Chehel Asrar 29 - Twenty Ninth Ghazal

Ghazal 29

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 469–470

نَقْدِ حَیات خَواهی، جان کُن فِدایِ جانان

naqd-e hayāt khāhī, jān kon fedā-ye jānān

1a  If you want life's true wealth, sacrifice your soul to the beloved:

کَاین اَسْت دَر رَهِ عِشْق آئِینِ مِهْرَبانان

k-īn ast dar rah-e ʿeshq āyīn-e mehrabānān

1b  this is the custom of loving hearts on the path of love.

Commentary on couplet 1

The opening offers a reversal of ordinary gain: whoever wants the wealth of life must give the soul to the beloved. Naqd suggests available wealth or ready capital, making the demand concrete before the second half presents it as the lovers’ customary way. Jān and jānān bind soul and beloved in sound, so the gift seems directed toward what already gives life its deepest attraction. The instruction can be read as surrendering self-possession and placing one’s life at love’s disposal. Its force lies in the cost of that offering. The poem will develop this reversal through frustrated wishes and relinquished mastery, asking how life changes when it is no longer treated chiefly as one’s own possession.

مَسْتانِ جامِ شَوْقَش بَر بُویِ لُطْف هَر شام

mastān-e jām-e showq-ash bar bū-ye lotf har shām

2a  Those drunk on the cup of longing for him, hoping for kindness each evening,

بَر دَرْگَهِ جَلالَش آیَنْد جان‌فِشانان

bar dargah-e jalāl-ash āyand jān-feshānān

2b  come to the threshold of his majesty, scattering their lives.

Commentary on couplet 2

The lovers approach a majestic threshold each evening, intoxicated by longing and hoping for kindness. The cup is explicitly filled with showq, yearning, so its intoxication belongs to an attraction that has not yet been satisfied. Bar bū-ye expresses hope while retaining the suggestion of following a scent, preparing the fragrance that will spread through couplet 5. Kindness and majesty shape two aspects of the approach: gentleness is hoped for, while the court inspires awe. The lovers arrive scattering their lives, extending the opening’s self-offering into an image of lavish expenditure. Their repeated attendance expresses commitment, but the verse does not announce that the threshold has been crossed or union attained.

آنان کِه زَنْگِ هَسْتی اَز لَوْحِ دِل زُدودَنْد

ānān ke zang-e hastī az lowh-e del zodūdand

3a  Those who have wiped the rust of selfhood from the tablet of the heart

اَز جان نُفور دارَنْد، دِل دَر هَوایِ جانان

az jān nofūr dārand, del dar havā-ye jānān

3b  turn away from their own lives, their hearts longing for the beloved.

Commentary on couplet 3

A cleared heart is followed by a changed direction of attachment: those who remove its rust turn from their own lives toward the beloved. Hastī can name existence or self-assertion; the supplied “selfhood” makes the tarnish an obstruction associated with the self’s prominence. The image need not condemn created existence as such. The strong word nofūr conveys aversion or turning away, preserving how far the lovers’ allegiance has shifted. Yet the heart remains active, filled with longing rather than left empty. This matters for the later claim that even the heart can become a shackle. The poem values its cleansing while continuing to question whether any inward possession can secure love through its own power.

مُرْغانِ سِدْرِه هَر شَب حَیْرانِ بی‌دِلانَش

morghān-e sedre har shab hayrān-e bī-delān-ash

4a  Each night the birds of the heavenly lote tree marvel at his heart-lost lovers [1]

چُون دَر خُروش آیَنْد، اَفْسونِ عِشْق خَوانان

chūn dar khorūsh āyand, afsūn-e ʿeshq khānān

4b  when they cry out, chanting love's enchantment.

Commentary on couplet 4

The heavenly birds marvel at the heart-lost lovers, whose cries seem capable of astonishing a celestial audience. The implicit plural subject of the second half most naturally returns to the lovers, although the Persian does not repeat their name. The sidra recalls the lote tree at the utmost boundary in Qurʾān 53:14–16; those verses do not describe these birds or the lovers’ chanting. [3] The poem furnishes that sacred setting with its own witnesses. Afsūn, enchantment, makes love’s utterance captivating without identifying a prescribed formula. Night answers the preceding evening: the approach to majesty now resounds with voices whose emotional force unsettles even the imagined inhabitants of heaven.

اَز چَشْمِ بَد نِهانَنْد وَز خَویْشْتَن نِهان‌تَر

az chashm-e bad nehānand v-az khīshtan nehāntar

5a  They are hidden from the evil eye, and still more hidden from themselves;

عالَم شُدِه سَمَنْ‌بُو اَز خُویِ آن نِهانان

ʿālam shode saman-bū az khoy-e ān nehānān

5b  the world smells of jasmine from the sweat of those hidden ones. [2]

Commentary on couplet 5

The lovers evade the evil eye and are more deeply concealed from themselves, yet their sweat perfumes the world with jasmine. Concealment and perceptible influence coexist: an unseen presence becomes known through what it gives off. Hiddenness from oneself can suggest freedom from self-regard, without requiring literal invisibility or a named hierarchy of saints. The supplied khoy means sweat, preserving a bodily image that should not be replaced by an abstract quality of character. Hamadani’s prose offers a related picture of hidden devotees whose breath and light benefit others. [4] The comparison concerns hidden influence; its breath and light remain distinct from the poem’s sweat and jasmine. Their presence exceeds the attention they give themselves.

چُون تیرِه‌روزْگاری، زان رَه نِشان چِه پُرْسی؟

chūn tīre-rūzgārī, z-ān rah neshān che porsī?

6a  Since your days are dark, why ask for a sign of that path?

گَر رَه رَوی، نِشان جُو اَز راهِ بی‌نِشانان

gar rah ravī, neshān jū az rāh-e bī-neshānān

6b  If you walk the path, seek guidance from the way of those who leave no trace.

Commentary on couplet 6

The speaker questions someone in darkened circumstances, then redirects the inquiry toward walking and seeking guidance. The description can include unhappiness or obscurity; it does not securely diagnose a particular moral fault. Neshān, a sign, is repeated against bī-neshānān, those without a trace, producing the central paradox: the way is learned through people who offer no conspicuous mark of themselves. The command still calls for guidance. Read after the fragrant hidden ones, absence of a visible trace need not mean absence of influence. The couplet asks how a seeker recognizes such a way through participation, when collecting obvious signs or asking from a distance cannot by itself disclose what is sought.

گَر کام خَواهی اَز دوسْت، ناکامی‌سْت کامَت

gar kām khāhī az dūst, nākāmī-st kām-at

7a  If you seek fulfillment from the Friend, your fulfillment is to go unfulfilled:

کَز گُلْشَنِ وِصالَش دورَنْد کامْرانان

k-az golshan-e vesāl-ash dūrand kāmrānān

7b  those who get their own way remain far from the rose garden of union with him.

Commentary on couplet 7

The Friend is approached through a desire for fulfilment, but the answer identifies fulfilment with going unfulfilled. Kām, nākāmī, and kāmrānān turn the same verbal material through desire, frustration, and getting one’s way. The second half gives the paradox its setting: those intent on their own satisfaction remain far from the garden of union. This can be read as a challenge to making the Friend serve a predetermined wish. It does not promise that relinquishment will eventually deliver every desired outcome. The garden remains attractive and distant, while disappointment exposes how firmly the seeker may still be organizing love around personal success. The verse asks for a transformed relation to wanting without disguising its difficulty.

عَقْل وُ دِل اَنْدَرین رَه جان را عَقیلِه آمَد

ʿaql o del andar-īn rah jān rā ʿaqīle āmad

8a  On this path, reason and the heart have become shackles on the soul,

کَاین کارِ باژْگونِه نایَد زِ کارْدانان

k-īn kār-e bāzhgūne nāyad ze kārdānān

8b  for the worldly-wise cannot accomplish this upside-down work.

Commentary on couplet 8

Both reason and heart become shackles on the soul, and the second half declares the work beyond those skilled in ordinary accomplishment. The sound of ʿaql, reason, is caught within ʿaqīla, an attested word for a tether or fetter. [5] The heart’s inclusion matters: the verse cannot be reduced to a contest between obstructive reasoning and trustworthy feeling. Even a cherished inward faculty can bind when treated as an instrument of mastery. “On this path” limits the claim to the work love demands. The upside-down task reverses familiar measures of competence, continuing the earlier exchange of gain for surrender. It challenges their sufficiency here without requiring an indiscriminate rejection of learning or discernment.

دَر وَصْفِ سِرِّ حُسْنَش گَر لال شُد عَلایی

dar vasf-e serr-e hosn-ash gar lāl shod ʿAlāʾī

9a  If ʿAlāʾī has fallen mute describing the mystery of his beauty,

خُوش باش کَاوْسْت آگَه اَز حالِ بی‌زَبانان

khosh bāsh k-ū-st āgah az hāl-e bī-zabānān

9b  take heart: he knows the condition of those without a tongue.

Commentary on couplet 9

The closing imagines ʿAlāʾī falling mute while describing beauty’s mystery, then answers that possible failure with reassurance. Gar, “if,” keeps the condition open; the couplet does not document a historical loss of speech. The knowing beloved can recognize a state that its speaker cannot adequately express. Read devotionally, this has a close parallel in Hamadani’s account of God hearing thoughts and words before they emerge from hearts and voices. [4] The consolation rests on being known, while the mystery remains beyond the lover’s description. The poem thus ends with a relation preserved through the limits of language. Its signature locates the poetic speaker without independently establishing authorship or an attained state of union.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal asks how a lover can approach the beloved while relinquishing the wish to possess life, direct the outcome, and explain the encounter completely. It begins by addressing a seeker, then places exemplary lovers before that seeker’s eyes. These figures give their lives, cleanse their hearts, gather at night, and remain hidden even from themselves. The repeated language of the path connects their portrait with the later instructions. Majesty, the heavenly lote tree, and the soul’s surrender support a devotional reading, while the beloved remains unnamed and the poem retains the intimacy and uncertainty of personal love.

Its strongest pattern joins concealment with an influence that can still be felt. The lovers approach in hope; their chanting astonishes heavenly witnesses; their hidden bodies perfume the world. The sweat and jasmine are especially striking because they make spiritual significance perceptible through bodily fragrance. When the seeker is then told to find guidance through those without a trace, the preceding couplet has already suggested how absence from view can coexist with a felt presence. Signs remain possible, but they cannot be reduced to conspicuous identity, reputation, or display.

Hamadani’s Dhakhīrat al-mulūk offers a relevant parallel in devotees whose hidden presence benefits others through breath and light. Its account of divine hearing also illuminates the final assurance that an unspoken condition can be known. [4] These passages were consulted through Farooq’s English translation. They support particular connections without turning sweat into breath, determining the identity of the heavenly birds, or proving the poem’s attribution. The spiritual question remains rooted in its images: how does a life become significant beyond its own effort to secure notice or control?

The later couplets test that effort more severely. Fulfilment is joined to frustration, and the heart praised for its cleansing is itself included among possible shackles. The poem offers no simple replacement of reason by feeling or failure by eventual personal success. Its last consolation is more intimate: if description fails, the beloved still knows. The conditional ending neither announces arrival in the garden nor explains away the mystery. It allows relationship to endure where the lover’s powers of accomplishment and expression reach their limit.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 4a: The sidra is the heavenly lote tree, recalling Qurʾān 53:14–16.

[2] 5b: Khoy means sweat here: their hidden presence perfumes the world.

Editorial references

3. Qurʾān, al-Najm 53:14–16, for Sidrat al-muntahā, the lote tree at the utmost boundary. The birds and their astonishment at lovers’ chanting belong to the poem’s imaginative presentation, not to these verses.
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. 365–366, on hidden devotees and their beneficial breath and light; and printed p. 61, on divine hearing before thoughts and words emerge. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
5. Dehkhodā, Loghat-nāma, entry ʿaqīla, consulted through Vajehyab, for a tether, fetter, or cause of entanglement, including classical examples associating the word with reason. This supports the supplied “shackles” in couplet 8.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 469–470 reference, the signature ʿAlāʾī, and both reading notes are retained unchanged. That edition and the attribution of this ghazal have not been independently verified. The supplied khoy is read as sweat; the implicit subject in couplet 4 and the conditional wording of the closing remain visible in the commentary.

Right margin one reads عقیله, set beside couplet 8 — عقل و دل اندرین ره جان را عقیله آمد. It carries a vowel mark above it, which the word in the line does not, so the corrector seems to be settling pronunciation as well as supplying the word.