought;

طُرْفِه حالِیسْت کِه هَم دَرْدَم وُ هَم دَرْمانَم

torfe hālī-st ke ham dard-am o ham darmān-am

3b  what a strange state: I am both the pain and its cure.

Commentary on couplet 3

The speaker claims two double identities: seeker and sought, then pain and cure. The repeated “both” prevents either side from simply cancelling the other. Being sought may suggest that the lover experiences a responding desire directed toward him; Hamadani’s prose likewise describes lovers of God as God’s beloveds. [2] This supports a reading through reciprocal love without proving that human seeker and divine beloved are identical in being. The second pair makes the paradox more intimate: the self that suffers also bears the possibility of relief. Yet the speaker calls this a strange state, preserving its unsettling character. He does not explain a mechanism of healing or claim an ordinary independence from the beloved.

کافِرِ عِشْق، مَنِ بِیدِل وُ دِین تا گَشْتَم

kāfer-e ʿeshq, man-e bī-del o dīn tā gashtam

4a  Since I, bereft of heart and faith, became love’s unbeliever,

فارِغ اَز شَکّ وُ یَقِین بِی‌خَبَر اَز اِیمانَم

fāregh az shakk o yaqīn bī-khabar az īmān-am

4b  I am free of doubt and certainty, unaware of faith.

Commentary on couplet 4

The lover now calls himself bereft of heart and faith, placing his altered identity under the provocative name of love’s unbeliever. The second half intensifies the disturbance: he has become free of both doubt and certainty, and unaware of faith. This cannot simply be paraphrased as having reached a higher certainty. One possible reading is that absorption in love suspends the speaker’s ordinary awareness of his own religious standing. The verse gives that suspension a deliberately troubling voice; it does not itself establish a legal confession or a general instruction to abandon belief. Hamadani’s prose, by comparison, joins effacement to continuing prayer and requests for guidance. [3] That parallel supplies context while leaving the poem’s sharper language intact.

تا شُدَم هَمْچُو عَلِی پادْشِهِ مُلْکِ فَنا

tā shodam hamcho ʿAlī pādshah-e molk-e fanā

5a  Since, like ʿAlī, I became king of the realm of self-annihilation,

اَسْبِ هِمَّت بِسُویِ مُلْکِ بَقا مِی‌رانَم

asb-e hemmat be-sū-ye molk-e baqā mī-rānam

5b  I ride the horse of aspiration toward the realm of abiding life.

Commentary on couplet 5

The closing turns loss into sovereignty: the speaker is king through self-effacement, yet still directs a horse toward another country. Fanā names the passing away of self-preoccupation or limiting traits; baqā names an abiding life in relation to God. Al-Qushayrī explains these terms through the disappearance of blameworthy qualities and persistence of praiseworthy ones, while also distinguishing loss of self-awareness from the creature’s actual cessation of existence. [4]

The horse gives himmat, concentrated spiritual aspiration, a form that can move and be directed. Be-sū-ye, “toward,” matters: the speaker rides toward baqā and does not announce arrival. “Like ʿAlī” is a comparison, not a direct address; the line alone does not securely identify the figure or settle whether poetic self-naming is involved. Its final emphasis falls on continuing aspiration after the claim to kingship.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal explores what remains active when the self is said to be effaced. Its answer takes shape through a sequence of verbs: the speaker sees, reads, seeks, and finally rides. The repeated first-person endings keep a speaking “I” audible within declarations of its dispossession. That tension gives the poem its energy. Beauty overwhelms the soul, but the result is astonished perception; the heart’s inscriptions disappear, but another reading begins. Effacement changes the speaker’s relation to experience without making the poem fall silent.

The beloved first appears through “his beauty” and then becomes the “you” whose face can be read on the heart. The cheek’s fine down preserves the physical delicacy of that image, even when the closing vocabulary invites a spiritual interpretation. The two worlds cease to occupy the heart’s page, and attention returns to the beloved at every moment. The seeker then finds himself also sought, the sufferer also a cure. These couplets loosen familiar divisions between activity and receptivity, lack and fulfilment, without supplying a systematic claim that all distinctions have vanished.

Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk provides a particularly close prose parallel: its account of divine lovers joins the cleared heart, being beloved, and enduring kingship, while retaining their creaturely contingency. [2] Consulted through Farooq’s English translation, this passage illuminates the poem’s connected images without establishing authorship. The poem’s declaration of freedom from doubt and certainty nevertheless deserves its own force. Hamadani’s prayer commentary continues from effacement into requests for help and guidance; the two modes of expression should remain distinguishable. [3] The ghazal speaks from a lover’s unsettling state rather than presenting a complete account of religious life.

The final couplet changes the emotional register from bewilderment and paradox to directed movement. Kingship in fanā could sound like a final achievement, but the horse is already carrying aspiration onward. Baqā remains the direction of travel, and the comparison with ʿAlī does not turn that journey into a verified historical attainment. The closing thus gives self-effacement a future: what survives the relinquishing of accustomed identity is the capacity to move toward a more enduring relation with the beloved.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 2b: Khatt also means the fine down on the beloved’s cheek; its sense of writing extends the image of the heart as a page.

Editorial references

2. 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. 337–338: the heart’s cleared tablet, lovers as beloveds, and enduring kingship alongside contingent existence. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
3. Hamadani, same work and translation, printed pp. 94–95: effacement followed by prayer for aid and guidance. Used comparatively beside couplet 4.
4. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya, translated by Alexander D. Knysh as Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism (Garnet, 2007), printed pp. 89–90, “Annihilation” and “subsistence.” The discussion distinguishes ethical transformation and loss of self-awareness from the literal disappearance of the person or creation. Used as classical Sufi context, not as an explanation of this particular ghazal.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 468 reference and the wording “like ʿAlī” are retained. That edition, the identity intended by ʿAlī, and the attribution of this ghazal have not been independently verified. The supplied Persian, transliteration, translation, and reading note remain unchanged.