Chehel Asrar 34 - Thirty Fourth Ghazal

Ghazal 34

11 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 473–474

اَگَر تُو بَر سَرِ کُویَش دَمی گُذَر یابی

agar to bar sar-e kūy-ash damī gozar yābī

1a  If you should pass for a moment through the beloved's lane,

کُنوزِ غَیْبِ دو عالَم بِیِک نَظَر یابی

konūz-e ghayb-e do ʿālam be-yak nazar yābī

1b  in a single glance you will discover the hidden treasures of both worlds.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker invites an unnamed listener to imagine a moment’s passage through the beloved’s lane yielding the hidden treasures of both worlds. The small measures, a moment and a single glance, stand against the abundance of konūz, treasures. Ghayb names what is hidden or unseen; the verse promises disclosure without cataloguing its contents. The direction of the glance is not fully specified, so the image can remain an encounter rather than being assigned exclusively to either lover or beloved. Its conditional opening establishes the pattern of the ghazal: “you will find” follows an opportunity for contact or recognition. The grandeur of the promise belongs to that invitation, before any claim that the listener has already received it.

کِلیدِ عُقْدِهٔ اَبْوابِ بارْگاهِ جَلال

kelīd-e ʿoqde-ye abvāb-e bārgāh-e jalāl

2a  The key that unfastens the gates of the court of majesty

تُویی، اَگَر سَرِ مُوئی زِ خُود خَبَر یابی

toyī, agar sar-e mūyī ze khod khabar yābī

2b  is you, if you gain even a hair's breadth of self-knowledge.

Commentary on couplet 2

The first half presents a key to the gates of majesty, then the second reveals its surprising identity: “it is you.” Yet this affirmation immediately requires some knowledge of the self, even a hair’s breadth. The minute measure continues the opening disproportion between slight contact and immense access. The seeker possesses a capacity that must be recognized before it can serve its purpose. Hamadani’s prose explicitly makes awareness of the self and its shortcomings a key to understanding God. [2] That parallel gives self-knowledge an ethical depth, anticipating the later relinquishment of pride. The key opens toward a court belonging to another; the image preserves both human possibility and dependence upon what the seeker approaches.

چِراغِ مَجْلِسِ روحانِیانِ عالَمِ قُدْس

cherāgh-e majles-e rūhāniyān-e ʿālam-e qods

3a  The lamp of the spiritual beings' assembly in the holy realm

زِ سوزِ تُسْت، گَر اَز شَمْعِ جان اَثَر یابی

ze sūz-e to-st, gar az shamʿ-e jān asar yābī

3b  burns with your fire, if you find a trace of the soul's candle.

Commentary on couplet 3

The poem gives the listener’s inward ardor a startling cosmic significance: the lamp of a holy assembly burns through that ardor. The second half places the claim under a condition, finding even a trace of the soul’s candle. The movement from candle to assembly magnifies what inward life might contribute to a wider spiritual order. It should retain that imaginative boldness without becoming a literal account of celestial beings requiring human fuel. The lamp, flame, and trace belong to one poetic image of illumination. Later, the spark is explicitly received from the beloved’s fire. Within the ghazal, the listener’s luminous possibility therefore remains bound to the relation through which it is awakened.

نِدایِ هاتِفِ غَیْبی زِ لا مَکان هَر دَم

nedā-ye hātef-e ghaybī ze lā makān har dam

4a  At every moment, the unseen caller's voice from beyond place

بِگوشِ جان شِنَوی گَر زِ خُود خَبَر یابی

be-gūsh-e jān shenavī gar ze khod khabar yābī

4b  will reach your soul's ear, if you come to know yourself.

Commentary on couplet 4

An unseen voice is continually calling, but hearing it depends upon knowing oneself. The first half locates the call beyond place and gives it the rhythm of every moment; the second brings reception to the soul’s ear. Hātef names an unseen caller without identifying a particular angel or person. Lā makān, beyond place, also prevents the source from being treated simply as a distant geographical point. The repeated phrase about self-knowledge recalls the key of couplet 2: inward recognition becomes a condition of access, now through hearing. The contrast is between a continuing call and the listener’s capacity to receive it. The verse describes spiritual receptivity through hearing while leaving the message itself unspoken.

تُو رَوْضِهٔ دِل اَگَر زِ آبِ عِلْم تازِه کُنی

to rowze-ye del agar ze āb-e ʿelm tāze konī

5a  If you refresh the garden of your heart with the water of knowledge,

بِعاقِبَت زِ رِیاضِ وِصال بَر یابی

be-ʿāqebat ze riyāz-e vesāl bar yābī

5b  in time you will gather fruit from the gardens of union.

Commentary on couplet 5

The heart is already a garden, but it needs the water of knowledge to become fresh and fruitful. Unlike the opening moment and glance, be-ʿāqebat, in time, gives this promise the duration of cultivation. The listener is asked to tend what can later yield the fruit of union. ʿElm, knowledge, is not restricted in the verse to a named discipline. Hamadani also compares knowledge to rainwater whose effects depend upon the disposition receiving it. [2] His warning that learning can nourish pride gives the image an ethical qualification. In the poem, the garden’s refreshment looks toward a good harvest; the later command to abandon pride helps explain what such fruitful cultivation requires.

سَریرِ سُدِّهٔ اِیْوانِ هَر کَمال تُراسْت

sarīr-e sodde-ye eyvān-e har kamāl torā-st

6a  Yours is the throne at the threshold of every palace of perfection,

بَر آسْتانِ جَلالَش رَهی اَگَر یابی

bar āstān-e jalāl-ash rahī agar yābī

6b  if you can find a way to the threshold of his majesty.

Commentary on couplet 6

The speaker announces a throne among the palaces of perfection, then makes its possession depend upon finding access to the beloved’s threshold. The courtly vocabulary gathers together dignity and attendance: sarīr is a throne, while sodde and āstān keep the image close to an entrance. The repeated threshold matters because the promised elevation does not remove the seeker’s relation to the sovereign. “Every perfection” gives the offer breadth, but its condition remains the way to his majesty. The listener is neither shown ruling independently nor reported to have entered already. The couplet extends the earlier image of the key into the honor that access may bring, sustaining the poem’s alternation between immense promise and required response.

حِجابِ نَقْشِ تَن اَز ماهِ روح بَرخیزَد

hejāb-e naqsh-e tan az māh-e rūh barkhīzad

7a  The veil of bodily form will lift from the soul's moon,

اَگَر زِ آتَشِ عِشْقَش یِکی شَرَر یابی

agar ze ātash-e ʿeshq-ash yakī sharar yābī

7b  if you find a single spark from the fire of his love.

Commentary on couplet 7

A single spark from the beloved’s love lifts the veil of bodily form from the soul’s moon. The moon’s light is already implied beneath the covering, so the change concerns what can become perceptible. Naqsh-e tan, the form or configuration of the body, gives the veil a definite outward shape. The poem uses this shape to describe an obstruction without narrating bodily destruction. Its spark is small, like the hair’s breadth of knowledge and the trace of the candle, yet its effect is large. Fire and moonlight cooperate rather than compete: love’s heat makes inward luminosity visible. The image therefore joins transformation to disclosure, preserving the distinction between the covering and the light it conceals.

رِیاضِ عالَمِ جان مُشْکْبُوی گَرْدانی

riyāz-e ʿālam-e jān moshk-būy gardānī

8a  You will fill the gardens of the soul's realm with musk,

نَسیمی اَز سَرِ زُلْفَش چُو دَر سَحَر یابی

nasīmī az sar-e zolf-ash cho dar sahar yābī

8b  when at dawn you catch a breeze from the tips of his curls.

Commentary on couplet 8

The listener will make the soul’s gardens fragrant after receiving a dawn breeze from the beloved’s curls. The active promise, “you will fill,” rests upon an encounter that cannot be supplied entirely from within. A slight movement of air carries the beloved’s fragrance into a much wider inward landscape. The gardens recall the heart watered by knowledge, while dawn gives this second cultivation freshness and expectancy. The curls retain their sensuous presence as the breeze touches their tips; no fixed metaphysical meaning is needed to explain their role. The verse moves from receiving an intimate trace to spreading its quality, bringing the listener’s agency and the beloved’s influence into the same act of transformation.

اَساسِ خُود چُو بِدانی، تَکَبُّری بِگُذار

asās-e khod cho bedānī, takabborī begozār

9a  Once you know what you are made of, set pride aside:

زِ کارْخانِهٔ عِزَّت یَقین ثَمَر یابی

ze kārkhāne-ye ʿezzat yaqīn samar yābī

9b  you will surely reap a harvest from the workshop of glory.

Commentary on couplet 9

Self-knowledge now receives an explicit test: once the listener knows his basis, pride must be put aside. Asās means foundation or basis; the supplied “what you are made of” does not require a single specified material substance. The answering harvest comes from the workshop of glory, giving honor a source beyond self-congratulation. Hamadani likewise joins recognition of personal weakness to recognition of divine greatness as a remedy for pride. [2] This clarifies how the poem’s grand promises can coexist with humility. The person described as a key and a source of light must understand those possibilities without claiming independent greatness. Knowledge shows its fruit in a changed relation to the self, preparing the certainty sought in the following couplet.

اَگَر تُو عالَمِ وَحْدَت یَقین کُنی اَز دِل

agar to ʿālam-e vahdat yaqīn konī az del

10a  If your heart gains certainty in the realm of oneness,

رِواقِ مَنْظَرِ جَبَروت را تُو فَر یابی

revāq-e manzar-e jabarūt rā to far yābī

10b  you will behold the splendor of the pavilion of divine might. [1]

Commentary on couplet 10

Certainty arising from the heart opens onto a magnificent architectural image: the splendor of a pavilion associated with divine might. Vahdat means oneness; the verse asks that it become inwardly assured, rather than merely named. Jabarūt carries the sense of overwhelming power or divine might, as the supplied note explains. The second half’s construction is compressed, and the retained translation reads far as the pavilion’s splendor. That reading does not provide enough detail to map a fixed hierarchy of spiritual worlds. The court and throne of earlier couplets now become a prospect of glory. Yet the promise remains conditional upon the heart’s recognition, and the next couplet will bring this elevated prospect back to hope at a door.

عَلایی، اَز دَرِ اُمید رُخ مَتاب دَمی

ʿAlāʾī, az dar-e omīd rokh matāb damī

11a  ʿAlāʾī, do not turn your face from hope's door for even a moment;

زِ فَیْضِ رَحْمَتِ عَامَّش مَگَر اَثَر یابی

ze fayz-e rahmat-e ʿāmm-ash magar asar yābī

11b  perhaps you will find a trace of the outpouring of his all-embracing mercy.

Commentary on couplet 11

The closing addresses ʿAlāʾī directly and asks for steadfastness at hope’s door. After treasures, thrones, and splendor, the desired gift becomes a trace of mercy. Magar, “perhaps,” makes that modesty audible: the named figure is urged to remain receptive rather than declare the promise fulfilled. Hamadani distinguishes inward preparation from divine gifts whose abundance remains beyond the seeker’s control. [2]

The refusal of despair has a scriptural context in Qur’an 39:53–54, which joins hope in mercy to returning to God; 7:156 affirms mercy’s encompassing reach. [3] The poem gives these possibilities its own intimate form. A moment began the journey, and not even a moment should now be spent turning away. The final trace remains hoped for, not reported as possessed.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal speaks through promises addressed to “you.” Its recurring yābī, “you will find,” follows conditions of passage, self-knowledge, cultivation, love, and inward certainty. The promised discoveries are immense, yet their measures of contact are often minute: a glance, a hair’s breadth, a trace, a spark, a breeze. That disproportion gives the poem its confidence in the possibilities of human inward life. It does not establish that its listener has already fulfilled the conditions. The final address to ʿAlāʾī makes the distinction especially clear, leaving him at the door of hope.

Self-knowledge connects the poem’s most daring affirmations to its demand for humility. The listener is the key to the court and the source of a holy assembly’s light, but these possibilities depend upon recognition and receptivity. Later, knowing one’s basis requires the abandonment of pride. Knowledge and love work together through the changing images: water refreshes the heart, fire lifts a veil, and fragrance spreads through inward gardens. Cultivation takes time even where a single encounter promises disclosure. The spatial images similarly preserve a relation to the beloved: courts, palaces, and pavilions repeatedly bring the seeker to a threshold.

Hamadani’s prose supplies close parallels in its self-knowledge as a key, knowledge as rainwater, and remedy for pride through recognition of human weakness and divine greatness. Its distinction between preparation and uncontrollable gifts also clarifies the final uncertainty. [2] These passages support particular connections without authenticating the poem or turning its cosmic lamp into a literal mechanism. The ghazal’s oneness, spiritual hearing, and inward illumination concern ways of recognizing and responding; they do not require the seeker to become independently divine. Body, moon, water, and curls keep the argument close to concealment, freshness, and affection.

The last couplet changes the scale of the demand without abandoning the earlier confidence. All the grandeur is brought to bear upon the willingness to wait for a trace. “Perhaps” qualifies the addressee’s possession of the gift, while mercy remains expansive. Hope therefore accompanies knowledge rather than being displaced by it. The seeker who may discover treasures in a glance must still resist turning promise into entitlement. The poem ends with the face directed toward a door: self-knowledge has made that posture both possible and necessary.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 10b: The compressed construction is read as finding the pavilion’s splendor; jabarūt is the realm of divine might.

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. 438–439, on self-knowledge, the key, and knowledge as rainwater; printed p. 454, on humility; and printed p. 414, on preparation and divine gifts. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
3. Qur’an, al-Zumar 39:53–54, joining the prohibition of despair with return and submission to God; and al-Aʿrāf 7:156, on mercy encompassing everything. The latter verse also retains divine judgment and specifies reverence, almsgiving, and belief in God’s signs in its promise of mercy. The Arabic and displayed English translations were consulted as contexts for the closing, which is not a direct quotation.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 473–474 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 interpretation preserves the compressed reading of couplet 10 and the distinction between the poem’s conditional promises and the closing “perhaps.”

Couplet order. The leaf runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 5, 11 in your numbering. "تو روضهٔ دل" stands seventh, immediately before the maqṭaʿ, not fifth. Your commentary has cultivation-in-time introduced early and then extended by the gardens of couplet 8; the manuscript gives the sequence the other way round, so the heart's own watering falls last before ʿAlāʾī is left at the door.

Two couplets are not on this leaf. Neither اساس خود چو بدانی (9) nor اگر تو عالم وحدت (10) appears. The page carries nine couplets, closing with the maqṭaʿ. Since your argument about pride and about certainty rests on exactly those two, the section "Understanding this ghazal" would need either a facing folio or a note that the printed text runs longer than this witness.

Word-level variants

Couplet 4b — clear reading, real difference

بِسَمْعِ دِل بِشنَوی گَر ز خود خبر یابی

be-samʿ-e del beshnavī gar ze khod khabar yābī

"you will hear it with the heart's hearing, if you come to know yourself"

The printed text has بگوش جان شنوی, the soul's ear. Reception sits in the heart here, not the soul, which then links forward to روضهٔ دل and backward to nothing in particular — the poem's inward faculty becomes consistently del. سمع also carries the Qurʾanic faculty vocabulary that گوش does not.

Couplet 7a — one letter, large consequence

حجاب نقش تن از راه روح برخیزد

hejāb-e naqsh-e tan az rāh-e rūh barkhīzad

"the veil of bodily form will be lifted from the soul's path"

The printed text reads ماه, the soul's moon. راه and ماه differ by a single stroke, and "از راه برخاستن" is the ordinary Persian idiom for an obstruction cleared from the way. Your commentary on this couplet is built on the moon image — light already present beneath a covering, made perceptible. On the manuscript reading there is no moon at all, only an obstacle removed, and fire no longer cooperates with moonlight. This is the crux most likely to need a second opinion on a higher-resolution scan.

Couplet 8b — the sensuous register at stake

نسیمی از رَهِ لطفش چو در سحر یابی

nasīmī az rah-e lotf-ash cho dar sahar yābī

"when at dawn you catch a breeze from the way of his grace"

The printed از سر زلفش gives the beloved's curls. لطف gives divine kindness, and with it the couplet joins the closing رحمت عامّه rather than the amatory idiom. Note the direction of the pressure: a copyist spiritualising زلف into لطف is a common enough move, and so is the reverse in an anthologist's hand. Your dissertation's interest in editorial mediation has a workable case here, since the two readings assign the ghazal to two different genres of reading.

Couplet 6b — transposition, plus an unresolved first word

The manuscript has جلالش اگر رهی یابی against the printed جلالش رهی اگر یابی. اگر and رهی carry the same prosodic weight, so nothing shifts metrically, and the sense is unchanged. The opening word of the hemistich resolves poorly at this resolution — بستان and بآستان are both defensible from the strokes, and they are not the same word.

The marginal entry

A large سدره stands in the left margin at the height of couplet 6, beside سدّهٔ in سریر سدهٔ ایوان هر کمال تراست. Position and size both point to a collation note rather than a catchword. Read it as a proposed variant: سدرهٔ ایوان for سدّهٔ ایوان, which trades the threshold for the Lote-Tree of Q 53:14 — the boundary of the ascent, with the Garden of Refuge beside it. The weights are identical, so the substitution passes unnoticed in recitation. Your reading of couplets 2, 6 and 10 as a sustained architecture of court, threshold and pavilion would take on a Qurʾanic anchor at exactly its midpoint if the marginal reading is adopted.

Readings I could not settle

Couplet 3a: چراغ محفل or چراغ مجلس. Same sense, same weight; the final letter does not resolve.

Couplet 11b: the manuscript may transpose اثر and مگر. Substance and metre are unaffected either way, but I would not print it from this image.

Chehel Asrar 33 - ThirtyThird Ghazal

Ghazal 33

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 472–473

سَیْرِ هُمایِ عِشْقَش والا بُوَد هَمیشِه

sayr-e homā-ye ʿeshq-ash vālā bovad hamīshe

1a  The Huma of his love forever soars on high;

ظِلِّ جَلالِ حُکْمَش بَرپا بُوَد هَمیشِه

zell-e jalāl-e hokm-ash barpā bovad hamīshe

1b  the majestic shadow of his rule stands firm forever.

Commentary on couplet 1

The opening places love in perpetual high flight and the beloved’s rule in enduring stability. Huma is the legendary bird whose shadow confers royal fortune; Rūmī explicitly connects receiving its shadow with sovereignty. [1] That convention helps the two halves resonate, although this verse assigns the shadow directly to the majesty of the beloved’s rule. The bird belongs to “his love,” giving love itself the freedom and elevation of flight. Jalāl, majesty, and hokm, rule or command, establish the authority that the next couplet will locate within lovers’ hearts. Hamīshe, always, already sounds twice: the poem begins by joining movement with permanence, preparing a love whose continuance exceeds the fortunes of an individual seeker.

چُون مَسْنَدِ جَلالَش دِلْهایِ بی‌دِلانَسْت

chūn masnad-e jalāl-ash del-hā-ye bī-delān-ast

2a  Since the throne of his majesty is the hearts of those who have lost their hearts,

پَس شاهْبازِ حُسْنَش اینْجا بُوَد هَمیشِه

pas shāhbāz-e hosn-ash īnjā bovad hamīshe

2b  the royal falcon of his beauty always makes its home here.

Commentary on couplet 2

The throne of majesty is found in the hearts of those who have lost their hearts to love. Bī-delān makes a deliberate paradox: the very people described as heartless possess the hearts in which sovereignty is received. Chūn and pas, since and therefore, join the two halves as an explanation. Because majesty has its seat there, beauty’s royal falcon remains “here.” The movement from the opening heights to inward presence is immediate. In a devotional reading, this throne expresses the heart’s receptivity and allegiance. Hamadani’s explicit denial that any place contains God helps distinguish that image from spatial enclosure. [2] Majesty and beauty are thus encountered together, while the heart’s surrender supplies the setting for their presence.

بُوئی زِ خاکِ کُویَش بَر جانِ هَر کِه آمَد

būyī ze khāk-e kūy-ash bar jān-e har ke āmad

3a  Whoever's soul receives a breath of fragrance from the dust of his lane,

اَنْفاسِ مُشْکْبارَش بُویا بُوَد هَمیشِه

anfās-e moshk-bār-ash būyā bovad hamīshe

3b  their musk-scattering breath will remain fragrant forever.

Commentary on couplet 3

A trace of fragrance from the beloved’s lane changes the recipient’s own breath. Dust, the humblest part of the beloved’s surroundings, carries an influence that becomes musk, a precious scent, in the person who receives it. The supplied translation takes the second half’s possessive as referring to that transformed recipient. The movement is from being touched by another’s fragrance to continually giving fragrance forth. Hamadani’s prose similarly describes lovers receiving the Beloved’s scent and communicating benefit through their breath and light. [2] That parallel supports a devotional reading of influence carried into speech and presence. The poem itself preserves the sensory image: an apparently slight contact has become an enduring quality of the lover’s breathing.

وَ آن کو عَمایِ غَفْلَت پوشیدِه چَشْمِ سَرَش

va ān kū ʿamā-ye ghaflat pūshīde chashm-e sar-ash

4a  But whoever has the blindness of heedlessness covering their outward eyes,

حَظِّ وَی اَز مُسَمّی اَسْما بُوَد هَمیشِه

hazz-e vey az mosammā asmā bovad hamīshe

4b  their share of the reality named will always be mere names.

Commentary on couplet 4

Heedlessness produces the opposite result: someone may retain names while missing what those names name. ʿAmā means blindness here, and ghaflat identifies the obstruction as inattentiveness or forgetfulness. Although chashm-e sar names the outward eye, the criticism concerns a failure of recognition. Mosammā is the thing or reality named; asmā are names. Their close relation in language makes the separation in experience more pointed. A person can speak correctly about something without meeting its significance. The verse criticizes this limited share in the reality, rather than declaring all naming worthless. Its “always” describes the persistence of such deprivation under heedlessness; the following light and opened eye show the contrasting possibility of perception.

زیبِ جَمالِ مَعْنی چُون نورِ مَعْرِفَت شُد

zīb-e jamāl-e maʿnī chūn nūr-e maʿrefat shod

5a  When the adornment of inner beauty becomes the light of spiritual knowledge,

سَیْرِ صَفایِ عارِف زیبا بُوَد هَمیشِه

sayr-e safā-ye ʿāref zībā bovad hamīshe

5b  the knower's journey in purity is forever beautiful.

Commentary on couplet 5

Inner beauty and spiritual knowledge are brought together, and their meeting makes the knower’s journey beautiful. Maʿnī can mean inward meaning or reality; maʿrefat is recognition or spiritual knowing, and ʿāref is the person who knows. Safā adds purity and clarity to the image of light. The first half’s compressed construction, retained in the supplied translation, does not set out a detailed sequence of stages. Its force lies in making beauty illuminate understanding, with zīb and zībā framing both halves through the language of beauty. Hamadani likewise associates knowledge of God with recovery from heedlessness, distinguishing its enduring delight from conceited claims to understanding. [2] This offers a close contextual answer to the preceding possession of mere names.

هَر کو نَدید رُویَش کورِ دو عالَم آمَد

har kū nadīd rūy-ash kūr-e do ʿālam āmad

6a  Whoever has not seen his face is blind in both worlds;

وَ آن را کِه دیدِه وا شُد، بینا بُوَد هَمیشِه

va ān rā ke dīde vā shod, bīnā bovad hamīshe

6b  whoever's eye has opened will see forever.

Commentary on couplet 6

The contrast now turns upon an eye that has opened: failing to see the beloved’s face is deprivation in both worlds, while awakened sight endures. The first half closely echoes Qur’an 17:72, which connects blindness in this life with blindness in the Hereafter. The poem recasts that warning through the beloved’s face. Qur’an 22:46 locates the relevant blindness in hearts rather than bodily eyes. [3] These contexts support reading the deficiency through the heedlessness already named, without making physical eyesight a measure of spiritual worth. The second half is the poem’s positive answering claim. Its lasting vision extends the light of knowledge in the preceding couplet, but the verse leaves the precise mode of that seeing undescribed.

جائی کِه سوزِ عِشْقَش مَنْزِل کُنَد زَمانی

jāyī ke sūz-e ʿeshq-ash manzel konad zamānī

7a  Wherever the burning of his love settles for a moment,

لَذّاتِ جاوِدانی آنْجا بُوَد هَمیشِه

lazzāt-e jāvedānī ānjā bovad hamīshe

7b  everlasting pleasures dwell there forever.

Commentary on couplet 7

Love’s burning settles somewhere for a moment, and everlasting pleasures make that place their home. The contrast between zamānī, a moment, and hamīshe, always, gives the brief visitation a consequence exceeding its duration. Manzel konad, takes up lodging, continues the earlier language of throne and dwelling, while “there” answers “wherever” across the two halves. Sūz can carry ardor as well as the ache of love, so the burning already contains more than simple pain. The paradox concerns the intensity of an encounter and the lasting delight it discloses. It speaks in the poem’s language of transformation, without providing a formula by which a measured interval of suffering secures an everlasting reward.

سَوْدائیِ وِصالَش شَیْدایِ اَنْجُمَن شُد

sowdāyī-ye vesāl-ash shaydā-ye anjoman shod

8a  The one possessed by longing for union with him becomes the gathering's mad lover:

بَر آفْتاب ذَرِّه شَیْدا بُوَد هَمیشِه

bar āftāb zarre shaydā bovad hamīshe

8b  a mote is forever mad with love for the sun.

Commentary on couplet 8

Longing for union makes the lover conspicuous within a gathering, and the second half finds an image for this condition in a mote devoted to the sun. Sowdāyī and shaydā intensify the sense of being possessed or carried away by desire. The repeated shaydā joins the human scene to the mote’s tiny presence before overwhelming radiance. Its smallness does not diminish its orientation toward the sun; it makes the disproportion between lover and beloved visible. Union remains the object of longing rather than an announced achievement. The image preserves a relation between the mote and the sun, while the gathering prepares the final feast, where the lover’s manner of claiming a place will itself be questioned.

بَر دَرْگَهَش، عَلایی، اَز ما وُ مَن گُذَر کُن

bar dargah-ash, ʿAlāʾī, az mā o man gozar kon

9a  At his threshold, ʿAlāʾī, pass beyond all talk of us and me,

زیرا کِه بَزْمِ عِشْقَش بی‌ما بُوَد هَمیشِه

zīrā ke bazm-e ʿeshq-ash bī-mā bovad hamīshe

9b  for the feast of his love is forever free of us.

Commentary on couplet 9

The closing brings ʿAlāʾī to the beloved’s threshold and commands him to pass beyond “we and I.” The answering bī-mā, without us, gives the feast a stark independence from those who would approach it. Reading mā o man as possessive self-assertion helps explain the demand, but the phrase “without us” retains its unsettling breadth. Love’s feast continues without depending upon the seeker’s presence or becoming his achievement. The paradox lies in addressing someone who must relinquish the terms through which he claims participation. This can describe a change in attachment and self-awareness without requiring bodily disappearance. The poem ends with an imperative at the threshold, leaving entry as a demand rather than reporting it accomplished.

Understanding this ghazal

“Always” gives this ghazal its governing rhythm. The word first affirms the beloved’s enduring love and authority, then follows fragrance, knowledge, sight, pleasure, and longing through different forms of persistence. It can also expose a continuing deprivation: heedlessness leaves someone with names alone. The speaker celebrates the beloved in the third person until the closing address to ʿAlāʾī turns praise into a demand upon the seeker. The question is how a person may receive what endures without trying to possess its permanence as something belonging to the self.

The poem repeatedly gives love a place: the throne within hearts, the dust of a lane, the site where burning lodges, the gathering, and the final threshold. Yet these places depend upon a change in the person encountering them. Hearts surrendered to love receive majesty; a trace of fragrance alters breath; an opened eye perceives what familiar names had failed to disclose. The birds in the opening belong to the beloved’s love and beauty, whereas the mote later gives the lover an image of smallness before radiance. The contrast keeps the relation between giver and recipient visible even as nearness intensifies.

Hamadani’s prose provides specific parallels for this inward reception: lovers communicate benefit after receiving the Beloved’s fragrance, and knowledge restores hearts from heedlessness while bringing enduring delight. His denial of spatial containment also helps clarify the heart’s throne as a devotional image. [2] The poem’s distinction between names and the reality named remains its own formulation. These comparisons support a reading concerned with transformed perception and its effects upon living, while leaving the beloved’s fragrance, beauty, and gathering their poetic richness. The couplets need not form a single account of successive spiritual attainments.

The ending tests the speaker’s accumulated assurances. After so many promises of lasting participation, the feast is said to be permanently “without us.” This can unsettle both private self-importance and the collective claim implied by “we.” At the same time, the command to pass beyond them keeps the threshold from becoming a simple sentence of exclusion. The seeker is addressed because a response remains possible, though the poem does not certify that it has occurred. Love’s continuance has been affirmed throughout; the final task is to approach it without making that continuance a possession.

Sources and textual notes

1. Rūmī, Dīvān-e Shams, ghazal 226, couplet 10, in the Persian text available on Ganjoor. Its association of Huma’s shadow with sovereignty supplies a literary context for the opening, without establishing direct borrowing.
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 p. 61, on God’s freedom from spatial containment; printed p. 335, on knowledge, heedlessness, and enduring delight; and printed pp. 365–366, on lovers receiving fragrance and communicating benefit. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
3. Qur’an, al-Isrāʾ 17:72, on blindness in this life and the Hereafter; and al-Ḥajj 22:46, distinguishing unseeing hearts from bodily eyes. The Arabic text and displayed English translation were consulted. Couplet 6 echoes the first passage through its own language of the beloved’s face; its promise of lasting sight is the poem’s answering formulation.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 472–473 reference and the signature ʿAlāʾī are retained unchanged. That edition and the attribution of this ghazal have not been independently verified. The commentary treats the heart’s throne, enduring sight, and the feast “without us” as poetic formulations whose implications require interpretation.

Chehel Asrar 32 - Thirty Second Ghazal

Ghazal 32

11 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 471–472

خُوشا سَری کِه بُوَد ذَوْقِ سَیْرها دیدِه

khoshā sarī ke bovad zowq-e sayr-hā dīde

1a  Blessed is the mind that has tasted the delight of spiritual journeys,

بِچَشْمِ دِل رُخِ اَسْرارِ آن سَرا دیدِه

be-chashm-e del rokh-e asrār-e ān sarā dīde

1b  and seen, with the heart's eye, the unveiled mysteries of that other dwelling;

Commentary on couplet 1

The opening blesses a mind acquainted with inward journeys and a heart capable of seeing mysteries. Sar is literally the head; the supplied “mind” brings its capacity for understanding forward. Taste and sight work together: the journey has been savored, and the mysteries have acquired a face before the heart’s eye. “That other dwelling” points beyond the familiar without specifying a particular celestial station. The grammatical frame matters for everything that follows. “Blessed is” introduces a fortunate person whose experiences accumulate through the subsequent couplets. This is a portrait being praised, and the speaker has not yet identified himself with it. The closing will make the distance between celebrating such perception and possessing it decisive.

زِ رَوْزَنِ دِلِ خُود گوش کَرْدِه رازِ اَزَل

ze rowzan-e del-e khod gūsh karde rāz-e azal

2a  that has listened to eternity's secret through the window of its own heart,

وَزان دَریچِه یَقین سِرِّ ماجَرا دیدِه

v-az-ān darīche yaqīn serr-e mājarā dīde

2b  and through that opening has surely seen the mystery of all that unfolds;

Commentary on couplet 2

The heart becomes a window through which the fortunate person both listens and sees. Hearing a secret through an opening used for sight joins two senses in one account of inward receptivity. Azal means beginningless eternity; the secret concerns that horizon without making the listener himself beginningless. Yaqīn strengthens the assurance of what is perceived, while mājarā gathers the unfolding of affairs into a mystery. In his exposition of prayer, Hamadani likewise pictures disclosure through an inward opening, immediately joining vision to the contingent creature’s need and devotion. [3] This is a documented parallel to the image of receptivity, rather than evidence that he explained this particular secret or claimed exhaustive knowledge of events.

بَر آسْتانِ وَفا هَر دَمی زِ دُشْمَن وُ دوسْت

bar āstān-e vafā har damī ze doshman o dūst

3a  that at the threshold of fidelity, at every moment, from friend and foe,

هِزار مِحْنَت وُ ناکامی وُ جَفا دیدِه

hezār mehnat o nākāmī o jafā dīde

3b  has suffered a thousand hardships, disappointments, and cruelties;

Commentary on couplet 3

The portrait turns from hidden knowledge to what fidelity has cost. The first half-line places the blessed person at a threshold and names the sources of affliction; only the second releases the full weight of hardship, frustration, and cruelty. Friend and foe appear together, removing the expectation that pain will come only from declared opponents. The threshold suggests sustained attendance, while har damī, every moment, and “a thousand” make the testing recurrent and abundant. Such experience complicates the opening blessing: inward sight has not insulated this person from hurt. The verse praises fidelity in someone who has suffered, leaving the following couplet to show how that suffering is understood and answered.

زِ هَر جَفا کِه کَشیدِه بِروزْگارِ دَراز

ze har jafā ke kashīde be-rūzgār-e derāz

4a  that in every cruelty endured through long years,

بَرایِ دوسْت دَر آن شیوِهٔ وَفا دیدِه

barā-ye dūst dar ān shīve-ye vafā dīde

4b  has seen, for the Friend's sake, a way to remain faithful;

Commentary on couplet 4

Each cruelty endured over long years becomes an occasion in which the lover discovers a way of remaining faithful for the Friend’s sake. The second half changes the direction of attention from what has been received to how one responds. Barā-ye dūst, for the Friend, is crucial: it locates the purpose of fidelity without necessarily making the Friend the agent of every injury. Nor does the verse simply rename cruelty as kindness. Its contrast between jafā and vafā, injury and fidelity, preserves their difference while binding them through sound. The praise concerns the lover’s sustained orientation under pressure; it does not make another person’s harmful conduct an ethical model or an obligation to endure.

بِهَر وَفا کِه نُمودِه بِزیرِ تیغِ جَفا

be-har vafā ke nomūde be-zīr-e tīgh-e jafā

5a  that for each act of fidelity beneath cruelty's blade,

زِ رُویِ دوسْت دو صَد خِلْعَتِ صَفا دیدِه

ze rū-ye dūst do sad khelʿat-e safā dīde

5b  has received from the Friend's face two hundred robes of purity;

Commentary on couplet 5

The blade of cruelty is answered by robes of purity bestowed from the Friend’s face. A khelʿat is a robe of honor, so the image gives inward clarification the dignity of being received and clothed by a generous patron. Safā suggests purity and clarity, extending the poem’s concern with the capacity to perceive. “Two hundred” enlarges the gift beyond the single act of fidelity; the numbers belong to praise’s abundance rather than a calculation of spiritual wages. The two halves hold wounding and investiture together. Where the blade threatens to strip the lover of security, the Friend’s regard supplies another kind of clothing, one whose value lies in the relationship it makes visible.

مِیانِ آتَشِ شَبْهایِ هِجْر تا دَمِ صُبْح

miyān-e ātash-e shab-hā-ye hejr tā dam-e sobh

6a  that amid the fire of nights of separation, until dawn,

هِزار رَوْحِ صَفا اَز دَمِ صَبا دیدِه

hezār rowh-e safā az dam-e sabā dīde

6b  has found a thousand pure comforts in the morning breeze's breath; [1]

Commentary on couplet 6

The person praised finds refreshment within burning nights of separation. The repeated dam connects the moment of dawn with the morning breeze’s breath, bringing relief close to the body’s own breathing. As the supplied note specifies, rowh means comfort or refreshment here. The fire remains the setting in which these comforts are received, so the couplet need not announce that separation has ended. Hamadani’s prose also joins a fragrant breeze of grace with illuminated perception and inward consolation, although its cooling imagery addresses passions. [3] In this verse, the breeze relieves longing’s heat. Its gentle arrival contrasts with the blade and robes of the preceding couplet, giving the Friend’s generosity a less ceremonial, more intimate form.

مِیانِ ظُلْمَتِ اِمْکان وُ آتَشِ دوری

miyān-e zolmat-e emkān o ātash-e dūrī

7a  that amid the darkness of contingent being and the fire of distance,

نَسیمِ صُبْحِ وِصال اَز رَهِ فَنا دیدِه

nasīm-e sobh-e vesāl az rah-e fanā dīde

7b  has met the dawn breeze of union on the path of self-effacement;

Commentary on couplet 7

The night’s darkness now receives a metaphysical name: imkān, contingency, the condition of what does not exist necessarily through itself. Alongside it, the fire of distance preserves the lover’s immediate distress. Through fanā, self-effacement, the person encounters the dawn breeze of union. The darkness gives dependence an image of obscurity; it need not turn creation into something inherently evil. Hamadani describes lovers absorbed in divine love while explicitly keeping their existence contingent. [3] That distinction helps separate a transformed experience of nearness from becoming independently existent. The poem’s breeze makes union perceptible as refreshment and arrival, while its movement through effacement asks what must loosen in the seeker for that change to be received.

چُو اَز رُسومِ مَجازی فَنا شُدِه کُلّی

cho az rosūm-e majāzī fanā shode kollī

8a  that, wholly effaced from the conventions of this figurative world,

دَرونِ زَهْرِ فَنا شَرْبَتِ بَقا دیدِه

darūn-e zahr-e fanā sharbat-e baqā dīde

8b  has found the sweet drink of abiding life within annihilation's poison;

Commentary on couplet 8

Annihilation appears as poison containing a sweet drink: abiding life is discovered within what seemed to threaten the self. Baqā means abiding or enduring life here. The word darūn, within, matters because the image locates the gift inside the feared loss, rather than simply after it. Rosūm-e majāzī names the conventions or traces of a figurative order; their effacement need not mean the physical destruction of the world. Al-Qushayrī explains fanā and baqā through the disappearance of blameworthy qualities and persistence of praiseworthy ones, and distinguishes loss of self-awareness from the continuing existence of the person. [4] This context clarifies possible kinds of transformation while leaving the poem’s unsettling taste of poison and sweetness intact.

زِ جامِ شَوْق شُدِه مَسْت وُ شیشِه بِشْکَسْتِه

ze jām-e showq shode mast o shīshe beshkaste

9a  that has grown drunk from longing's cup and shattered the flask,

مِیانِ عَرْبَدِه مَحْبوبِ خُوش‌لِقا دیدِه

miyān-e ʿarbade mahbūb-e khosh-leqā dīde

9b  and amid the drunken uproar has seen the lovely-faced beloved;

Commentary on couplet 9

Longing fills the cup, intoxication breaks ordinary composure, and the flask shatters before the lovely-faced beloved appears amid the uproar. The image gives desire a force that its container can no longer hold. ʿArbade is noisy, unruly drunken behavior; its disruption belongs to the poem’s depiction of ecstasy. Al-Qushayrī connects spiritual intoxication with disclosure of divine beauty, while distinguishing it from absence caused by longing and other emotions. [4] The poem places longing’s cup before the sight of the beloved, so its movement should retain its own shape. This vision still belongs to the blessed person’s portrait. It will sharpen the closing question about an intoxication that has occurred without such sight.

زِ نَنْگِ خُود شُدِه یِکْسوی دَر حَریمِ شُهود

ze nang-e khod shode yaksūy dar harīm-e shohūd

10a  that has stepped aside from the shame of selfhood and, in the sanctuary of witnessing,

جَمالِ آن مَهِ بی‌چُون وُ بی‌چِرا دیدِه

jamāl-e ān mah-e bī-chūn o bī-cherā dīde

10b  has seen the beauty of that moon beyond all how and why.

Commentary on couplet 10

The blessed person steps aside from the self’s shame and enters the sanctuary of witnessing, where beauty appears as a moon beyond how and why. The supplied “selfhood” interprets khod, self; the movement withdraws attention from the self’s encumbering presence so that another beauty can occupy it. Shohūd means witnessing, an immediate beholding rather than merely hearing a report. Harīm makes that beholding an intimate, protected encounter. Yet the moon’s visible loveliness is joined to language resisting ordinary specification. The verse allows perception without implying that its object has been fully enclosed in an explanation. This is the portrait’s fullest statement of seeing, immediately before the closing denies sight to the named addressee.

عَلایی، اَز چِه شُدی مَسْت چُون نَخُورْدی مَی؟

ʿAlāʾī, az che shodī mast chūn nakhordī may?

11a  ʿAlāʾī, how did you become drunk when you drank no wine?

زِ دیدِه مَسْت شَوَد هَر کَسی، تُو نادیدِه

ze dīde mast shavad har kasī, to nādīde

11b  Others grow drunk from seeing; you, without having seen. [2]

Commentary on couplet 11

The closing abruptly addresses ʿAlāʾī: how has intoxication arisen without wine, and without the sight that intoxicates others? Nādīde, without having seen, reverses the dīde repeated throughout the portrait. The turn prevents the preceding visions from being read automatically as the named figure’s accomplishments. Its tone can sustain both astonishment and self-questioning. Longing may overwhelm before sight, but the question may also expose an ecstasy whose claim to experience remains uncertain. The poem does not settle between these possibilities or place unseen intoxication above witnessing. Its final contrast leaves the named figure close enough to praise vision vividly, yet unable simply to claim it. The signature becomes the point at which the ideal portrait meets an unresolved personal condition.

Understanding this ghazal

The ghazal begins by blessing a person who has journeyed, perceived, suffered, and remained faithful. For ten couplets, its repeated dīde accumulates experiences around that opening figure. What has been “seen” includes both inward mysteries and the trials of a life: the same pattern of speech can hold revelation, injury, consolation, and beauty. The final address to ʿAlāʾī then introduces a different condition, intoxication without sight. The poem’s central question becomes who can speak of vision, and how the power of longing relates to the experience it celebrates.

Its images make spiritual perception tangible through several senses. Mysteries have a face; the heart’s window admits both hearing and sight; cruelty carries a blade; purity becomes a robe. Fire and darkness give way to a breeze whose refreshment prepares the language of union. The poison and sweet drink then bring transformation within a single taste, before longing’s cup releases the disruptive scene of intoxication. These images resonate across the ghazal without requiring a fixed sequence of attained stations. Throughout the changing scenes, fidelity sustains the person’s orientation toward the Friend, even when other relationships bring injury.

Hamadani’s prose offers specific parallels: inward disclosure pictured through an opening, grace figured as a fragrant breeze, and lovers’ transformed condition held together with their continuing contingency. [3] Al-Qushayrī’s treatment of fanā and baqā further distinguishes changes of character and awareness from the cessation of created existence. [4] These contexts help explain how self-effacement can disclose an abiding life. They do not turn suffering into a purchase price for gifts, or cruelty into conduct to imitate. The faithful response, the received consolation, and the continuing dependence of the recipient remain distinct.

The last couplet reopens what the sanctuary of witnessing seemed to complete. It need not cancel the praised portrait, but it changes the reader’s relation to the voice describing it. ʿAlāʾī may be marveling at longing powerful enough to intoxicate before encounter; he may be questioning a state unsupported by the vision just praised. The text allows the uncertainty to stand. Its repeated language of having seen ends in not having seen, making incompletion part of its final honesty. The poem can give vision an intensely felt presence while leaving the one who longs for it still at a distance.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 6b: Rawḥ, pronounced rowh in Persian, is read as refreshment or comfort, not rūḥ, spirit.

[2] 11b: The compressed closing contrast is between intoxication through seeing and intoxication without sight.

Editorial references

3. 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. 94, on inward disclosure within an exposition of prayer; printed p. 338, on lovers’ absorption and continuing contingency; and printed p. 413, on fragrant grace, perception, and consolation. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
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, on fanā and baqā as transformations of qualities and awareness while creatures continue to exist; and printed p. 93, distinguishing absence through longing and other emotions from intoxication through disclosed beauty. Used as classical Sufi context, without imposing its classification upon the poem’s closing paradox.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 471–472 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 commentary distinguishes the blessed figure described in couplets 1–10 from the closing address and leaves the meaning of intoxication without sight open.

The right margin carries a clearer دشمن و beside the line of couplet 3, بر آستان وفا هر دمی ز دشمن و دوست. to clarify confusion with the written text.

Chehel Asrar 31 - Thirty First Ghazal

Ghazal 31

9 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 471

راحَت اَر خَواهی، بِیا با دَرْدِ اُو هَمْراز شُو

rāhat ar khāhī, biyā bā dard-e ū hamrāz sho

1a  If you want peace, come and become the confidant of his pain.

دَوْلَت اَر جُویی، بِرَو دَر عِشْقِ اُو جانْباز شُو

dowlat ar jūyī, berow dar ʿeshq-e ū jānbāz sho

1b  If you seek good fortune, go and stake your life on his love.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker offers peace and good fortune through conditions that appear to undo them: intimacy with pain and the staking of one’s life in love. The paired invitations, “come” and “go,” turn desire into a demand for movement. Hamrāz means someone admitted to a confidence; pain becomes something whose secret the seeker must learn to share. Dard-e ū can name pain associated with the beloved, including the pain of loving him, without establishing that the beloved personally suffers. Jānbāz intensifies the commitment through the language of risking life. The couplet speaks with the urgency of love poetry, leaving the beloved unnamed while preparing the devotional possibilities developed through the later images of Presence and nearness.

سازِ راهِ عِشْق سَرْبازی وُ بَدْنامی بُوَد

sāz-e rāh-e ʿeshq sarbāzī o badnāmī bovad

2a  The provisions for love's path are risking your head and bearing disgrace.

گَر سَرِ این راه داری، دَر پَیِ این ساز شُو

gar sar-e īn rāh dārī, dar pay-e īn sāz sho

2b  If you intend to take this road, go in search of these provisions.

Commentary on couplet 2

Love’s road requires unusual provisions: readiness to risk one’s head and to lose a good reputation. The second half makes the choice conditional upon intending the journey. Sar, head, links sarbāzī with sar-e īn rāh dārī, having a mind to take this road; intention is tested by the cost the traveller accepts. Sāz names equipment or preparation here, making apparent losses the very resources needed to proceed. The disgrace concerns the lover’s standing before others, whose approval cannot determine the whole undertaking. Its poetic valuation does not specify misconduct to perform. The repeated command to seek these provisions therefore presses beyond enthusiasm toward a willingness to relinquish the protections of personal prestige.

بَر تَن وُ جان چَنْد نازی چُون نَیَرْزی اَرْزَنی؟

bar tan o jān chand nāzī chūn nayarzī arzanī?

3a  How long will you boast of body and soul when you are not worth a grain of millet?

صَعْوِه با اَرْزَن گُذار وُ بَر دَرَش شَهْباز شُو

saʿve bā arzan gozār o bar dar-ash shahbāz sho

3b  Leave the sparrow to its millet; become a royal falcon at his door.

Commentary on couplet 3

A sharp rebuke to boasting opens into an invitation to become a royal falcon. The grain of millet first measures the smallness of the self’s claims, then becomes food left to the sparrow. The echo between nayarzī, “you are not worth,” and arzanī, “a grain of millet,” gives the rebuke its verbal bite. Body and soul are both named as objects of pride, so merely preferring spiritual accomplishments would leave the criticism unanswered. Yet the verse also offers a greater possibility: the seeker may exchange narrow appetite for the falcon’s aspiration. Its station is at the beloved’s door. Even this royal image therefore locates elevation within attendance upon another, anticipating the closing door and its difficult entry.

تا بِکَی هَمْچُون زَنان این راه وُ رَسْمِ رَنْگ وُ بُوی؟

tā be-kay hamchūn zanān īn rāh o rasm-e rang o būy?

4a  How long will you follow, like women, these ways of color and fragrance?

راهِ مَرْدان گیر وُ با صاحِب‌دِلان دَمْساز شُو

rāh-e mardān gīr o bā sāheb-delān damsāz sho

4b  Take the path of men and keep company with those whose hearts are awake.

Commentary on couplet 4

The speaker opposes a life of color and fragrance to the company of people whose hearts possess understanding. The contrast is explicitly gendered: women are associated with adornment, men with resolve. That hierarchy depreciates women and remains part of the verse’s rhetoric. Sāheb-delān supplies a further criterion for companionship, locating its value in inward perception. Hamadani’s prose connects companionship with counsel and help in sustaining good deeds. [3]

A contrasting use of spiritual manhood appears in ʿAttar’s introduction to Rābiʿa: he includes her among the spiritual “men” and argues that sex distinctions fall away in divine unity. [4] This context expands the possible company of accomplished seekers while leaving this couplet’s disparaging comparison visible. Damsāz, companion or one in accord, makes shared commitment the positive answer to its rebuke.

چُون زَغَن تا چَنْد باشی بَسْتِهٔ مُرْدارِ تَن؟

chūn zaghan tā chand bāshī baste-ye mordār-e tan?

5a  How long will you cling, like a kite, to the body's carrion?

دَر هَوایِ سَیْرِ جان یِک لَحْظِه دَر پَرْواز شُو

dar havā-ye sayr-e jān yak lahze dar parvāz sho

5b  Longing for the soul's journey, take flight for a single moment.

Commentary on couplet 5

The kite remains fastened to carrion, while the answering half-line asks for even one moment of flight. Calling the body carrion gives present attachment the image of something already lifeless: the seeker is feeding upon what cannot provide the life being sought. This is a severe poetic treatment of bodily fixation. Havā allows longing and air to resonate together, so the desire for the soul’s journey also suggests the medium in which wings can open. The modest duration, a single moment, contrasts with the prolonged captivity implied by “how long.” Here the soul offers movement beyond confinement; the next couplet will unsettle even that distinction by including the soul among the shackles.

جان وُ تَن بَنْدَسْت وُ کُفْر وُ دین حِجاب اَنْدَر رَهَش

jān o tan band-ast o kofr o dīn hejāb andar rah-ash

6a  Soul and body are shackles; unbelief and faith are veils upon his path.

جُمْلِه را بَر هَم زَن وُ با عِشْق هَم‌آواز شُو

jomle rā bar ham zan o bā ʿeshq ham-āvāz sho

6b  Sweep them all away and raise your voice in harmony with love.

Commentary on couplet 6

The command now reaches beyond bodily attachment: soul and body are both shackles, while unbelief and religion alike veil the path. This is a deliberate escalation after the soul’s liberating flight. What served as an alternative to confinement cannot become a final possession. Reading the religious pair as identities or convictions to which the self clings is plausible, but those qualifications are interpretive; the verse itself makes the broader, startling claim. Its imperative does not explain how that claim relates to religious duties. The second half replaces the sweeping negation with ham-āvāz, being in harmony with love. Harmony offers a way to understand participation and responsiveness without making the lover identical with the beloved or requiring created beings to cease existing.

بازِ اَوْجِ کِبْریایی، مانْدِه اَنْدَر دامِ کام

bāz-e owj-e kebriyāyī, mānde andar dām-e kām

7a  Falcon of the heights of majesty, caught in the snare of desire,

دام وُ دانِه بَر دَر وُ خُرَّم بِحَضْرَت باز شُو

dām o dāne bar dar o khorram be-hazrat bāz sho

7b  tear away the snare and bait, and return joyfully to the Presence.

Commentary on couplet 7

The seeker is addressed as a falcon of majestic heights whose actual condition is captivity. Dām, snare, kām, desire, and dāne, bait, draw the bird’s appetite and entrapment into a close pattern of sounds. Release requires removing both the restraint and what makes it attractive. Bāz also links the falcon with “back” in bāz sho, turning the bird’s name into the movement of return. Ḥāfiẓ uses a comparable image of a royal falcon called from above while caught in a trap. [5] Such language gives spiritual recollection the shape of homecoming without establishing a literal account of the soul’s preexistence. The joyful return answers the present predicament through the possibility the captive has failed to exercise.

گَر هُمایِ قافِ قُرْبی، بالِ هِمَّت بَرگُشای

gar homā-ye Qāf-e qorbī, bāl-e hemmat bargoshāy

8a  If you are the Huma of intimacy's Mount Qaf, spread the wings of aspiration; [1]

دَر فَضایِ لا مَکان با قُدْسِیان اَنْباز شُو

dar fazā-ye lā makān bā qodsiyān anbāz sho

8b  in the expanse beyond place, become a companion to the holy ones.

Commentary on couplet 8

The conditional address raises the flight into a legendary landscape: if the seeker is the Huma of nearness, aspiration must become wings. The Huma’s legendary good fortune and Qaf’s height enlarge the aspiration already voiced through the royal falcon. Himmat means concentrated aspiration or resolve here. Yet the destination, an “expanse beyond place,” unsettles the spatial picture that makes flight imaginable. Hamadani’s prose combines God’s freedom from spatial containment with a nearness exceeding that of the creature’s own breath. [3] This helps distinguish devotional nearness from measurable travel. The holy ones suggest exalted companionship, without identifying a particular celestial order. The verse challenges the seeker to answer the image’s promise; its “if” leaves fulfilment open.

قُفْلِ این دَر شُد عَلایی وُ کِلیدِ آن نِیاز

qofl-e īn dar shod ʿAlāʾī o kelīd-e ān niyāz

9a  ʿAlāʾī has become the lock upon this door, and need is its key. [2]

گَر نِیازی داری اینْجا، بَر سَریرِ ناز شُو

gar niyāzī dārī īnjā, bar sarīr-e nāz sho

9b  If you bring your need here, ascend the throne of love's favor.

Commentary on couplet 9

After the magnificence of the birds, the closing makes ʿAlāʾī himself the lock upon the door. Niyāz, need expressed through humble petition, supplies the key. The given reading brings the obstacle within the seeker, as the supplied note explains. Hamadani likewise describes desires as locks upon spiritual treasure, while distinguishing the seeker’s work of cleansing the heart from gifts governed by divine will. [3] The parallel illuminates self-obstruction without explaining this exact poem. Nāz now returns after the boasting of couplet 3: in the supplied translation, its final sense is favor received through need. The throne is offered conditionally, so grandeur cannot be claimed merely by imagining oneself a royal bird. Access depends upon acknowledging the lack that pride concealed.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal addresses a seeker repeatedly summoned to become something other than what habit and appetite have made of him. Its recurring sho, “become,” gives each invitation the pressure of a command. Peace and good fortune are desired from the outset, but love changes the terms on which they can be sought: pain becomes a confidence to share, and loss of reputation becomes provision for the road. The beloved remains unnamed. The later language of majesty, Presence, and nearness strengthens a devotional reading without requiring every earlier image to lose its resonance with human love.

Birds give aspiration a changing body. The sparrow and kite are occupied with food, while the royal falcon and Huma disclose other possibilities of attention and movement. Yet elevation repeatedly receives a qualification. The royal falcon attends a door; the falcon of majesty remains trapped; the Huma is addressed through an “if.” Most strikingly, the soul that promises flight becomes a shackle alongside the body. These reversals prevent the images from forming a simple ladder of attained superiority. The poem asks how even a cherished spiritual identity may continue the attachments it appears to overcome.

Its ethical and devotional demands retain tensions that a unified explanation should leave visible. The invitation to discerning companionship is expressed through a gender hierarchy, while the later dismissal of unbelief and religion as veils exceeds ordinary language of moral improvement. Hamadani’s prose associates companionship with counsel and good action; this supplies a concrete parallel without resolving the poem’s radical treatment of religion. His account of nonspatial nearness also helps interpret flight beyond place without turning God into a destination contained somewhere above the world. [3] These parallels come through a modern translation of his prose, rather than a verified explanation of this ghazal.

The final lock returns the poem’s challenge to the named figure, ʿAlāʾī. After commands to leave, fly, tear away, and return, the decisive obstacle is the self that would enter. Need becomes a key precisely where royal and celestial images might encourage a fresh claim to distinction. The contrast between niyāz and nāz gathers the opening promises into a different account of good fortune: favor can be received through dependence. The ghazal ends at the threshold of that possibility, with aspiration answerable to the humility that can open its door.

Sources and textual notes

Reading notes

[1] 8a: Huma, a mythical bird of good fortune, and Mount Qaf place the soul's flight in a legendary celestial landscape.

[2] 9a: The poet's own self is the obstacle to entry; compare ghazal 15, couplet 9.

Editorial references

3. 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. 61–62, on divine transcendence and nearness; printed pp. 193–194, on counsel and companionship, subsequently applied to rulers; and printed p. 414, on desire’s locks, inward preparation, and divine gifts. The English translation was checked; the Persian wording was not independently collated.
4. ʿAttar, Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, account of Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya, opening paragraphs, in the Persian text available on Ganjoor. His defense of including Rābiʿa among the spiritual men and his discussion of sex distinctions in divine unity provide a contextual counterpoint to couplet 4.
5. Ḥāfiẓ, ghazal 37, couplets 4–5 in Ganjoor’s numbering: a royal falcon, an elevated perch, a call from above, and entrapment. Cited as a shared literary image, without a claim of direct borrowing.

Editorial note: The supplied Riaz 1991, printed p. 471 reference, the signature ʿAlāʾī, and both reading notes are retained unchanged. That edition, the attribution of this ghazal, and the comparison with ghazal 15, couplet 9 have not been independently verified. The commentary retains the distinction between the supplied reading and the contextual parallels cited here.