Jami

“ To offer—boldly offer it in thine!
And yet, how long, Jámí, is this old house
Stringing thy pearls upon a harp of song?
Year after year striking up some new song,
The breath of some old story? Life is gone,
And yet the song is not the last; my soul
Is spent—and still a story to be told!
SALÁMÁN AND ABSÁL.
"THOU MOVEST UNDER ALL THE FORMS OF TRUTH"
O Thou, whose memory quickens lovers' souls,
Whose fount of joy renews the lover's tongue,
Thy shadow falls across the world, and they
Bow down to it; and of the rich in beauty
Thou art the riches that make lovers mad. ”

“ Show not to us non-existence as existent, nor cast the veil of non-existence over the beauty of existence. Make this phenomenal world the mirror to reflect the manifestations of thy beauty, and not a veil to separate and repel us from Thee. Cause these unreal phenomena of the universe to be for us the sources of knowledge and insight, and not the cause of ignorance and blindness. Our alienation and severance from Thy beauty all proceed from ourselves. Deliver us from ourselves, and accord to us intimate knowledge of Thee. ”

“ May Jámí, who planted this garden, O Lord,
Be always full of God and empty of self. [1]
May he travel on no other path but His, and seek no other Union [2] but His;
Nor utter another name but His, nor see another face but His.
SONG IN PRAISE OF THE BELOVED
To the Maker!—the rose-grove of the sphere
Is but one leaf of the flower-garden of. His creation—
That those who sing His praises
May have a plate of pearls and jewels full of oblations!
May the magnitude of His glory shine, and the world of His perfection be exalted! ”

“ It is touching to note that when she finds her own love slighted she should send other women to try their fortune with him, intending, should they succeed, to subtly take their place by strategy of some kind. Again, in the splendid Palace of Pleasure, painted all over, floor and wall and ceiling, with love-entwined figures of Yúsuf and Zulaikha, there is an idol—"A golden idol with jewelled eyes," representing this fatuous woman's love. ”

“ FRIENDSHIP
He is a friend, who although meeting with enmity
From his friend, only becomes more attached to him.
If he strikes him with a thousand stones of violence,
The edifice of his love will only be made more firm by them.
SECOND GARDEN
"A SECRET"
O boy! ”

“ It so happened, however, that her eyes remained closed to everything else but her charge to such an alarming extent that when Salámán was fourteen years old she revealed herself, with many subtle, Zulaikha-like wiles, as his devoted lover.
After the young people had spent a joyous year together, the knowledge of their attachment came to the ears of the king. That wise ruler duly admonished his wayward son and suggested hunting in preference to "dalliance unwise." The sage added his profound wisdom, as was his wont. These admonitions only resulted in the lovers fleeing the city. ”

“ Every beauty and perfection manifested in the theatre of the various grades of beings is a ray of His perfect beauty reflected therein. It is from these rays that exalted souls have received their impress of beauty and their quality of perfection. Whosoever is wise derives his wisdom from Divine wisdom. ”

“ Did I not seek Thee, how wouldst Thou be sought?
My love is as a mirror in the which
Thy beauty into evidence is brought.
O Lord, none but Thyself can fathom Thee,
Yet every mosque and church doth harbour Thee;
I know the seekers and what 'tis they seek—
Seekers and sought are all comprised in Thee.
THE UNIVERSE A NUMBER OF "ACCIDENTS"
The universe, together with its parts, is nothing but a number of accidents, ever changing and being renewed at every breath, and linked together in a single substance, and at each instant disappearing and being replaced by a similar set. ”

“ It is, then, necessary to use every endeavour to force these thoughts to encamp outside the enclosure of thy breast, and that the "Truth" most glorious may cast His beams into thy heart, and deliver thee from thyself, and save thee from the trouble of entertaining His rivals in thy heart. Then there will abide with-thee neither consciousness of thyself, nor even consciousness of such absence of consciousness—nay, there will abide nothing save the One God alone. ”

“ The old king, remembering, perhaps, his early days, pitied them at first. But human pity is usually short-lived. Day after day seeing the same lovelorn objects in the magic mirror, he grew very angry and decided to make the lovers' embraces impossible in future. The king succeeded in casting a spell and also in revealing his face to his son, which so pricked the young man's conscience that he and Absál left their beautiful island and returned to their city. But here Salámán was torn with conflicting thoughts about his beloved Absál. ”

“ If the work be regarded as a love poem, without its mystical interpretation, Yúsuf may well be regarded as a cold, statuesque young man of the St. Anthony type, but cast in a more beautiful mould. While we may equally well regard Zulaikha as a passionate young lady sadly lacking in worldly wisdom. The coldness of Yúsuf would probably irritate us were we not frequently reminded of the way in which poor Zulaikha plagues him with her too constant attentions. Neither strike us as being very ordinary human people for precisely reverse reasons. ”

“ This was high praise indeed; but though it awakens our admiration, the fact that he dispensed with "home-work" while at school, scanned his lessons while walking past the rose-gardens, bettered his instructor in an argument, and in every way shone as a most clever young man, because he simply could not help being anything else, makes him not one whit dearer to our hearts if we expect from him something more than cleverness. Jámí had not that greatness of soul whereby to counteract the deterrent effect his conspicuous success might have upon him. ”

“ This, then, is & brief sketch of Yúsuf and Zulaikha. Like Salámán and Absál it is intended to reveal the beauty of the Beloved; that He can be only approached after much purification, when the physical form ceases to blind the soul's outlook, and only when we realise that passion is an idol that must be broken, and Love the pure Light that shines alone from Him. ”

“ Second, that Jámí had a very decided sense of humour, strongly in evidence in the "Sixth Garden" of his Baháristán, so delightfully entitled: "Blowing of the zephyrs of wit and the breezes of jocular sallies, which cause the buds of the lips to laugh and the flowers of the hearts to bloom." From these two things alone we might have expected a finer and nobler character. We must be, however, content with the life of a great literary egoist, abandon sentiment, and remember only that he has left to posterity the most polished of Persian poetry. ”

“ O Commander of the Faithful, to take vengeance for a crime is justice, but to pass it over is virtue; and the magnanimity of the Prince of the Faithful is more exalted, than that he should disregard what is higher, and descend to what is lower. ”

“ The slave replied: "What thou hast seen." "Then why hast thou not kept it for thyself?" "The dog is a stranger here; I thought he had come from a long distance and was hungry, wherefore I did not mean to leave him in that condition." "Then what wilt thou eat to-day?" "I shall fast." Then 'Abdullah said to himself: "Everybody is blaming me for my liberality, and this slave is more liberal than myself." ”

“ In these early days of too youthful recognition we find Jámí infected with that disease commonly known as "swelled head," from which the poet never recovered. We see him too often as a little tin-god denying, with the exception of his father, all indebtedness to others for his noteworthy erudition—an absurd attitude for any one to take. He remarks: "I have found no master with whom I have read, superior to myself. ”

“ Absolute self-sufficiency is a quality involved in Divine Perfection. It signifies this, that in a general and universal manner all the modes, states, and aspects of the One Real Being, with all their adherent properties and qualities, in all their presentations, past, present, or future, manifested in all grades of substances, divine and mundane, are present and realised in the secret thought of that Divine Being, in such wise that the sum of them all is contained in His Unity. ”

“ That is to say that a portion of the material world, through the mercy of God, is capable of receiving Very Being, and thus the phenomenon becomes Very Being externalised. But Omnipotence requires the total destruction of all phenomena and all multiplicity of the same substance. ”

“ Alexander degraded one of his officials by removing him from a high and employing him in a low post. One day this man waited upon Alexander, who asked him what he thought of his occupation, and he replied: "May the life of my Lord be long! A man is not ennobled by a great occupation, but an occupation is ennobled by a great man. ”

“ Jámí pleads for the love of One and the abandonment of all little earthly loves that distract the attention of the lover for his Beloved—precisely the same theme as that expressed in Salámán and Absál. The poet loudly condemns "Hell-born vanity" and the accumulation of worldly wisdom, even all learning except "The lore of God." It would be a strange theme for a poet to so persistently choose were not Jámí a mystic. With the "Inner light" of the true mystic he sets aside the things of the world as being unsatisfactory. ”

“ The Arab replied: "What injury can the bristles of a porcupine inflict upon the paw of a formidable lion?" This sally pleased the liberal man, who said: "I like this better than the Qasída," and ordered him to be rewarded for it with 1,000 and for the sally 3,000 dirhams.
FIFTH GARDEN
A LOVERS' DIALOGUE
Maiden:
By God, who openly and secretly
Is worshipped by men and fairies,
I swear that of all whom I see in the world
No one is dearer to me than thou.
Youth:
O thou who sawest me, and residest in my heart,
Soul and body, all now belong to thee. ”

“ One is so apt to see printed requests in the public gardens of England that it seems a little ironical to come across the following in the literary "Gardens" of Jámí: "It is requested that the promenaders in these gardens—which contain no thorns to give offence, nor rubbish displayed for interested purposes,—walking through them with sympathetic steps and looking at them carefully, will bestow their good wishes, and rejoice with praise the gardener who has spent much trouble and great exertions in planning and cultivating these gardens." ”

“ A KIND FRIEND
O heart, when a time of sorrow overtakes thee
There will be no sorrow if thou hast a kind friend;
For a day of trouble a friend is required,
Because in times of comfort, friends are not scarce.
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
A beautiful woman had many admirers, whose attentions were so assiduous that the very street in which she lived became thronged by her visitors, but when her attractions disappeared and she had become ugly, her lovers abandoned her. ”

“ They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. ”

“ One day, after the king had poured forth a very beautiful lament on his childless marriage, and had concluded by remarking that a son was "man's prime desire," the keeper of the Tower of Wisdom supplemented his lord's remarks by describing woman as "A foolish, faithless thing," and marriage made miserable by "One little twist of temper." ”

“ This very estimable reverence for holy men and holy things must ever remain as one of the poet's finest characteristics. We can, however, never say of Jámí that he was a man of wide sympathy. He was kind and generous towards the poor and needy; but he lamentably failed where, perhaps, he should have shone most, namely, among the literary men of his own period. He too frequently displayed a fighting spirit, where tolerance and a willingness to admit of another point of view would have shown to greater advantage. ”

“ Jámí advocates, as others have done before him, the destruction of self in order to gain knowledge of Very Being, "Until He mingles Himself with thy soul, and thine own individual existence passes out of thy sight." The poet also discusses the question of matter being maya— I delusion, the ceaseless round of "Accidents," the I ever coming and vanishing media for the revelations of the Beloved.
The Lawá'ih should be studied in conjunction with Mahmud Shabistari's Gulshan-i-Raz [3] or "The Mystic Rose Garden." ”

“ At this point of the poem we are once more reminded of the Bible story of Joseph, for Jámí also mentions the interpretation of Pharaoh's dream, the release of the interpreter, and the unlimited power as the king's right hand that followed.
So we watch Yúsuf rise from slave to be the king's chief adviser, and in consequence the fall of the Grand Vizier and Zulaikha. The success of Yúsuf awakens little admiration. He is so far from being human that we should not have been very surprised if he had eaten one of the Pyramids. ”

“ And here we see the great mystical poet sitting, like a little child listening to a tale that is told, quelled into reverential silence by the greatness of the theme. It is in silence, in the quiet places of our hearts, rather than on the housetops of much controversy, that we can hear the sweet call of the Beloved and forget the clanging of the world in the Great Peace which He alone can give.
IV. THE STORY OF YÚSUF AND ZULAIKHA.
Yúsuf and Zulaikha, like Salámán and Absál, belongs to the series of poems known as the Haft Aurang. ”

“ The Baháristán has a distinct interest apart from its literary merit. It appears to have been written by Jámí for the instruction of his "darling and beloved son Ziá-uddin-Yúsuf." The poet-father goes on to say, "That young boys and inexperienced youths become very disheartened and unhappy when they receive instruction in idiomatic expressions they are not accustomed to." Although Jámí allowed his son to read the Gulistán, he evidently thought the last word had not yet been written in the interests of instructing the young, and thus conceived the idea of writing the Baháristán. ”

“ The Lawá'ih, or "Flashes of Light," is a theological treatise based on Súfíism, and is a book of immense importance to the student of Mysticism. It will afford him a very interesting and striking parallel to Neo-Platonism (Plotinus in particular) , and also to some of the Buddhistic teachings. As I have treated the subject of Súfíism, or Persian Mysticism, elsewhere, [2] I need add but few words to this particular volume of Súfí lore.
The keynote to the Lawá'ih is to be found in Jámí's preface. ”

“ Jámí, however, felt justified in punishing the originators of the plot. N'imat-i Haidarí had his moustache very unceremoniously cut off, and was commanded to forfeit a pious garb with the crushing remark: "It will be necessary for you to recommend yourself to some holy man of the day, who, peradventure, may yet put you on the right way." This man's brother, who had also offended, was forced to wear a fool's cap and to ride on an ass with his head facing the animal's tail, amid the none too complimentary remarks of the Baghdad people. ”