Chehel Asrar 30 - Thirtieth Ghazal

Ghazal 30

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 470

تا چَنْد داغِ عِشْقَش دارَم نِهُفْتِه دَر جان؟

tā chand dāgh-e ʿeshq-ash dāram nehofte dar jān?

1a  How long must I hide the brand of his love within my soul?

پِنْهان چِه دارَم آتَش چُون دود نیسْت پِنْهان؟

penhān che dāram ātash chūn dūd nīst penhān?

1b  Why hide the fire when its smoke is plain to see?

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker asks how long love’s burn-mark can remain hidden within the soul when its outward signs are already visible. The second question gives the first a physical explanation: smoke discloses the fire one tries to conceal. Dāgh, a brand or lasting burn, makes love an impression the speaker carries rather than an attachment he can put aside at will. The smoke may be heard in the restless questioning itself, as inward feeling becomes speech. The beloved remains unnamed, and the image can sustain both human longing and devotional absorption. Its immediate tension lies between intended secrecy and involuntary disclosure: the lover’s effort to conceal has become part of how his love appears.

چُون نیسْت دَرْدِ عِشْقَش داروپَذیر، پَس مَن

chūn nīst dard-e ʿeshq-ash dārū-pazīr, pas man

2a  Since the pain of loving him admits no cure, then why should I

بیهُودِه چَنْد پُویَم دَر آرِزویِ دَرْمان؟

bīhūde chand pūyam dar ārezū-ye darmān?

2b  keep wandering in vain, hoping for a remedy?

Commentary on couplet 2

The next question turns from concealment to the search for relief. If this pain admits no cure, the speaker asks, why continue wandering after one? The sentence carries its questioning force across the half-line boundary, leaving “then I” suspended before the futile search is named. Dārū-pazīr means capable of receiving a remedy; denying that capacity makes ordinary expectations of recovery inadequate to this particular love. The repeated movement of pūyam suggests an unsettled pursuit whose goal must be reconsidered. The following couplet will answer by calling pain itself medicine. The question therefore prepares a change in what the lover understands by a cure, while retaining the weariness of his present searching.

دارویِ دَرْدِ این ریش اَز هَر طَبیب مَنْدیش

dārū-ye dard-e īn rīsh az har tabīb mandīsh

3a  Do not expect just any physician to cure this aching wound: [1]

کِین را دَوا نَیابی جُز دَرْد وُ داغِ جانان

k-īn rā davā nayābī joz dard o dāgh-e jānān

3b  its only medicine is the beloved's pain and burning brand.

Commentary on couplet 3

The speaker now warns against expecting the cure from just any physician, then names an unsettling exception: this wound’s medicine is the beloved’s pain and brand. Rīsh means wound or sore, as the supplied note specifies. The first half questions the suitability of an ordinary healer; the second changes the meaning of treatment. The final phrase can be understood as pain and burning occasioned by loving the beloved, without claiming that the beloved personally suffers the wound. What seemed incurable may be transformed through the relation that caused it, rather than removed by escape from that relation. The apparent contradiction belongs to the poem’s account of attachment, whose remedy deepens the lover’s involvement.

اِدْبارِ هَسْتیِ ما شُد پَرْدِهٔ جَمالَش

edbār-e hastī-ye mā shod parde-ye jamāl-ash

4a  The wretchedness of our selfhood has veiled his beauty;

وَرْنِه زِ راهِ تَحْقیق خُورْشید نیسْت پِنْهان

varne ze rāh-e tahqīq khorshīd nīst penhān

4b  otherwise, seen in truth, the sun is never hidden.

Commentary on couplet 4

The speaker widens his confession into “our” selfhood, identifying its unhappy condition as the veil before beauty. The answering image insists that the sun itself is not hidden when seen truly. The obstruction therefore falls upon the way the observer sees, while the source of illumination retains its force. Hastī, being or selfhood, is read here through the supplied translation as an encumbering attachment to the self; the verse need not make created existence intrinsically evil. Taḥqīq suggests verified or realized apprehension, beyond an untested appearance. Fire and smoke have already made concealment unstable. Now sunlight extends that pattern: what seems absent may be obscured by the observer’s own condition.

اَز مَن مَجُوی راهی چُون رام نیسْت بَخْتَم

az man majūy rāhī chūn rām nīst bakht-am

5a  Do not ask me for a way forward: my fortune will not yield.

کَی راه دانَد آن کو کَز خَویْش گَشْتِه حَیْران؟

kay rāh dānad ān kū k-az khīsh gashte hayrān?

5b  How can someone bewildered by himself know the way?

Commentary on couplet 5

The speaker refuses the role of guide: his fortune will not yield, and bewilderment about himself prevents him from knowing the way. Rāh, way, and rām, tractable or compliant, give the failure a close verbal pattern. The second half explains the first through an inward difficulty as well as adverse fortune. Az khīsh specifies bewilderment arising from the self; it should not automatically be promoted into a perfected spiritual state. This admission also makes the poem’s teaching voice less secure and more searching. The person who has diagnosed selfhood as a veil now acknowledges his own entanglement. His words emerge from that predicament rather than establishing authority as someone already beyond it.

دَوْرِ حَیاتِ هَسْتی آخِر شَوَد وَ لیکِن

dowr-e hayāt-e hastī ākher shavad va līkan

6a  The cycle of life in existence comes to an end, yet

نَبُوَد بَقایِ جان را هَرگِز فَنایِ دَوْران

nabovad baqā-ye jān rā hargez fanā-ye dowrān

6b  the soul's abiding life can never be destroyed by time.

Commentary on couplet 6

The passing span of embodied life is set beside an abiding life of the soul that time cannot undo. Dowr and dowrān connect life’s course with the turning of time. Baqā, abiding, and fanā, passing away, sharpen the contrast without necessarily describing a formal sequence of spiritual stations. Hamadani likewise distinguishes bodily death from the continuing life of hearts animated by divine love, while retaining the lovers’ contingent existence. [2]

The soul’s endurance does not by itself make it beginningless or independent of God. Al-Qushayrī explicitly treats souls as created. [3] These contexts allow both spiritual life and life beyond death to inform the couplet, without requiring jān to match a single technical category. The verse affirms endurance but leaves its precise mode unexplained.

هَر دَم کِه بی‌غَمِ اُو اَز سَرِ دِل بَرآیَد

har dam ke bī-gham-e ū az sar-e del barāyad

7a  Every breath that rises from the heart without longing for him

آن دَم زِ راهِ غَیْرَت بَر جانِ ماسْت تاوان

ān dam ze rāh-e ghayrat bar jān-e mā-st tāvān

7b  incurs a penalty upon our souls, through love's jealous demand.

Commentary on couplet 7

Every breath becomes accountable to love: a moment rising from the heart without longing places a burden upon the soul. Dam can signify both breath and moment, bringing bodily rhythm and passing time together after the preceding meditation on endurance. Ghayrat names love’s jealous or exclusive claim upon attention. Tāvān gives forgetfulness the language of a penalty or compensation, as though the lover owed an answer for time spent outside that relation. This is the poem’s demanding measure of fidelity, not a specified legal fine. The plural “our souls” again includes the speaker within the demand. The life that may endure beyond time is tested through the quality of each present breath.

بی‌اِمْتِثالِ اَمْرَش چَشْمِ اُمید مَگُشای

bī-emtesāl-e amr-ash chashm-e omīd magoshāy

8a  Do not open the eye of hope without obeying his command:

مَرْد آن بُوَد کِه دارَد بَر دیدِه مُهْرِ فَرْمان

mard ān bovad ke dārad bar dīde mohr-e farmān

8b  a true man bears the seal of obedience upon his eyes.

Commentary on couplet 8

Hope is permitted no independence from response: the eye must not open expectantly while the command goes unobserved. The second half repeats the eye, now bearing a seal of obedience. Seeing and hoping are thus brought under the same commitment. On a devotional reading, the beloved’s command becomes the divine demand shaping conduct. Hamadani supplies a relevant parallel when he criticizes invoking mercy or fate as an excuse for surrendering to passions and avoiding effort. [2] The verse’s “true man” is defined here by steadfast response, preparing the “true men” of the closing. Hope remains present, but its gaze is answerable to how the lover actually lives.

پایانِ راهِ مَرْدان فَقْدِ خُود اَسْت، وَرْ نَه

pāyān-e rāh-e mardān faqd-e khod ast, var na

9a  The end of the path of true men is the loss of self; otherwise,

هَرگِز کَس، اِی عَلایی، رَه را نَدیدِه پایان

hargez kas, ey ʿAlāʾī, rah rā nadīde pāyān

9b  O ʿAlāʾī, no one has ever seen an end to the road.

Commentary on couplet 9

The closing locates the path’s end in loss of self, then tells ʿAlāʾī that otherwise no one has seen its end. Faqd-e khod, losing the self, answers the selfhood that veiled beauty and the self-bewilderment that prevented guidance. Al-Qushayrī offers a useful distinction: spiritual effacement can involve losing awareness of oneself while the person continues to exist. [3] This provides context for relinquishment without requiring bodily destruction. The poem’s own paradox concerns completion: the self that seeks to possess an endpoint is implicated in what must be lost. It does not describe all further seeking as finished or certify the speaker’s arrival. The named addressee remains included in the final demand.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal begins with a love that cannot remain concealed and ends with a self that cannot retain its accustomed claim upon the path. The speaker’s opening questions concern secrecy and relief: the fire shows through its smoke, and the wound resists ordinary remedies. Those images give his difficulty a felt reality before the poem explains it through selfhood, bewilderment, and obedience. The beloved is spoken of rather than directly addressed, while the speaker alternates between personal confession, the inclusive “our,” and instruction to an unnamed listener. The closing address to ʿAlāʾī brings the teaching back upon the named figure.

Its central tension is that the desired remedy appears to intensify what needs curing. Pain and brand become medicine; the self that seeks guidance is itself bewildering; the destination requires that self’s loss. The fire and sun provide a related contrast between the strength of illumination and the difficulty of receiving or concealing it. These couplets need not describe successive attained stages. The speaker’s refusal to act as a guide interrupts any easy picture of assured mastery, even as his reflections continue to make claims about the path.

The affirmation of the soul’s abiding life broadens the poem beyond immediate suffering. Hamadani’s distinction between bodily death and life through divine love offers a relevant setting, while al-Qushayrī’s insistence that souls are created helps keep endurance distinct from beginningless existence. [2] [3] Yet lasting life does not excuse inattentive living. The following breath-by-breath demand and the joining of hope to obedience bring the argument back to present conduct. Hamadani’s criticism of appeals to mercy that evade effort provides a further parallel. [2] These prose passages clarify particular tensions; consulted through modern translations, they do not establish the ghazal’s attribution or explain every image.

The closing holds completion and an unended road together. Losing the self can answer the obstruction disclosed earlier, but the verse gives no report that its speaker has achieved this release. Nor does the abiding soul simply disappear because selfhood is relinquished: the poem distinguishes what endures from what prevents a fuller relation to the beloved. Its final demand is therefore inseparable from its opening exposure. Love has already made the hidden fire visible; the remaining question is what the lover must cease holding as his own.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 3a: Rīsh means wound or sore, not beard.

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. 336–338, on bodily death, spiritual life, and lovers’ contingent existence; and printed p. 395, on invoking mercy and fate to evade effort. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
3. Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya, translated by Alexander D. Knysh as Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism (Garnet, 2007), printed p. 110, on the created soul; and printed pp. 89–90, on fanā and baqā, including loss of self-awareness while the person continues to exist. Used as classical Sufi context, without assigning this poem a fixed sequence of stations.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 470 reference, the signature ʿAlāʾī, and the reading note are retained unchanged. That edition and the attribution of this ghazal have not been independently verified. The commentary distinguishes the soul’s enduring life from beginninglessness and the closing loss of self from a claim of attained spiritual mastery.

The important thing on this page is the order. The manuscript transposes couplets 4 and 5 against the printed text: از من مجوی راهی چون رام نیست بختم stands on the fourth line, above ادبار هستی ما شد پردهٔ جمالش on the fifth. Both couplets are intact and correctly paired with their own second hemistichs — only the sequence differs. The left margin carries تحقیق, set beside the line that holds ورنه ز راه تحقیق خورشید نیست پنهان — which is the transposed couplet 4.  Worth noting that the corrector marks the same line whose order is out of sequence, though that is likely coincidence rather than a comment on the transposition.

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.  

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.

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.

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.