Chehel Asrar 28 - Twenty Eighth Ghazal

Ghazal 28

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 468–469

تا نَیَفْشانی دَرِین رَه دامَن اَز جان وُ جَهان

tā na-yafshānī dar-īn rah dāman az jān o jahān

1a  Until you shake your skirts free of soul and world upon this path,

دَر جَهان وُ جان نَیابی فَیْض اَنْدَر سِرِّ جان

dar jahān o jān na-yābī fayz andar serr-e jān

1b  in world and soul you will find no grace within the soul’s secret.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker addresses a traveller whose first task is to shake free of soul and world, as someone might shake dust from a garment. The second half makes that demand paradoxical: the grace sought is still to be found within the soul’s secret. The repeated jān and jahān move from what must be relinquished to the setting in which discovery becomes possible. Read spiritually, the gesture releases possessive attachment even to one’s own life or inward attainments. It need not describe destroying either self or world. Fayḍ suggests an outpouring of grace, while the soul’s secret remains an inward depth the verse evokes without mapping a separate spiritual faculty.

گَر زَنی بَر سَدِّ یَأْجُوجِ هَوا یِکْدَم قَدَم

gar zanī bar sadd-e Yaʾjūj-e havā yek-dam qadam

2a  If for one moment you step upon the rampart of desire’s Gog, [1]

اَز نَسِیمِ صُبْحِ اَسْرارِ قِدَم یابی نِشان

az nasīm-e sobh-e asrār-e qedam yābī neshān

2b  from the dawn breeze of the mysteries of eternity you will receive a sign.

Commentary on couplet 2

A single step upon desire’s rampart promises a sign carried by the dawn breeze. The scale changes from a formidable fortification to a moment of movement and a delicate trace. In Qurʾān 18:93–99, Dhū al-Qarnayn’s barrier protects people against Gog and Magog and is called a mercy. The supplied reading makes the poem’s association with desire an obstacle for the traveller; this is a poetic adaptation of the scriptural image. [4] The line speaks of stepping upon the rampart, without describing its demolition. Qadam, step, answers qedam, beginningless eternity: a momentary action opens toward what exceeds temporal measurement. Yet the promised gift is neshān, a sign, preserving the difference between an intimation and complete realization.

چَنْد بَر فَوْتِ مَنالِ عارِیَت نالی زِ دَهْر

chand bar fowt-e manāl-e ʿāriyat nālī ze dahr

3a  How long will you complain of time for the loss of borrowed possessions?

تا کَی اَز بَهْرِ مُرادِ تَن بِغَم داری رَوان

tā kay az bahr-e morād-e tan be-gham dārī ravān

3b  How long will you keep your soul in sorrow for the body’s wishes?

Commentary on couplet 3

The speaker questions a grief sustained by losing what was only borrowed. The second half exposes the cost of that attachment: the soul is kept sorrowful for the sake of bodily wishes. Manāl, possessions or material gain, echoes nālī, your lamenting, bringing acquisition and complaint close in sound. Hamadani’s discussion of almsgiving offers a precise prose parallel: possessions belong to God, while people hold them temporarily in their custody. [5] In that setting, borrowed ownership supports generous giving. Here it challenges the assumption that time has wronged the possessor by taking something permanently his. The later invitation to sorrow will change its object, directing lament from threatened possession toward the beloved.

خاکْدانِ دِیو با غُولانِ نَفْسانی گُذار

khākdān-e dīv bā ghūlān-e nafsānī gozār

4a  Leave the demon’s dustbin to the ghouls of the carnal self;

عَیْش با رُوحانِیان کُن بَرپَر اَز هَفْت آسْمان

ʿaysh bā rūhāniyān kon bar-par az haft āsmān

4b  rejoice with the spirits and soar beyond the seven heavens.

Commentary on couplet 4

The imagery divides a cramped dustbin inhabited by demonic figures from a vast flight among spiritual companions. The first command leaves appetite’s enclosure behind; the second replaces it with joy and ascent. Nafsānī locates the threatening ghouls in the sphere of the desirous self, whose demands were already burdening the soul. The image attacks their domination without requiring every bodily need to be treated as evil. Seven heavens give the flight its cosmic scale; Qurʾān 67:3 supplies the familiar background of heavens arranged in layers. [4] The command to soar beyond them enlarges aspiration beyond ordinary horizons. It does not narrate an accomplished physical ascent or identify a particular company of spirits.

رَوْحِ اَنْوارِ صَفا اَز بِی‌صَفایان تُو مَجُوی

rowh-e anvār-e safā az bī-safāyān to ma-jūy

5a  Do not seek the refreshment of purity’s light from those without purity; [2]

یُمْنِ آثارِ هُما اَز مَنْظَرِ بُومان مَدان

yomn-e āsār-e homā az manzar-e būmān ma-dān

5b  do not expect the humā’s blessed influence from the sight of owls. [3]

Commentary on couplet 5

The traveller is warned to seek refreshment from a source capable of giving it. Purity and its absence form the first contrast; the humā and owls supply the second through inherited associations of blessing and desolation. Saʿdī’s Gulistān offers a close literary parallel when it contrasts the sought shadow of the humā with the owl’s unwanted shadow. [6] The birds carry a poetic judgment about the quality of companionship and influence. No particular community is named among those lacking purity. Rowḥ, refreshment or repose, remains a provisional reading, with rūḥ, spirit, preserved as an alternative in the supplied note. The commentary therefore leaves the precise wording open while retaining the counsel to discern one’s sources of nourishment.

نالِه را هَمْدَم گُزِین وُ سایِه را هَمْسایِه گِیر

nāle rā hamdam gozīn o sāye rā hamsāye gīr

6a  Choose lament as your companion and shadow as your neighbor;

جامِ غَم بَر رُویِ اِیشان نُوش کُن دَر هَر زَمان

jām-e gham bar rū-ye īshān nūsh kon dar har zamān

6b  drink the cup of sorrow in their company at every moment.

Commentary on couplet 6

Lament and shadow become the companions of a deliberately austere gathering. The second half offers its drink: a cup of sorrow to be taken continually in their presence. The pronoun “their” most naturally returns to these two personified companions, rather than introducing an unnamed human group. Sāye and hamsāye bind shadow and neighbour in sound, giving even the faintest nearby presence a place in the scene. This chosen sorrow differs from the complaint over possessions in couplet 3: the following verse identifies it with the condition of lovers. The cup prepares a gathering whose refreshments and music will come from tears and sighs. Solitude is being poetically furnished, without identifying the shadow as a particular guide.

بِیدِلان را ساقی اَز اَشْکَسْت وُ مُطْرِب آهِ دِل

bī-delān rā sāqī az ashk-ast o motreb āh-e del

7a  For those who have lost their hearts, tears are the cupbearer and the heart’s sigh the musician;

عاشِقان را لَذَّت اَز دَرْد اَسْت وُ راحَت سُوزِ جان

ʿāsheqān rā lazzat az dard ast o rāhat sūz-e jān

7b  for lovers, pleasure comes from pain, and comfort is the soul’s burning.

Commentary on couplet 7

The gathering now finds its cupbearer and musician in the lovers’ own tears and sighs. The supplied rendering personifies tears as the cupbearer; the Persian construction with az is compressed, and that interpretation should remain visible as a reading of the unusual phrase. The second half explains the gathering’s reversed pleasures: pain gives delight, and the soul’s burning gives comfort. These oppositions describe how attachment to the beloved can make the expression of suffering feel intimate and sustaining. The sorrow has acquired a relationship and an object. The verse intensifies this lover’s experience without establishing that suffering is beneficial in every circumstance.

عِشْق سُلْطانَسْت چُون مِهْمانَت باشَد نُزْلِ اُو

ʿeshq soltān-ast chūn mehmān-at bāshad nozl-e ū

8a  Love is a king; when it is your guest, make its feast

دِیدِه وُ دِل ساز وُ جان شُکْرانِه آر اَنْدَر مِیان

dīde o del sāz o jān shokrāne ār andar miyān

8b  of eye and heart, and bring your soul as an offering of thanks.

Commentary on couplet 8

Love enters as both king and guest, giving the host the honour and demand of receiving a sovereign. The syntax runs across the half-line boundary: the feast named at the end of the first half receives its provisions, eye and heart, in the second. Nuzl denotes hospitality prepared for a guest, so perception and affection become what the host sets before Love. The soul is then brought forward as a further offering of thanks. The body’s imagery makes the welcome total rather than casual; it expresses the surrender of attention and self-possession. The offering concerns how the lover sees, loves, and lives under the guest’s transforming presence.

عِشْقِ جانان آتَش وُ جانِ عَلایی خَس بُوَد

ʿeshq-e jānān ātash o jān-e ʿAlāʾī khas bovad

9a  Love for the beloved is fire, and ʿAlāʾī’s soul is straw;

خَس چُو دَر آتَش فَنا شُد دِیگَر اُو را خَس مَخوان

khas cho dar ātash fanā shod dīgar ū rā khas ma-khān

9b  once straw is annihilated in fire, do not call it straw any longer.

Commentary on couplet 9

The closing names ʿAlāʾī’s soul as straw and love for the beloved as the fire that consumes it. Its second half draws a consequence for language: once the straw has passed away, the former name no longer fits. Fanā, passing away or annihilation, marks that decisive transformation. Hamadani’s prose offers a close but distinct parallel when love’s fire burns the straw of greed and jealousy. [5] The poem goes further by making the speaker’s soul itself the fuel. Its uncompromising image can unsettle a lover’s former self-understanding without asserting that straw becomes fire or that a human being becomes God. The final command concerns naming after transformation, and the signature alone does not authenticate the ghazal.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal addresses a traveller through commands, questions, and images of hospitality. Its central demand is to relinquish possessive attachment so that a different inward life can become possible. Soul and world are initially what must be shaken from one’s skirts, yet the grace being sought is found within the soul’s secret. That opening prevents renunciation from being understood only as outward departure. The obstacle is also a way of clinging to the self, its possessions, and its desired satisfactions. A step, a breeze, and a sign suggest how delicately a new orientation may begin.

The couplets repeatedly test where nourishment is sought and what kind of sorrow occupies the heart. Grief over borrowed possessions burdens the soul with bodily wishes; later, lament is deliberately welcomed and the lover’s tears furnish a feast. The difference lies in the sorrow’s object and meaning. The warning about purity, humā, and owls sharpens this discernment, while the movement from a demonic dustbin to spiritual companionship gives it a dramatic spatial form. These images resonate without requiring a continuous account of literal travel through the heavens or a universal rule that pain itself is spiritually valuable.

Two passages in Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk closely illuminate this movement. His account of possessions held in custody directs borrowed ownership toward generosity; his image of love burning the straw of greed and jealousy makes renunciation an inward transformation. [5] Both were consulted through Farooq’s English translation. The parallels are specific, but their differences remain useful: the poem offers eye, heart, and soul to Love and finally names the soul itself as straw. Its imagery extends the prose’s ethical concerns into the lover’s surrender of an entire sense of self.

The last two couplets make surrender a response to a presence: Love is received, thanked, and finally encountered as consuming fire. The closing brings the named speaker within the demands previously addressed to the traveller. Its last word is an instruction about what may now be called straw, giving transformation a consequence for how the self is recognized. The poem leaves that consequence open rather than supplying a new substance or identity. What love has transformed cannot be adequately described by simply repeating its former name.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 2a: The barrier against Gog and Magog in Qur’an 18:93–99 becomes an image of the obstacle posed by desire. Qadam, “step,” is paired with qedam, “pre-eternity,” in the next line.

[2] 5a: Rowh, “refreshment, repose,” is provisionally read here; the unpointed word could also be rūh, “spirit.”

[3] 5b: The mythical humā brings good fortune; owls conventionally evoke ruins and desolation.

Editorial references

4. Qurʾān, al-Kahf 18:93–99, for the barrier protecting against Gog and Magog; 18:98 calls it a mercy. The poem’s association with desire is an adaptation. Al-Mulk 67:3 supplies the background of seven layered heavens, without verifying a literal ascent in couplet 4.
5. 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. 117, on borrowed possessions and almsgiving; and printed p. 74, on love burning the straw of greed and jealousy. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
6. Saʿdī, Gulistān, chapter 1, tale 3, includes a couplet contrasting the shadows of the humā and owl. Dehkhodā’s entry būm, consulted through Vajehyab, records the owl’s conventional associations with misfortune and ruined places. These verify literary associations, without establishing direct borrowing by this ghazal.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 468–469 reference, the signature ʿAlāʾī, and all three reading notes are retained unchanged. That edition and the attribution of this ghazal have not been independently verified. Rowh remains provisional; the commentary also acknowledges the compressed wording of the rampart image and the tears as cupbearer.

The order of couplets 6 and 7 is reversed

All nine couplets are present, but the leaf runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 6, 8, 9. The lovers' cupbearer couplet (بیدلان را ساقی) stands before the counsel to choose lament as a companion (ناله را همدم گزین).

This bears directly on a judgment in our commentary. On the printed order you read couplet 6 as furnishing an austere gathering that couplet 7 then staffs — "the cup prepares a gathering whose refreshments and music will come from tears and sighs" — and you consider, then set aside, the possibility that ایشان in 6b names "an unnamed human group", preferring the two personified companions.

On the leaf's order that group is not unnamed. بیدلان and عاشقان stand in the immediately preceding couplet, and "drink the cup of sorrow in their company" then most naturally returns to the heart-lost and the lovers. The counsel to take lament and shadow as companions becomes the practical consequence of the lovers' condition rather than its preparation. Both readings remain available, but the manuscript's sequence tilts the pronoun the way our commentary declines to take it.

The corrector is at work again, and the printed text follows him

Couplet 1a — و جهان supplied above the line

The copyist wrote تا نیفشانی درین ره دامن از جان and stopped. A corrector added و جهان above the line's end. Without it the hemistich falls short of the ramal pattern the rest of the ghazal keeps, so this is repair of an omission rather than a variant.

Couplet 2a — the Qurʾānic name lost and restored

The main text reads, as far as the letters allow, بر سدّهٔ اوج هوا — "upon the threshold of desire's summit." The letter after سدّه is a plain alef, not the ی that یأجوج requires. In the right margin, in a clear hand and with a small collation sign, stands سدّ یأجوج هوا.

This is the most instructive correction on any of the four leaves. سدّ یأجوج and سدّهٔ اوج share almost the same skeleton, and a copyist who did not recognise the proper name has produced ordinary Persian from it. The Gog-and-Magog allusion that our reading note [1] builds on is therefore absent from this copyist's text and present only in the corrector's margin — and the printed edition gives the margin's reading without recording that it is one.

Couplet 3a — فوت منال in the margin

The main text writes the word after فوت without the distinguishing dot, so it stands as ممال rather than منال. The margin supplies فوت منال, again with a collation sign. A third note, دهر, sits at the top of the lower panel and belongs to the same hemistich's closing words.

Couplet 8a — نزل او supplied above the line

The copyist wrote عشق سلطانست چون مهمانت آمد and left the line there; نزل او is written above it. The printed text again reproduces the corrected state.

Left margin — ز آه

A note reading ز آه, with a collation sign, stands in the left margin of the lower panel. Its natural application is to 7a: with it the hemistich reads بیدلان را ساقی از اشک است و مطرب ز آهِ دل, which restores the parallel preposition and gives tears and sighs the same construction. Our commentary calls that hemistich compressed and asks that the cupbearer reading stay visible as an interpretation. The margin appears to be answering the same difficulty, and the elision ز آه → ز-آه keeps the weight unchanged.

Variants with no correction attached

Couplet 1b — از for در

از جهان جان نیابی فیض اندر سر جان

az jahān-e/o jān nayābī fayz andar serr-e jān

Two things sit together here. The hemistich opens with از where the printed text has در, and both are single long syllables, so nothing shifts metrically. The sense does shift: the printed line places the search in world and soul, the manuscript denies that grace comes from them — which answers 1a's shaking-free directly rather than naming a location.

The connective و is not written between جهان and جان. In unpointed script that leaves jahān-o jān ("world and soul") and jahān-e jān ("the world of the soul") equally available, and the metre does not choose between them, since izafe and the conjunction fill the same position. Our translation assumes the first; the leaf does not confirm it.

Couplet 8a — آمد for باشد

چون مهمانت آمد — "when it has come as your guest", against the printed باشد, "when it is your guest". Equal weight, different aspect. On the manuscript's reading the sovereign has already arrived, which puts the imperatives of 8b under real pressure of time rather than framing a hypothetical.

Couplets 4, 5 and 9 agree with our printed text, as do the second hemistichs throughout.