The year 1300 of the Christian era, that wherein the Seljúq Kingdom ceased to exist, may be regarded as the birth-year of the Ottoman Empire. Nearly a century had elapsed since Suleymán Sháh had sought refuge in the west, and during that time his son and grandson had done good service to their Seljúq patrons as wardens of the Bithynian marches against the officers of the Cæsars. But neither Er-Toghrul nor csmán had ever sought independence for himself; they had been content to remain loyal vassals of the suzerain power, which, on its part, had never failed to treat them with honour and generosity; and it was only when the Seljúq Empire was no more and cOsmán found himself without a lord, that he arose and fought for his own hand.
Out of the chaos which resulted from the Mongol invasion and the Seljúq downfall there emerged in Asia Minor the ten little Turkish kingdoms already mentioned as constituting the West-Turkish Decarchy. The names of those little states and of the ancient provinces to which they roughly corresponded are: 1. cOsmán (Phrygia Epictetus with a portion of Bithynia wrested from the Greeks); 2. Qarasi (Mysia); 3. Kermiyan1 (Phrygia): 4. Hamíd (Pisidia and Isauria); 5. Tekke (Lycia and Pamphylia); 6. Saru-Khan; 7. Aydin (together Lydia); 8. Menteshe (Caria); 9. Qizil-Ahmedli2 (Paphlagonia); 10. Qaraman (Lycaonia).3
Thus at the outset the Ottoman is but one, and that the least in extent, of a number of petty Turkish kingdoms sprung up from the ruins of the Seljúq or old West-Turkish Empire. But its rulers and people being the most enterprising and adventurous, it gradually gathered in the others, until we find about a century and a half after the Seljúq collapse that there is again but a single Turkish state in Asia Minor, though the supreme power is now in the hands of the Ottoman Sultán. This reconsolidation of the Turkish power would have occurred earlier had not Timur’s invasion at the beginning of the fifteenth century thrown everything into confusion and retarded matters for fifty years.
Now in the regions forming these little kingdoms several Turkish dialects were spoken. These dialects were all variations of the Western branch of the Turkish tongue and did not materially differ from one another, though each had certain words and grammatical forms peculiar to itself. They were one and all perfectly intelligible to every Western Turk; there was therefore no reason why a poet in the days of the Decarchy should write in any other than that of his own province. And so we find that poets and other men of letters, born outside the Ottoman borders, whether they remained subject to their native prince or passed into the Ottoman service, made exclusive use of the Turkish of their own district.
This state of things lasted for about a century and a half; and it was only when all the nine kingdoms had been finally gathered in, and Constantinople won by the Ottoman Sultán for the capital of the renovated West-Turkish Empire, that the Ottoman dialect, modified no doubt to a certain extent by those of the neighbouring provinces, became the sole recognised literary medium for the whole West-Turkish world. Up till that time each poet made use of his own native dialect; there was no single idiom accepted by all. Consequently comparatively few of the works produced during this century and a half which we have called the First Period are written in the true Ottoman dialect.
Nevertheless it would be wrong to pass over these in silence as certain modern Ottoman writers do; because even though they are written in old provincial dialects, they form the foundation upon which the more strictly Ottoman literature that followed has been reared. It may perhaps be said that such works cannot accurately be classed under the head of Ottoman poetry, that West-Turkish poetry would be a more correct designation; and from a philological point of view this would be true. All the same, these works are practically Ottoman; the majority of them were written in the Ottoman dominions for Ottoman patrons in dialects which differ less from the Ottoman than those of the English counties do from one another. Moreover, as they form the basis of the subsequent Ottoman poetry, without some knowledge of them we should be unable to trace satisfactorily the gradual development of sentiment and style in that poetry. We shall therefore take all the more prominent of these early writers just as though they had been Ottomans in the most restricted sense, and examine their works as fully as the materials at our disposal will allow.
During the woeful years immediately preceding the birth of the Ottoman power, when Western Asia was one vast battle-field where hostile races and rival dynasties struggled for existence or fought for pre-eminence, the Persian sun was standing high in the heaven of poetry, and the Eastern world was bright with the glory of that radiance the reflection of which lingers to this day. Some century and a half before, mysticism had triumphed over the more realistic spirit of earlier times, and now claimed as its own the whole field of contemporary Persian poetry. And in most quarters side by side with mysticism, even at this early period, reigned artificiality. The grandiose but obscure and affected qasídas of Anvarí1 and Zahír-ud-Dín-i Fáryábi2 were looked upon as the crowning glory of lyric poetry, for the ghazel had not yet attained that predominant position which, thanks chiefly to the genius of Háfiz, it was afterwards to hold. Nizámí3 had brilliantly inaugurated the mystic-romantic poetry of the East; and in his famous Khamsa, the work, or rather series of works, destined to arouse to emulation so many both in his own and other lands, were displayed — nowhere more clearly — the two chief tendencies of the age. For the Khamsa was written at the very time when the qasída was being stifled under every species of decoration, and it reflects in many and many a far-fetched metaphor and recondite allusion that passion for the artificial and ostentatious which had now established its tyranny over Persian poetry. Again, Nizámí was the first romantic poet after the universal triumph of mysticism, and thus his stories are no longer, as in former times, romances pure and simple, but are all more or less allegoric in intention and mystic in spirit.
But mightier than either lyric or romancist was he under whose shadow both were fain to sing. The mystic poet, the master who elected verse as the channel for his transcendental teaching, was lord-paramount wherever Persian culture held; and nowhere was his power more absolute or his influence more profound than in this very Asia Minor. For here in Qonya, the Seljúq capital, had been established for over fifty years the head-quarters of a group of saintly mystics who by the power of their writings and the spell of their personality have exercised an incalculable influence upon the subsequent literature and philosophy of the Muslim East. Hither, while yet a youth, had the greatest of them all, the Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín,1 been brought by his father Behá-ud-Dín Veled; here had he lived and taught; here had he seen those visions and worked those signs which Eflákí2 has collected for us with such loving care; and above all here had he written his marvellous Mesneví.1 This great poem, one of the greatest and most noble in all Persian literature, which in clear, simple language, but without apparent order or method, discourses on the doctrines and aspects of the mystic philosophy, has for ages formed the text-book of the Súfí thinker from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Wall of China. Scarcely less important has been the influence of the impassioned Díwán where in inspired strains the poet-saint sings of the mystic Love, and immortalises his dear master Shems-ud-Dán of Tebríz.2 Here too in Qonya had the Mevláná founded that famous dervishorder,3 called after him the Mevleví, which in later years became so powerful, and which centuries afterwards gave to Turkey one of her greatest poets.4
Unlike the contemporary lyric and romantic poets, Jelál and the other mystic teachers, both in Qonya and elsewhere, wrote in a simple and straightforward style, eschewing the tricks and artifices wherewith the court poets bedecked their works. These men were too much in earnest to play with words; moreover, they were less artists in language, or even poets singing because they must, than masters who chose to teach in verse rather than in prose, the former being more in harmony with the spirit of the time and better suited to the matter they had to say.
The influence then of Jelál-ud-Dín and the mystics held the first place in the age and in the country wherein Turkish poetry was destined to start upon its course, while that of the lyric and romantic writers occupied the second. The effects of this are immediately evident; the earliest Turkish poetry consists of long mystic or theological mesnevís written in a plain and simple fashion with little attempt at embellishment or literary grace of any kind. Later on, when the immediate personal influence of the master and his band has somewhat faded, a change occurs; lyric and romantic poetry, and with them artificiality, begin to be cultivated with the greater assiduity, while mysticism as a formal subject of poetry falls into the second place, though remaining as the foundation and background of the whole.
It is just after the close of the fourteenth century that this change becomes clearly evident. The disastrous invasion of Timur, which occurred at the very beginning of the fifteenth century, cuts the First Period into two divisions, the poetry produced during the first of these being not only the more single-minded in purpose and the more artless and naïve in expression, but also far the more Turkish in its manner and diction. Whether it be, as seems more probable, the natural result of a century of culture, or whether it be in any degree owing, as the historian Ἅlí would infer, to the influence of the Persian scholars who came into Asia Minor in Timur’s train, the West-Turkish poetry written about the time of the Tartar onslaught becomes somewhat suddenly much more Persian and much more artificial. The simple homely language of the earlier poets with their old-fashioned ‘finger-counting,’ suggestive of the ancient folk-songs and ballads, gives place to high-sounding foreign words and to the laboured rules of Persian prosody. Ingenious allegories begin to supersede the earnest if somewhat tedious homilies of the early followers of Jelál, and tricks of language and curiosities of imagery gradually replace the old straightforward speech.
Although he lived full half a century in a Turkish city, and for that same reason is known throughout the East by the surname of Rúmí1 — a term which practically means the (Western-) Turk — Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín, for all his splendid literary ability, did virtually nothing towards the great work of founding Turkish literature. His Mesneví-i Ma῾nevi contains between 25,000 and 30,000 couplets, but there is never a Turkish line among them; there are in his vast Díwán 1,000,000 distichs, yet there is not one single ghazel written wholly in the Turkish tongue. Some time ago a scholarly member of the Mevleví order, Veled Chelebi by name, made a careful examination of the master’s works for the express purpose of discovering to what extent he had made use of the Turkish language; and the only reward of this labour of love was one complete ghazel of the description known as Mulemma῾ written in mingled Turkish and Persian, together with three Persian ghazels each of which contains a few Turkish distichs, and one or two other ghazels with a single Turkish couplet apiece.1
Jelál-ud-Dín was born in Balkh in Central Asia in 604 (1207–8), and died in Qonya in 672 (1273–4), so those few lines are our earliest specimens of West-Turkish verse.
Veled Chelebi quotes as examples the two following fragments. The passages which in the original are in Persian are italicised in the translation.
Or good or ill the brother be, indeed he
Upon a long and toilsome road will lead thee.2
The shepherd clutch thou fast, the wolves are many;
O my black lamb, O my black lambkin, heed me!3
And be thou Turk, or be thou Greek, or Persian,
The tongue of those the tongueless learn, I rede thee!4,
Thou know’st how out of all folk I love thee and thee only;
If to my breast thou come not, for grief shall I die lonely.
I fain one day were seated alone beside thee, dearest,
Then would I learn me Turkish5 and quaff the wine full pronely.
The Turkish cause owes more to Jelál-ud-Dín’s son Sultán Veled. This son, whose full name was Sultán Veled Behá-ud-Dín Ahmed, was born in the Seljúq city of Larende,1 in 623 (1226), when his father was only nineteen years of age. His youth was spent in the service of some of the greatest Súfí teachers of the time, such as Burhán-ud-Dín of Tirmíz, Shems-ud-Dín of Tebríz and Saláh-ud-Dín Feridún of Qonya, the last-mentioned of whom gave him his daughter Fátima in marriage. In his Lives of the Súfí Saints, entitled Nefahát-ul-Uns or ‘The Breaths of Intimacy,’2 Jámí, the great Persian poet, tells us that when Sultán Veled grew up, he became so like his father that those who did not know them used to take the two for brothers. Jelál-ud-Dín, who died in 672 (1273–4), was, according to Eflákí, succeeded by Sheykh Husám-ud-Dín, who had till then acted as his vicar. On the death of this person in 683 (1284), the generalship of the order passed to Sultán Veled,3 who continued to expound his father’s teachings in what the biographers describe as clear and graceful language till he died, at the age of eighty-six, on the 10th. Rejeb, 712 (11th. November, 1312).
Amongst other works in Persian verse wherein he comments and discourses upon his father’s teaching, Sultán Veled left a mesneví poem bearing the name of Rebáb-Náme or ‘The Book of the Rebeck.’ In the hundredth section of the first part of this Book of the Rebeck there is a series of one hundred and fifty-six couplets in the Seljúq dialect of Turkish, — the earliest important specimen of West-Turkish poetry that we possess. Through the presence of these Turkish verses this otherwise undistinguished book acquires a great and unique interest, for here, enshrined in its pages, it holds the first serious utterance of the new literature.
The composition of the book which thus curiously, and as it were by accident, comes to be the starting-point of West-Turkish poetry, synchronises almost exactly with the birth of the Ottoman state. It was written within the space of four months in the year 700 (1301). The poem, the purpose of which is purely mystic, owes its name to a panegyric on the musical instrument called the Rebáb or ‘Rebeck’ with which it opens, much as the Mesneví of Jelál-ud-Dín begins with the eulogy of the Reed-Flute. What induced the author to break through all precedent, write a series of verses in the Turkish language, and incorporate these in a Persian mesneví, we cannot say. But Sultán Veled seems to have had a fancy for versifying in various tongues, as Professor Vámbéry discovered in this same Rebáb-Náme a series of twenty-two couplets in the Greek language though written in Persian characters.1 This is yet more extraordinary; Turkish, though not then a literary language, was at least the speech of a Muhammedan people, while Greek was the tongue of a nation outside the Muslim pale. But Sultán Veled was a Súfí, not a Muslim of the orthodox type; and to the Súfí all religions are more or less good, as all are roads leading to The Truth, though some may be shorter or more direct than others; and so considerations which would at once have determined a member of the ῾ulemá might have had little enough weight with him.
The Rebáb-Náme is written in the same metre as Jelál-ud-Dín’s Mesneví and in this metre — of course one of the regular Persian varieties — are the Turkish couplets; but in these the feet are generally, though not invariably, syllabic according to the true Turkish fashion. In a few cases they are quantitative; and thus we see here, in the very first piece of Western Turkish verse, the beginning of that struggle between the native and the Persian systems of prosody which characterises the earlier part of the First Period. The vocabulary too is very Turkish, containing but few Arabic or Persian words, far fewer than we meet with in even slightly later works. Many of the Turkish words employed are now obsolete; some probably never existed in the Ottoman dialect, others perhaps still linger on in some provincial patois. Looked at merely with regard to the language, these verses are of great interest, as in them we have a specimen ofthe Turkish of Western Asia at the time when the Ottoman Empire was being founded.
Sultán Veled is one of those men whom I have described as being less a poet than a mystic teacher who taught through verse. There is therefore in these Turkish couplets no attempt at literary grace of any kind. They are written in correct enough metre in the Turkish fashion, and the lines rhyme with sufficient accuracy, and that is all. There is an entire absence of anything that is merely decorative, nor is there any slightest hint of that torrent of fantastic similes and remote allusions which is by and by to overwhelm this poetry. The writer does not trouble himself even to avoid repetition; he uses the same words and phrases over and over again, without thinking or caring to vary them. The poverty of the language may perhaps go for something here; but the true cause is the earnestness of the teacher. His great object is to say what he has to say in the clearest and directest way he can. And here he is certainly successful; for once the merely external difficulty of his old-fashioned dialect is overcome, his style is singularly easy.
In one place Sultán Veled speaks as though his acquaintance with the Turkish language were limited; he says: —
‘Knew I Turkish, unto you I should make known
‘All the secrets that the Lord to me hath shown.’
Here he can mean only that he did not write Turkish verse with the same facility as Persian; for his work is before us to prove that he possessed an excellent knowledge of the Turkish language, as indeed it would be strange had he not, seeing that he passed all his life in a Turkish country.
The theme of Veled’s Turkish verses is of course the mystic philosophy. Even in this comparatively short passage of one hundred and fifty-six couplets we can see very clearly that truly Oriental discursiveness so characteristic not alone of the writer and his illustrious father, but of almost every poet of the mystic school. The author takes up a point, makes a few observations on it, and then passes to some fresh subject, to return ere long to the first, which is again abandoned and taken up without any perceptible line of thought being followed. Instead of presenting an orderly sequence of ideas leading up to some point which he desires to establish, the poet seems to put down whatever thought comes into his mind without considering its due relation to the context.
Thus Sultán Veled’s Turkish couplets open with a few lines in praise of Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín, after which the writer proceeds to declare the superiority of his teaching over worldly riches; he then bids the reader implore God to show him the truth and to efface his individual existence even as the drop is lost in the sea. After a little the praise of the Mevláná is resumed, and we are told that the gifts of God to His saints differ in each case, but that none is equal to that vouchsafed to Jelál. We have next a list of the gifts bestowed on the Prophets of old; after which we are told not to regard God as other than His saints. We are then bidden resign our soul to God by whom we shall be repaid an hundred-fold. As when we are dreaming, the soul leaves the body and creates of itself a world, so shall it be when we die; but we must be careful to preserve our faith, which the soul will take along with it and which will form as it were its passport to Paradise. The poet touches next on the blessed state of the saint whose soul is alive through Love; we are enjoined to find out such an one and hold fast by him. Then we are told that if we would see the soul, we must look for it with soul as our eye; for every form of perceptible existence has an eye proper to perceive it, and this we must use, on the same principle as that only like can pair with like. After a further expatiation on the virtues of the man of God, we have the curious passage in which Sultán Veled says that if he knew Turkish he would impart all his knowledge to his readers, whom, he adds, he loves like a father, and for whose love he prays. He then bids us hold fast by him, as if we do not, where are we to go? We are again warned not to conceive of the saint as other than God, for he who sees one as two is squinteyed. This identity of God with the saint who has found Him is dwelt on at some length and is buttressed by a story, borrowed from the Mesneví, in which God, when speaking to Moses, identifies Himself with a holy man who has been ill, and in the clearest language declares Himself and His saints to be one. The reader is then called upon to renounce the world and be of those who have won to Truth; for such are in Paradise even while on earth, in the night do these see the sun, and in the darkness do they see the light; in the demon do they find the houri, and in blasphemy do they find true faith; they have died to themselves and are become one with God; like the drop they have fallen into the sea; but we must not call them drops, we must call them the Sea; and we must cleave fast to them and let all else go by.
If Sultán Veled really was the first — and we know of none before him — to seriously attempt literary poetry in the Western Turkish language, his success is marvellous. That his verses are little poetical is nothing to the point. It was no mean achievement to fashion from the rough dialect of camp and market-place a medium for the teaching of a spiritual philosophy. To do this, moreover, almost exclusively from native elements, with such little assistance from the more cultivated languages he knew so well, proves the poet to have been as resourceful as he was daring. Wonderful is the way in which the homely Turkish words fall so easily into their places in the smooth and even lines, just as though they had been long accustomed to such exercise, and no raw recruits drawn from city-street or country-side. And so well do they look standing marshalled there, that we cannot help regretting so many among them must ere long pass away to give place to substitutes levied from the Persians or the Arabs.
To Sultán Veled then belongs not only the honour due to the pioneer in every good work, but the credit which is justly his who successfully accomplishes an arduous enterprise. To have inaugurated the poetry of a nation is an achievement of which any man might be proud.
The passages here translated from Sultán Veled’s Turkish verses have been chosen as being representative of the series.1
Wot ye well Mevláná2 is of saints the Pole;3
Whatsoever thing he sayeth, do in whole.
All his WoMS are mercies from the Heavenly King;
Such that blind folks’ eyes were opened, did they sing.
Whosoever by this Word doth tread the Way,4 —
God vouchsafe to me the meed for him, I pray.
Mine are neither flocks nor riches to bestow,
That the love of Him through riches I should show.
These5 the riches which the LOM hath granted me;
Whoso longeth for such riches, wise is he!
Words,1 they form the riches of the man who ’s wise;
All his riches giveth he, these Words he buys.
Riches, they are dust; these Words are life for aye;
Therefore flee the wise from those, in these to stay.
Words abide enduring, wealth departing flies;
Seize the living thing and leave thou that which dies!
Hold by God, that so thou mayst abide for aye;
Beg thou aidance of the Lord both night and day.
Praying, say to Him a-weeping dolefully:
‘Through Thy grace divine do Thou have ruth on me;
‘That see Thee clearly, ope mine eyen wide;
‘That I drop-like fall midmost the sea, and bide.
‘E’en as when the drop into the sea doth run,
‘Two they rest not, drop and sea become but one.
‘So would I, e’en as that drop, become the sea;
‘Die not, but e’en like the sea, alive would be!’
Mazed and wildered at these words the wise abide: —
‘How then hath the creature the Creator spied?’2
‘No man sees that Face,’3 ’tis thus I answer these,
‘It is his own self reflected that he sees.
‘God the Lord doth give to him of His own Light,
‘By that Light doth he the Lord God clearly sight.’4
So far may the letters hold the Verities;
By these Words it is that soar aloft the wise,1
Understanding how ’tis God that seeth God,
How it is the Light of God that seeketh God!* * * * * * * * * *
Leave thy wisdom, on this Path a madman be!2
He who gives his soul, an hundred souls wins he.
Since the soul ’s from God, to Him the soul restore;
He shall give thee many and many a soul therefor.
Sow the soul where it an hundred-fold shall bear;3
He who sows not there his soul shall evil fare.
See, thy soul, when thou ’rt asleep, where doth it flee?
See too what it worketh there4 withouten thee.
From thy body, when thou sleep’st, the soul doth fleet
Bird-like, whcresoe’er it list, doth drink, doth eat;
Of itself a soul will myriad forms assume,
City, market-place, or shop will it become;
Of itself it will become the earth, the skies;
Wakeful is the soul, while there the body lies.
Know that thus will be thy soul when comes thy death.5
When thou yieldest up thy soul heed well thy faith,6
That the soul may bear this1 with it up to God,
And may walk with houris bright in Heaven’s abode.
Happy yonder soul whose very soul is Love,
And whose service on this Path is naught but Truth!
Dead the loveless soul must needs be held, I say;
Needs must find one who a Lover2 is straightway,
That he make the soul in thee alive through Love;
Ay, that through his radiance flee this darkness off;
That he make thee, e’en as he is, true and leal;
That he pardon through his mercy all thine ill.
Seek thou eager in the world for such an one,
Hold him fast and sure, and let all else be gone.
Such as hold him fast and sure, earth’s Lords are they, —
Nay, it is through them that earth alive doth stay.3
Earth is as the body, as its soul such are.
Look within the body, where ’s the soul? say, where?
All may see the body, none the soul may see;
Never asks the wise of how the soul may be.
Viewless is the soul, that eyes should see its face;
’Tis not body, that it stand in yonder place.
Leave this eye,4 with Insight then the soul regard,
Even as thine understanding sees each word.5
Different eyes for every different thing there be;
Yea, thou hast an hundred eyes, and all do see.
Thus the ear is e’en the eye for speech, and well
Can the ear becoming speech from graceless tell.
In the body is the mouth for taste the eye,
’Twixen sweet and bitter well can it descry.
Look on every thing then with the eye therefor,
That thou mayest see, nor fall afar forlore.
One must look upon the soul with soul for eyes.
Seekest soul? — then from the body must thou rise.
Houri seek’st? — turn Houri then for Houri’s sake!
Well thou knowest horse doth ne’er with camel pair;
As the evil-worker hath not good for share.1* * * * * * * * *
Knew I Turkish, unto you I should make known
All the secrets that the Lord to me hath shown;
With my words I’d make you know whate’er I know,
All that I have found I’d make you find, I trow.
Fain would I that all the folk this thing might see,
Yea, that all the poor should rich become through me;
That to all I might make known the things I know,
That both great and small might find my finding too!* * * * * * * * * *
Seek thou God from him who doth His message bear;
Deem not such2 is other than The Truth,3 beware!
Hold thou fast by him who hath found God alway;
Neither when thou’st found him cry, ‘Where ’s God? I pray!’
Other is not God than he, ope thou thine eyes;
He it is who aye thy light to thee supplies.4
Whoso seeth one as two is squint of eye;5
Hearken not his speech, it is but trumpery.
Brother, whoso loves God from his heart, ’tis he
Who will understand these Words e’en as they be.
Heaven and earth before his sight are one alone, —
All through God, without, within, One Secret shown!
One the speech, e’en though his words a myriad be;
From his speeches will an Eye come finally.1
All that is will die, the soul alone will bide;
In yon world the Slave2 and Sultán,3 naught beside:
One are Slave and Sultán there, they are not tway;
In that Palace Prince and Slave are One for aye!* * * * * * * * * *
God to Moses said,4 ‘I have been sick indeed;
‘Is it thus that one his loving friend should heed?5
‘Great and small have come to see me, how I fare;
‘How is it to ask of me thou camost ne’er?’
Moses said, ‘Afar from Thee may sickness be!
‘The Creator Thou, whence sickness then to Thee?’
‘I’ve been sick, thou hast not come,’ said God again,
‘No account of what I told thee hast thou ta’en.’
Moses said, ‘I may not read this mystery;
‘What Thou meanest by this secret know not I.’
God made answer, ‘Sick a saint of Mine hath been;
‘There on earth My mad one suffered sickness’ teen.
‘How is it thou ne’er hast gone to see him there?
‘Never asked his plight, nor said, “How dost thou fare?”
‘For his sickness ’tis that I am sick e’en now.
‘That I’m other than My saint, Oh, deem not thou!
‘Whoso seeth him, he hath seen Me likewise;
‘Whoso asks for him hath asked for Me likewise.
‘See thou Me in him, and him in Me thou’It see;
‘Ask of Me from him, and ask of him from Me!’* * * * * * * * * *
There are, according to Veled Chelebi, nine (apparently complete) ghazels besides several couplets in Turkish in Sultán Veled’s Díwán which is about half the size of that of his father. The Chelebi quotes these two fragments as examples.
To-night a Radiance sheen hath filled thy dwelling,1
That thereinto the moonbeams briglit are welling.No more will darkness bide therein, for this Moon
Is through Its radiance darkness quite expelling.And whether gone the thief or whether still there,
Will when the house is light be easy telling.
Come, for God’s sake, come unto me that thou mayest God conceive!
Give up the world e’en this very day that thou mayest God receive!What were thy head? give thou it up along with thy flocks on this Path!
Open thine eyes then, headless soul! that thou mayest God perceive!2Soar up to Heaven aloft, O my soul, if thou indeed be mine;
Open thy hand, give up thy wealth, that thou mayest God achieve!
During those wild years when the Princes of the Decarchy were carving their little kingdoms out of the shattered empire of the Seljúq there lived in Anatolia a holy man, Yúnus Imre by name, who, though said to have been quite unlearned and scarce able to read, appears to be the first recorded native poet of the Western Turks.
Ἅshiq Chelebi, whose Tezkire or Dictionary of the Poets is one of the most interesting and valuable works of its class, alone among the biographers of poets mentions Yúnus; but Tash-köpri-záde, the author of the Crimson Peony, has a few remarks concerning him which reappear among the notices of contemporary learned and pious men that the historians Sa῾d-ud-Dín1 and Ἅlí subjoin to their accounts of the several Sultáns’ reigns. All we learn from these sources is that Yúnus was a native of the district of Boli in what is now the viláyet or province of Qastamuni, but at the close of the thirteenth century formed part of the petty kingdom of Qizil-Ahmedli, and that he was a disciple of a teacher called Tapduq Imre. In the Crimson Peony and in Ἅlí’s History we read that for long he acted — after the ancient fashion of the East — as servant to his master, and that never once among the faggots which he used to gather and bring to the hermit’s cell was there a crooked stick, which circumstance, Ἅlí adds, attracted the attention of his teacher who one day said to him, ‘Is there never a crooked stick on the hills where thou cuttest wood?’ whereupon the disciple replied, ‘Things crooked profit not in either world that I should bring such to your threshold,’ an answer which, we are told, called down on him the master’s blessing. These are the only biographical items recorded concerning Yúnus; but Tash-köpri-záde and his two followers devote each a brief notice to his teacher Tapduq Imre. From these we learn that this saintly personage settled in a hamlet near the river Saqariya where he lived in seclusion, though, following the ‘noble custom of the holy,’ he imparted instruction to a band of disciples.1
None of these biographers gives any date in connection with either master or pupil; but Tash-köpri-záde, and therefore Sa῾d-ud-Dín and Ἅlí, — though without mentioning any authority for so doing — place them among the sheykhs of Sultán Yildirim Báyezíd’s time (A. H. 792–805. A. D. 1390–1403). But as Veled Chelebi points out in the article already quoted, there occurs in one of Yúnus’s own poems the following passage which shows him to have flourished nearly a century earlier: —
‘And seven hundred and seven was the date
‘When Yúnus laid down his life (i. e. devoted himself) in this Path.2
The Muhammedan year 707 begins on the 3rd. of July 1307 and ends on the 20th. of June 1308.
For the rest, the biographers merely say that Yúnus was unlettered, that his talent was the direct gift of God. Thus Ἅshiq writes that Yúnus was ‘of the number of those perfect ones who are pulled by the hook of the Divine Attraction from the World of the Kingdom to the World of the Angelry,’1 and that ‘for all he was illiterate, he was of them who read in the college of the Divine, of them who turn the pages of the book: “We have been given knowledge for an inheritance from the Living who dieth not!”2’ that he was ‘of the saintly and just who translate the language of the lip into the language of the heart, and of those Companions of the Secret who with the Voice of the Unseen World3 declare what is in the soul.’ The biographer adds that Yúnus could hardly read, that, as he puts it in his figurative way, ‘the mirror of his heart was undulled by the turbidity of the lines and curves.’4
Referring to his work, the Crimson Peony says, ‘from the words he uttered in the ballad5 style in the Turkish tongue containing subtle points and allusions and excellencies, it is clear and manifest that he had a perfect knowledge of the Divine mysteries and held an exalted station in the Perception of the Unity.’6 Ἅlí has nothing about illiteracy, but says that Yúnus made in the Turkish language endless pleasant verses hinting at the mysteries.
The poetry of Yúnus Imre, as we have it in the lithographed edition of his works,1 consists of something over six hundred couplets in mesneví verse and a díwán of between three and four hundred ghazels. All this verse is written in the Turkish metres, which is doubtless what Tash-köprizáde means when he speaks of Yúnus’s words being in the ‘ballad style.’ In most of the ghazels there is present, in greater or less measure, the favourite Turkish arrangement of a thrice-repeated internal sub-rhyme, an arrangement which, as has been said before, works out into practical identity with what in more literary poetry is known as musemmat verse.2
Although the poems as they appear in the lithographed Díwán can hardly be in every respect quite what they were in their original form, such changes as they may have suffered during the centuries would not appear to be very vital. The rudeness inevitably attaching to a first endeavour and the ultra-Turkish character which distinguishes them are evident in every line. The rhymes, both final and internal, are often extremely defective, frequently merely assonant, it being sometimes only the vowel-sounds that agree, sometimes only the final consonants. There is of course no conscious attempt at any artificial graces; the Art of Rhetoric did not exist for Yúnus. The language, though naturally abounding in long-obsolete words and forms, is considerably more Ottoman than that of the Rebáb-Náme verses. This may probably be in some measure owing to the ‘corrections’ of successive copyists, but it is no doubt chiefly attributable to the fact that the author was a northern Turk.
In matter the poems are exclusively transcendental. Yúnus was a thorough-going mystic; nothing outside the Súfí philosophy seems to have had the slightest interest for him. There is no more single-minded poet in all Turkish literature. But while he touches more or less on nearly every side of the system, what appears to have impressed him most profoundly is the stupendous conception of the ultimate Unity of all things. Thus he loves to tell how he was with the Beloved in the beginning, how he was Moses beholding the Divine Epiphany on Mount Sinai, how he was Abraham and likewise the ram he sacrificed in his son’s stead, how he was Joseph and likewise the one who purchased him,1 how he was Mansúr and likewise his executioners;2 he further identifies himself with brutes and even inanimate objects, declaring that he is the snake in its dust-hole, the cloud wandering over the sky, the rain that descends upon the earth; and in more than one place he openly proclaims that he is God ‘who createth man from seed and who bringeth the bird from the egg.’ Yúnus’s pantheism is thus frank and outspoken; it does not, like that of so many later poets, conceal itself behind a veil of allegory. This old singer says what he means in the most downright fashion.
Yúnus’s verse is rugged beyond that of any other Turkish poet; this is in part owing to the fact that he alone used exclusively the uncultivated Turkish metres; Sultán Veled, as we have already seen, and Yúnus’s contemporaries and immediate successors, as we shall shortly see, although they did not systematically adopt the Persian quantitative scansion, wrote in one of the established Persian metres, and thus a certain air of culture is at once given to their work.
Though the direction be unusual, we clearly see in the work of this poet the influence of the master spirit of the age, Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín. For unlike most of the early Turkish poets, Yúnus is a lyric writer, and so he finds his inspiration less in the Mesneví than in the Díwán of the great mystic. The points of contact between master and disciple are many. All the philosophy of Yúnus will be found in the Díwán of Jelál, notably the former’s favourite doctrine of the ultimate Unity, which appears there in quite the manner in which he afterwards proclaimed it.1 There is also some resemblance in outward form; Yúnus is hardly more partial to the internal subrhyme than is Jelál himself; but imitation is less likely here, as this arrangement is at least as much Turkish as it is Persian.
Yet Yúnus had practically no model; though inspired by Jelál, he did not, like the early mesneví-writers, copy the Persian masters, and there was no lyric poetry in Western Turkish. There was nothing but some rude folk-songs and popular ballads; and it was in the way of these that Yúnus fashioned his verse. He may indeed have seen or heard the Díwán-i Hikmet of Khoja Ahmed-i Yeseví, which has much in common with his own both in manner and matter; but this is in Eastern, not Western, Turkish.
We have seen that the biographers say that Yúnus could barely read, we have also seen that these same biographers knew very little about Yúnus. The mere fact that his verses are in the native and not the Persian metres is itself enough to stamp him a barbarian in the eyes of these literary mandarins; it was enough to make Latífí and Hasan Chelebi exclude him altogether from their Memoirs. Of course it is impossible to decide whether the statement of Ἅshiq and the others is correct, but there is abundant evidence in the Díwán to show that Yúnus was not only perfectly familiar with the philosophy of Jelál-ud-Dín, but was thoroughly acquainted with the theological lore of his time. All that we can say is that his verse, remarkable in any case, is doubly wonderful if it be the work of a man so illiterate.
Here are two of Yúnus’s pantheistic ghazels.
Faith, idol, Kacba-fane1 am I; who smites the sphere a-spin2 am I;
The cloud upon the heavens’ face, likewise the rains that rain am I.The thunderbolt that flasheth forth, that, flashing, weaves itself in birth;
The poison-snake that deep in earth to creep and cower is fain am I.The one who Hamza3 drew o’er Qáf,4 who swelled his hands and feet therewith;
Who many from their thrones drave off, the King of Wisdom’s Rayne am I.The cloud that doth to heaven ascend, the rain that doth to earth descend,
The haze and mist that doth before the sightless eyes remain am I.Who buildeth bone and flesh and skin, who keepeth this a living thing,
Who lieth Wisdom’s crib within and Power’s milk doth drain am I.Who summer brings and earth doth cheer, who makes our heart-house His repair;5
Who doth consent to dam and sire,6 who knoweth Serfhood’s gain am I.
Full many an one have I made thrall, I’ve lived a merry life withal;
What coalless burns,1 what leaps when hammer-blows on iron rain2 am I.Let him come here who suffers woe that I to him a place may show;
My heart his home, mine eye his town; Time in the Cycle-train3 am I.It is not Yúnus sayeth this, ’tis Power’s Tongue that speaketh thus;
Who credits not a paynim is, the First and Latest e’en am I.
That Mighty One of ‘Be! and ‘tis,4 that Lord of gracious sway am I.
That King who ere ’tis cut provides for each his bread each day am I.5The One who maketh man of seed, who maketh bird from egg proceed,
Who makes the Tongue of Power to speak, He who remembereth aye am I.6Who maketh some ascetics be, and some to work iniquity;
That Argument and Proof who veils their faults and flaws alway am I.Who unto one doth horses give, doth wives and wealth and children give,
The while another lacks a groat, — that One of gracious sway am I.
Who bringeth snow and doth earth freeze, who on each brute his food bestows,
Who worketh all these businesses, the Soul of souls in fay am I.I am Eternity in sooth, that King, the Unconditioned Truth;
To-morrow Khizr1 may water dole, who wipes his sins away am I.Know ye what from Four Things proceed, behold, I am the Sign indeed;
That God who builded Fire and Air and Earth and Water, yea, am I.Who holds the veils of flesh and skin and bone and life and body e’en;
My works are Power and many an one, the Hid and Open aye am I.The Outer and the Inner I, the Former and the Latter I;
Yea, I am He, and He is I, He whom they praise alway am I.No truchman may between Us be, all wroughten there is clear to me;
Who giveth me this tongue is He; yon Sea that rolls each way am I.He who did earth and sky create, who maketh Throne and Stool rotate;2
Thousand and one His Names;3 Yúnus, He of the Koran,4 yea, am I.
The next ghazel seems to be an invitation to some friend to follow the mystic life.
Come and let us two be comrades, come and let us seek the Loved One;1
Come and let us two be helpmates, come and let us seek the Loved One.Come and guide me on our faring; to the Friend2 be our repairing;
Cast aside all dule and caring, come and let us seek the Loved One.Let us quit the world together, cheated not, for it doth wither;
Let us two be parted never, come and let us seek the Loved One.Soothly is the world unstable; ope thine eye, thy soul is sleeping;
Unto us be fere and comrade, come and let us seek the Loved One.Ere the clutch of Fate impel us, ere the voice of Death do hail us,
Ere that Ἁzrá᾽íl3 assail us, come and let us seek the Loved One.Let us see the loyal lover4 tidings of The Truth to gather,
Let us find the lover Yúnus, come and let us seek the Loved One.
In the following passage in mesneví verse Yúnus boldly attacks certain points in the conception of God prevalent among the more ignorant or fanatical of the orthodox.
O my God, if so be Thou should question me,
Lo then, this would be mine answer unto Thee; —
‘Gainst myself I’ve sinned and mine own hurt have sought;
But to Thee, O King, what have I done or wrought?
Ere I came Thou didst decree me frail to be;5
Ere my birth Thou saicht: ‘A rebel he ’gainst me!’
Even as Thou wouldest, so with me Thou’st done;
Whatsoe’er I’ve wrought, ’tis Thou hast wrought alone.
When loped mine eyes a prison met my view,
Crammed with fiends and devils, and with lust a-stew.1
Saying, ‘Lest within this jail I hungered die,’
Times have been when clean2 and unclean eat have I.
Was it I who schemed me? — nay, Thou didst me scheme;
Why createdst me so faultful, Lord Supreme?
Was there aught a-lacking to Thy Sovranty?
Or had word of mine a part in Thy decree?
Did I leave Thee hungry, eating up Thy dole?
Or did I on sudden make Thee want to thole?
Thou dost make a Bridge like to a hair3 and say:
‘Cross, and save thee from thy doom decreed, straightway!’
How should man cross o’er a bridge like to a hair?
Or he slippeth or he falleth headlong there.
When Thy servants build a bridge it is for good;
This the good, that folk may safely cross the flood.
So ’tis needful it be strong and spacious too,
That the crossers say: ‘Lo, here the road way true!’
Thou hast set a Balance4 evil deeds to weigh;
Hast designed to cast me in the fire straightway.
Scales are meet for him who may a grocer be,
May a goldsmith, merchantman, or spicer be.
Thou’rt omniscient, so Thou know’st mine every way;
Where Thy need then all my actions thus to weigh?
Since that sin unclean est is of things unclean,
In itself the very work of evil men,
Why shouldst Thou search out and weigh that filthiness?
This were seemly, that Thou veil it with Thy grace.
Thus Thou say est: ‘Mid the fire I will thee fling
‘If I see that heavy comes thine ill-doing.’
In Thy hand is ill’s decrease and wears increase,
In Thy hand is weal’s decrease and ill’s increase.
Look Thou on then at Thine ease and I shall burn!
(Far be this from Thee, O Lord for whom men yearn!)1
Is Thy vengeance sated? — Thou hast made me die,
Turned me into dust, with earth hast stopped my eye!
For a handful dust2 is all this much ado
Needful, O Thou gracious Lord of Glory true?
Now from Yúnus there hath sprung no evil deed;
And Thou knowest all that is, revealed and hid.
Another very early mystic poet is a certain Ἁlí, who is, however, always spoken of as Ἅshiq Pasha, the name Ἅshiq, which signifies ‘Lover,’ being a surname given to or assumed by him on account of his mystic fervour, while the title Pasha is in his case a mere honorific. In a preface in Persian prose prefixed to many manuscripts of his work, this poet tells us something of his own genealogy; he there describes himself as Ἁlí, the son of el-Mukhlis, the son of Sheykh Ilyás; he whose grandfather was commonly known as Baba (i. e. Father), and who himself is commonly known as Sheykh Pasha el-Ἅshiq.
This grandfather, Baba Ilyás as he is generally called, receives a brief notice in Tash-köpri-záde’s Crimson Peony, where it is stated that he dwelt in Amasiya and that, as he was a worker of miracles, he had a large number of disciples; but that the Seljúq Sultán Ghiyás-ud-Dín the son of Ἁlá-ud-Dín,1 fearing a dervish revolt, ordered a general massacre of the Súfís, and that Baba Ilyás soon after this fell into the hands of the Sultán’s troops, and was killed and his succession cut off. In a marginal note to the printed edition of the Peony, Baba Ilyás is further described as el-Khurásání (i. e. the Khurásán man), and it is added that on the irruption of Jengíz2 he came (presumably from Khurásán) into Rúm, and there settled in the neighbourhood of Amasiya.
The story of Baba Ilyás as given by Von Hammer1 differs considerably from the account in the Crimson Peony. The Austrian historian tells us that the first trouble of the reign of Sultan Ghiyás-ud-Dín II was caused by a revolt of dervishes excited by this Ilyás who had played upon the fanaticism of the people. The revolt was suppressed; but its instigator managed so to ingratiate himself with Ghiyás-ud-Dín that Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín and his companions left the Seljúq court in disgust. In another place2 the same writer says, on the authority of the historian Jenábí,3 that Baba Ilyás was killed in an attempt to raise the people of Amasiya.4
Concerning Sheykh Mukhlis, the son of this man, and the father of the poet, we are told by Ἅlí that on the death (probably it should be the deposition) of Sultan Ghiyás-ud-Dín, when chaos reigned in those regions, he was besought by the people of the province of Ionia,5 and especially by his own disciples (for like his father he was ostensibly a mystic teacher), to become the ruler of the country. He consented, but after six months of sovereignty resigned, whereupon his province was handed over to Qaraman, the son of Núr-ud-Dín, which latter had been one of Baba Ilyás’s ‘Súfís.’1 Both Ἅlí and Tash-köpri-záde say that Mukhlis, after staying for a time in the country subject to Qaraman, joined cOsmán Khan, the founder of the Ottoman power, and was present at many of that monarch’s victories.
Of the poet himself there is even less to tell than of his father or grandfather. Tash-köpri-záde and Ἅlí both give him a brief notice, but Latífí is the only one of the Tezkire-writers to make any mention of him. The last-named biographer’s statement that Ἅshiq came from some place near the confines of Persia is almost certainly erroneous, and looks very like a blurred reminiscence of his grandfather’s connection with Khurásán. Tash-köpri-záde is much more likely to be correct when he says that it was from the Kingdom of Qaraman that Ἅshiq came to the town of Qir-Shehri, in what is now the province of Angora, where, according to all authorities he settled, and where he eventually died and was buried. Latífí says that it was during the time of Sultan Orkhan, who reigned from 726 (1326) to 761 (1359), that Ἅshiq came into Rúm, being attracted thither by the presence of the famous and venerated saint Hajji Bektash who was then living in the neighbourhood of Qir-Shehri and whose companion he became.1
That is all the biographers have to say concerning the life of this old poet, which would seem to have been as uneventful as any man’s could be in those stirring times. Not one of them gives a single date; but in a Persian couplet2 at the end of the table of chapters in his poem the dates of his birth and death are mentioned as 670 (1271–2) and 13th. Safer 733 (3rd. Nov. 1332).3
Ἅshiq had a son named ῾Ulwán who was like himself a mystic poet, and who settled in a spot near Amasiya where his tomb is still a place of visitation.1
The biographers are at one in extolling the sanctity and many virtues of Ἅshiq Pasha and in declaring that his tomb was in their time, as it still is, a favourite shrine with pious souls in the neighbourhood when they would in an especial manner supplicate the Heavenly Grace.2 According to Latífí, he was man of great wealth and lived in princely style, but was none the less a true dervish in his heart and ways. ‘He is the dervish,’ Latífí reports Ἅshiq as having said, ‘who renounceth the world, he is the beggar whom the world renounceth; for with them of the Truth true poverty is not the outward, it is the inward; and that which they call dervishhood dwelleth not in homespun and serge and tattered cloak, it dwelleth in the heart; the dervish who loveth the world, whatsoever be his poverty and indigence, is yet a wordling; while that rich man, whatsoever be his riches and worldly power, who yet in his heart loveth not those things, nor inclineth thereunto, neither seeketh after them, howsoever rich a lord he be, is yet in the eyes of them of the Way among the folk of renunciation and of those who are dead unto the world: brief, dervishhood is the plucking from the heart the love of ‘the all beside,’1 and the freeing of the soul from the fetters of the world; elsewise, through cowl and frock and rosary and staff becometh no man a Súfí pure of heart; and if one hold not this path, never shall he find the way to come nigh unto The Truth.’
The long mesneví poem which constitutes Ἅshiq Pasha’s contribution to literature has been known by more names than one; but, as Dr. Rieu has pointed out,2 its true title is Gharíb-Náme3 or ‘The Book of the Stranger.’4 That this is so is proved by a passage in the poem itself. In the last division of the last chapter, almost at the very end of the book, in a discourse on the Koranic text ‘And we have not sent any apostle save with the language of his people,’1 occur these lines: —
None did to the Turkish tougue a glance accord,
None had ever to the Turks his heart outpoured.
Yet the Turks knew naught of yonder tongues,2 I say,
Naught of all those stages vast, that narrow Way.3
Now there comes this Gharíb-Náme in their speech,
That this folk likewise the hidden lore may reach.4
This leaves no doubt as to what the poet himself called his book; and this, his own title, has very properly been generally adopted of late.5 But in the Crimson Peony, which was written in the middle of the sixteenth century, we read that the ‘true name’ of Ἅshiq’s poem is Ma῾árif-Náme or ‘The Book of the Sciences;’ and this is the title under which Kátib Chelebi6 has entered it in his Bibliographical Dictionary. When Tash-köpri-záde speaks here of its ‘true name,’ he means to oppose this to its popular name which was the ‘Díwán of Ἅshiq Pasha,’1 or even simply ‘Ἅshiq Pasha.’ This title of ‘Díwán of Ἅshiq Pasha,’ which seems to have been the only one known to Latífí and Von Hammer, is singularly inappropriate to a poem which is wholly in mesneví verse, and must have arisen either through ignorance or through a slovenly use of the word Díwán as a generic name for books of poetry without regard to the nature of their contents.
Ἅshiq’s theme is naturally the mystic philosophy, the only possible theme for a poet of that age in those lands; and it is in true Oriental fashion that he sets about his task. He does not attempt to present to his readers any systematic account of the tenets that he holds, but by discoursing on a vast variety of subjects, always from the one standpoint, that of the Súfí thinker, he seeks to place them in possession of an immense mass of details all correlated, if all in chaos. The more readily to accomplish this, he hit upon an ingenious and, as far as I know, original plan for the arrangement of his book. The Gharíb-Náme is divided into ten Bábs or ‘Chapters,’ each of which is subdivided into ten Dástáns or ‘Legends.’ Now in the ten Legends of the First Chapter the poet deals with subjects associated in some way with the number One; similarly, in those of the Second Chapter he deals with subjects associated with the number Two. In like manner the Legends of the Third Chapter deal with ‘the Threes,’ those of the Fourth with ‘the Fours,’ and so on right through. Thus, for example, the Seventh Legend of the Fifth Chapter treats of the Five Senses, the First of the Seventh of the Seven Planets, while the Third of the same has for text the Seven Ages of Man. As a rule, each Legend consists of two parts, the first containing the exposition of the subject, and the second being a kind of metrical homily on some verse of the Koran or some Hadís or other aphorism of the mystics which, along with the subject, is indicated in a prefatory rubric.
That the poet is thus enabled in his hundred Legends to touch upon a great variety of matters is obvious; not less so is it that while his work may thereby acquire an external semblance of orderliness, an artificial and fantastic arrangement such as this must, even were there nothing else, render the expression of any true sequence of ideas an impossibility. When I speak of a true sequence of ideas I speak from the modern European point of view; but in considering such works as this Gharíb-Náme we must ever bear in mind that they were not written for modern Europeans, that they were written by Oriental mystics for Oriental mystics, that is, by and for men whose mental attitude is very different from ours. The purpose of such books, moreover, is not to expound the Súfí philosophic system — that is taken for known and granted — but to show by example piled upon example how the central truth upon which that system is built underlies all phenomena psychical and physical alike.
The Gharíb-Náme was finished in 730 (1329–30),1 only three years before the poet’s death, and although it is therefore probable that it was, at least in part, written in the town of Qir-Shehri, it were natural to imagine that the dialect in which it is composed would be that of the author’s native country of Qaraman. But there is a marked difference between Ἅshiq’s vocabulary and that of Sultán Veled whose work was written less than thirty years earlier and in Qonya, the very city that became the Qaraman capital. Ἅshiq Pasha’s language, though differing in detail from that of Yúnus, resembles it in being much closer to the Ottoman than that of Veled. It may therefore be that the Gharíb-Náme was either written wholly in Qir-Shehri and in the dialect which prevailed there, or, that if any part were composed before the author’s arrival in that town, this was modified after he had settled there and become familiar with the local form of Turkish. Ἅshiq’s metre is the Persian hexametric remel,1 that of Jelál-ud-Dín and Sultán Veled; his prosody continues essentially Turkish, but with a larger percentage of quantitative feet and a more sustained endeavour to manipulate the words in conformity with the Persian system.
The verses themselves read smoothly, and in matters of technique are on the whole tolerably correct; but poetry they are not. The work is a poem in form alone, and at a later period would most probably have been written in prose. As it is, the author naturally took Sultán Veled and Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín as his models; they wrote in verse, so he did the same; they used a particular metre, so he used it also; they, engrossed in the didactic side of their work, wholly overlooked the artistic, so he did likewise. Ἅshiq plods on through his hundred Legends patiently and conscientiously, but he rarely, if ever, gets beyond the level of a not very distinguished prose. His work has even less of the quality of poetry than Veled’s; and were it not for the curious conceptions and quaint illustrations that are scattered through its chapters, it would prove but dreary reading. There is, of course, hardly any attempt at art;1 the rhymes are often imperfect, and there is — as is usual in literatures in their infancy — a constant recurrence of certain expletive phrases when lines have to be filled up. By way of accounting for this absence of the rhetorical embellishments so dear to the Oriental, Latífí tells us that the men of God give no heed to artifices and fancies in their verses in order to find favour with the people, nor seek to trick out their phrases in the hope of fame and honour. If we add to this the example of Ἅshiq’s models and the condition of the Turkish language at the time he wrote, the explanation will be fairly adequate.
At the end of the Persian preface already mentioned occur the following four lines of Turkish verse — the first words in that language in the book — which read like an apology for the poem’s being written in the vulgar tongue instead of in Arabic or Persian, which up till then had been regarded as the only literary languages of Islam: —
Even though the Turkish tongue is spoken here,
Yet the Mystic Stages are made known and clear.
So thou findest all the Stages of the Way,
Turn not thou from Turk or Tajik2 tongue away.3
The reason why Ἅshiq chose to write in Turkish we have already learned from the passage quoted on page 182; and whatever we may think of his literary ability, we must hold him in honour as the first who seriously and systematically endeavoured to lay open before his fellow-countrymen what was for him the Way of Truth.
The following is the First Legend of the Fourth Chapter and is here translated in its entirety; the subject, namely the Four Elements of early science, as well as the aphorism and the Koranic verse which form the text of the homily, is mentioned in the Persian prose rubric which runs thus: — ‘The First Legend of the Fourth Chapter: The Story of the Commentation on the Four Elements, the which are the Four Columns of the Microcosm and the Four Declensions of the Macrocosm,1 the which consist of these: — the Fixture, the Traction, the Elevation and the Rest,2 and the which are in the Similitude of Four Pillars: And on the Incitation to the Understanding of ‘Whoso knoweth himself knoweth his Lord,’3 and to the joyful Persistence in the Rendering of Thanks, because of this Verse, ‘If ye give Thanks, I will surely give you Increase.’4
The First Legend of the Fourth Chapter.
Lo! the wondrous things that God hath wroughten see!
What the hand of Power Divine hath brought to be!
Wishful yearnéd He to make Himself be known,1
Build the Kingdom,2 fill with creatures of His own.
‘Be!’ He said,3 — the world, the soul, the body were,
Earth and sky arose, and man and genie there.
Every thing another’s cause ordainéd He,
Hence relationship ’twixt all the things that be.
Never hath there been a causeless thing on earth,
Never unrelated creature hath come forth.
Whatsoe’er hath come, there is a root for all;
Whatsoever thing hath root hath shoot withal.
He who hath nor root nor branch, — then who is he?
He is He who unto all doth give decree!
Listen, till that of His mighty power I tell,
So that thou may know this business sure and well;
See what He hath done, what He hath made, hath wrought,
What He hath created, what from what hath brought.
Knowledge of this work behoveth thee always,
List then while I tell, then plunge midmost amaze.
First the Prime Intelligence4 created He,
Through the which Four Ministers He made to be;
He those Four the Columns Four of earth hath dressed,
Whereby Fixture, Elevation, Traction, Rest.
Water, Fire, Air and Earth He named them there,
And He made of them this Kingdom’s bases fair.
Four domains unto the Four did God decree,
For it was not meet that these should subject be.
Each of these attends his work steadfast and sure,
And it is through these this world doth still endure.
Hearken now what is the work of each of these,
See how gladsome in his work the worker is.
Plain and garden blossom by the toil of one;
Through his labour oil and honey plenteous run.
As the Kingdom’s lamp another shineth bright,
Earth and sky are filléd with his radiant light.
One is carpet-spreader to earth’s surface e’er,
Which he careful waters, besoms, cleanses fair.
Thereunto ordainíd, fast abideth one,
That created things may pass their term thereon.
In their fourfold work the Four are blithe and gay;
Each a-work at his own work, yet mates are they.
Never till the Day of Resurrection glows
From their offices shall any these depose.
’Tis these Chieftains Four who form earth’s bases sure;
These it is who ever hold the earth secure;
’Tis through these the world doth fixed and steadfast show;
’Tis through these that plants upon the earth do grow.
Naught upon this earth may to existence win
But of these there still is present therewithin.
Whatsoe’er hath form doth grow from out these Four,
And from these all such receive their food moreo’er.
Come then, and with thought consider thine estate;
Learn and understand, so thou be wise, thy state.
See too in what manner God hath dealt by thee,
How He fashioned thee, for what He made thee be;
What the Grace that yon All-Wise to thee hath shown,
What the boon that yon All-Kind to thee hath done.
If thou knowest of His power, give thanks alway,
Call upon Him ceasing never night or day.The saying of Him — exalted be He! —
‘If ye give thanks, I will surely give you increase.’1
So thou givest thanks, He will His gifts increase;
List then till I tell thee what thy business is.The saying of Him — exalted be Ile! —
‘And as for the favour of thy Lord, discourse thereof.’When that God existence upon thee bestowed,
Earth and Water, Air and Fire in worship bowed;
Ready to thy service these arose straightway,
Full surrender to thy greatness offered they.2
Each to set his face in service loyal was fain;
(Know that this is true, nor hold these words for vain.)
What the work of each of these is I will tell,
That thou mayest know the manner of this tale.Look, within thy heart a-burning see the Fire!3
What the heat within thee, if it be not Fire?
’Tis the Fire keeps the vitals warm in thee;
’Tis through it thy body still in health doth be.
Fire too the sun that riseth every day
And with brightness tills thy house as dark it lay.
Nursing, it matureth all that thou dost sow;
Fostering, it ripens whatsoe’er doth grow,
That thou mayest eat and offer thanks withal,
Day and night upon the name of God mayst call.‘If ye give thanks, I will surely give you increase.’
Likewise came the Air and became breath for thee,
That thereby this cage4 might walk, might living be.
Should the breath depart and not return again,
Dies the body, if no breath of Air be ta’en.
Every hour a thousand times, O saintly one,5
God doth grant that Air to thee, a precious boon,
That for this likewise thou mayest thanks accord;
So with grateful breath acknowledge thou the Lord.1‘If ye give thanks, I will surely give you increase.’
See the Water, how within thy veins ’tis blood.
If thou drink it, straightway is thy thirst subdued.
Therewithal thy body lives in pleasant guise,
Using it to wash in, drink, ablutionise.
Skinker ’tis alike for wordling and for saint;
Aye, and for the Master’s Face it yearns a-faint.
This likewise yon Glorious One hath granted free,
Making it a fountain from His grace to thee,
That thou mightest drink and offer thanks anew;
Meet it is that service-rite be paid as due.‘If ye give thanks, I will surely give you increase.’
See the Earth and what the Lord therewith hath done;
He hath made the same for thee a pleasant throne.
He hath made a stead for thee on Earth right well
That upon the same thou mayest constant dwell.
From this Earth too He a form hath given thee
Such that dazed and mazed thereat are all who see,
Meet it is then thou shouldst offer thanks and praise,
Meet thou shouldest thank Him for this grace always.‘If ye give thanks, I will surely give you increase.’
So that lawful be for thee this breath and love,
So that hour by hour thy fortune greater prove,
Since these Four, O Joy,2 unto thee service do,
Be thou in the Love of God both leal and true.
These at once thy servants are, thy source, thy heart;
Ne’er let doubt thereof within thy bosom start.
Greater these than thou to outward seeing are,
Lesser these than thou in inward being are.
If one look unto the form, these nourish thee;
Know thou yet that they in truth thy servants be.
Come are these to nourish and sustain thy frame,
Come they are not for to make thee slave to them.
Every thing doth serve the soul with one accord,
While the soul itself is come to serve the Lord.
Pity if it should its servants’ servant be,
To its own dependents paying service-fee.
To the wise these words enow the meaning show;
O my mad one,1 from these words will meaning grow.
Nor would more of words avail the fool in aught;
Hearing, of their meaning he would gather naught.2
Whosoever shall have known himself in truth,3 —
He, collected,4 to himself is come in sooth.
Unto him the root of all the meaning ’s known,
Therefore is he judge and subject both in one.5
To the lover ’tis Love’s words the meaning show,
Never shall the loveless frere the meaning know.
O my God! of him to whom these words are clear
Quicken Thou the love, that with his soul he hear;
Never let him from Thy love depart or stray,
Losing ne’er in Either World the Narrow Way.
In the following extract from the Sixth Legend of the Fourth Chapter there is a curious comparison of humanity to a road lying between earth and Heaven along which souls must journey, the human body being figured as a fourgated city on this road, through which all must pass. The homily which succeeds (here omitted) deals with the means of distinguishing the true mystic from the hypocrite.
The Sixth Legend of the Fourth Chapter.
Now shall I a wondrous matter tell in verse,
And from point to point expound, comment, rehearse,
That this matter edify the soul in thee,
Food and nouriture eke for thy faith it be;
That thou mayest from this matter know thy state,
That these words may learn thee of thine own estate;
That the faithful from the hypocrite thou know,
What the life of each of these is here below.
Hearken then and how this thing is I shall tell,
So thou mayest know this business sure and well.
Through humanity a four-doored road doth go,
Where the folk of earth and Heav’n pass to and fro,
E’en as ’twere a two-doored caravanseray,
Like the months the caravan fares on alway.1
Earth and Heaven, each doth like a country lie,
Like the road between them lies humanity.
As a city on that road this form2 doth show,
Through the which both wise and foolish come and go.
In the middle of that city is a throne,
And the Sovran on that throne is God alone.
Soul His kingdom, Heart His treasure-house, and there
Mind His alnager, His measure Knowledge fair.
Stands this City of the Form in high esteem;
E’en although to thee so circumscribed it seem.1
In this city there are Portals Four in truth;
I shall name each by its name in all good sooth:
One of these is called the Eye, and one the Ear,
One the Tongue, and one the Hand, as thou dost hear.
Good and evil, all must pass through these in whole,
Be arraigned before the mind, pass through the soul.
Through the Hand some leave that enter through the Eye,
Through the Ear come some that through the Tongue do hie.
Thus the Ear gets words the which it gives the heart,
From the heart again these to the Tongue do start;
Wot ye well what comes through Eye through Hand doth go,
And what comes through Ear through Tongue departeth, know.* * * * * * * * * * * *
The last extract which I shall give from the Gharíb-Náme IS the Fourth Legend of the Seventh Chapter. It describes a series of Seven Things contained one within the other and each the other’s life. In this case there is no homily.
The Fourth Legend of the Seventh Chapter.
If thou’rt mate, O heart, with one who knows the Path,
Or if thou thyself art one who vision hath,
Learn its lesson from each thing that thou dost see,
So thou mayest know the Source whence all things be.
If the eye learn of things seen their lessoning,
In the heart will knowledge surely sprout and spring;
Thence to it the Hidden Treasure2 will be shown,
And by it the manner of this world be known.
Understand thou that this world is manifold:
What then are its folds? Why is it fold on fold?
What is of each fold the state, the fashioning?
Knowledge verily it is to know this thing.
Hearken then unto these words that I recite,
That thou mayest know the Heavenly Sovran’s might.
Know then that this world is sevenfold, I say;
Inner, outer, hidden each from each are they.1
One the other’s life these Seven Folds are, see,
These as ’twere the veins, as ’twere the hlood those be.
Deeper in than all there lies the Life of Lives,
That it is for which each being yearns and strives.
Bodies are these Seven Folds, the life is That;
Whoso knoweth, he may know all things but That.
To the proving of these words come now are we;
Look, the providence of yonder Sovran see.
See thou how this world is fashioned sevenfold,
All toward that King Divine their faces hold.
Each of these shall I describe in turn to thee;
Listen now to how from first to last they be.
One Fold is this Earth and Sky, like body this.
Hearken thou, a wondrous disposition ’tis.
Now these Seven Folds are each the life of each;
Yet material they, if to their root thou reach.
Every form whose inner part is empty, still
Needeth something else its vacuum to fill.
See upon the Earth these Buildings2 high and low;
That these are the life o’ th’ Earth, O father,3 know.
Through these buildings ’tis the world’s alive, I say;
Else ’twere only as a lifeless form for aye.
All these towns and villages on Earth that are,
These it is that keep the Earth alive, be ware.
Wheresoever these be waste and ruinéd,
Know thou this that yonder place is truly dead.
In whatever place there naught of Buildings be,
No one from that place shall aught of profit see.
Thus ’tis Buildings are the life of Earth alway,
Though that in themselves material are they.
Now unto the Buildings’ life arrived are we;
Hearken then to what the life thereof may be.
Even as ’tis Buildings that make Earth to live,
’Tis Humanity that life to them doth give;
’Tis the Form of Man that is the life of these;
Hear this mystery, then plunge midmost amaze.
Every Building whereto Man doth not repair,
Know that thence will come no profit anywhere.
Know of every ruined and deserted stead,
That ’tis as a carcass whence the life is fled.
Whatsoever realm doth all unpeopled lie, —
Dead is yonder region, dead, in verity!
’Tis the Folk that maketh kingdoms firm and sure,
Making still their life and welfare to endure.
’Tis the Folk that are a kingdom’s life, in fay;
If they go, the kingdom dies, it cannot stay.
Many are the lives on earth, but noblest see
Standeth Man; yea, Noblest of the Noble he.
First of all created things Man standeth forth,
So ’tis he who rules the kingdoms upon earth.
Yea, ’tis Man that keeps the life in kingdoms, yea;
If a kingdom manless be, it dies straightway.
Now to Man a Soul1 and Body both belong;
’Tis his Soul that keeps his Body stark and strong.
Goes the Soul, the Body dies, it works no more;
Others take his wealth and all his worldly store.
Through the Soul it is the Form hath beauty fair;
Goes the Soul, desire no more remaineth there.2
Through the Soul the ear doth hear, the eye behold,
Through the Soul the foot doth walk, the hand doth hold,
Through the Soul it is the tongue hath power of speech,
And from land to land ’mong folk its judgments reach.
’Tis the Soul that keeps the Form a living thing;
For if go the Soul, what from the Form will spring?
That is settled, come and at the Soul look now,
What it is that makes the Soul alive see thou.
Know then Knowledge1 makes the Soul alive in sooth,
Life unto the Soul ’s the Knowledge of the Truth.
Whatsoever Soul is Knowledgeless is dead;
See thou how that lower than all else its stead.
’Tis through Knowledge that the Souls such virtue gain;
Therefore doth this over Kings and Sultans reign.
Yonder Soul whose life is Knowledge of the Lord, —
See how over all it reigneth Sovran-lord.
’Tis this Heavenly Knowledge holds the Soul alive;
Much of wisdom from that Soul will grow and thrive.
In the dullard’s Soul there is no life in sooth;
Know these words for true, for they are very truth.
Life upon the Knowers hath the Lord bestowed,
Therefore do these ever yearn and seek for God.
Since it is the life of Souls The Truth to know,
Faithfully this Heavenly Knowledge study thou.
Thus ’tis Knowledge doth the Soul alive maintain,
See now whence this Knowledge its own life doth gain.
’Tis through Reason2 Knowledge lives in very deed;
Look through Reason, and therewith this Knowledge read.
Naught of Knowledge his who hath of Reason naught;
He who Reason hath is thence with Knowledge fraught.
He whose Knowledge lives hath this through Reason done,
He who Knowledge wins hath this through Reason won.
Yea, the Knowledge of the Reasonless is dead,
Hence no work of his hath aught accompliséd.
’Tis this Reason is the life of Knowledge, sooth;
He who Reason lacks wins not through Knowledge truth.
Who hath Knowledge and yet doth not Reason own? —
From a Knowledge such as his result were none.
Thus that Knowledge living is whose comrade true
Reason is from first to last and through and through.
Well, that Knowledge lives through Reason thou dost see;
Look now at what maketh Reason living be.
Look now, what is it that maketh Reason live?
Hearken, that the tale thereof to thee I give.
Love it is makes Reason live, know thou in truth;
Dead the Loveless Reason is in sooth est sooth.
Who may man of Reason yet no Lover be?
Were there such, unworthy of The Truth were he.
Dead the Reason that for comrade hath not Love;
Lower such than e’en the very lusts thereof.1
For such Reason as with Love trod not the road
Wisdom and the Mysteries were never food.
’Tis this holy Love is Reason’s life indeed;
Love it is that Reason up to God doth lead.
Whate’er Reason is not in that Presence dazed, —
Know the Love of God hath not its life upraised.
Rooted is such Reason fast in drearihead;
For no life it hath, which meaneth it is dead.
Lo this Reason’s life is Love ill very sooth;
See how Loveless Reason ne’er may win The Tru’n.
Well thou knowest now this Reason’s life is Love;
Look at Love and see from whence its life doth prove,
See through what it is that Love is thus alive;
Know in truth The Truth to Love its life doth give.
Yea, the life of Love is through The Truth alone;
Parted from The Truth, hath Love nor stead nor wone.
In the world below hath Love no fond desire,
To The Truth alone its wistful hopes aspire.
Naught in Love beside The Truth may ever be;
So the heart is filled, nor seeketh worldly fee.
Ne’er in Love do name and fame exultant rise;
But in Love full many a ‘hidden treasure’ lies.
’Tis The Truth’s own word that by Love’s tongue is said,
’Tis The Truth’s own work that by Love’s hand is sped;
’Tis The Truth’s own light that looketh through Love’s eye,
Therefore doth it build at times, at times destroy.
Reason, Spirit, Body, Soul are slaves to Love,
For The Truth hath filléd Love; doubt ne’er thereof.
Since it is The Truth makes Love alive in sooth,
Hold thou fast by Love that thou mayst win The Truth.
Love is His, the Lover and the Loved is He;
So thou wouldest win to Him, a Lover be.
Know that Love may never be from Him apart,
Ne’er for aught beside take then from Love thy heart.
Love is life of all, The Truth is life of Love;
Hid within the Signless doth that Sign less move.
So these Seven Things whereof hath been our speech
Are in verity each one the life of each.
’Tis The Truth, O Joy, that makes the life of Love,
So the Man of Love can never faithless prove.
Love it is makes Reason live without gainsay,
So the face of Reason looks to Love alway.
Knowledge ’tis that holdeth Reason still alive,
From which cause it is this work doth grow and thrive.
Knowledge ’tis that makes the Soul alive, be ware;
Dead indeed the Soul that doth not Knowledge share.
Lives the Body through the Soul, Soulless ’tis dead;
’Neath the dust is aye the Soulless Body’s stead.
’Tis through Bodies that yon Buildings living show;
How should kingdom flourish thus through jealous foe?
It is Buildings keep the World a living thing;
Without Buildings what within the World would spring?
These the Seven Things, they have been told in whole; —
Where thou passest to through all, there is the Goal!
E’en as Seven Veils are these, an thou enquire;
There whereto thou passest through dwells thy Desire.
Now thou needs must pass through these and onward go.
If thy strength vail not to pass, what shalt thou do? —
Hold thou fast by Love, ’tis surest guide for thee,
Passing thee through all to there where dwelleth He.
For that Love is far beyond all else that is,
And its realm Infinitude’s dominion is,
He who goes with Love finds to The Truth the way;
Never shall he die, nay, he shall live for aye.
Whoso looks with Love into his dear one’s face, —
Wheresoe’er he look, behold, what meets his gaze!
Glory therefore in thy Love, O Lover true;
’Tis through Love that man hath passed this Kingdom1 through.
Whosoe’er hath Love for wings, forth let him go!
Heav’n forfend that he should bide on earth below!
O my God! may we ne’er lose the Narrow Way,
Never let us from Thy Love depart or stray.
1 Several authorities write this name Germiyan.
2 Sometimes called Isfendyárli.
3 To the east was a welter of Turkman hordes, from out of which there emerged later on several local Turkish kingdoms, three of which maintained their independence in face of the Ottomans for over a century.
1 Anvarí, who died in 587 (1191–2), is considered by many to have carried the Persian qasída to its highest point of perfection.
2 Zahír-ud-Dín-i Fáryábí died in 598 (1201–2). His qasídas were held in high esteem by his contemporaries, some of whom placed them before those of Anvarí. He is frequently mentioned by the early Turkish writers, always in terms of respect and admiration .
3 Nizámí of Genje was born in 535 (1140–1) and died in 598 (1201–2) or 599 (1202–3). His Khamsa or ‘Quintet’ contains these five mesnevís : Makhzenul-Esrár or ‘The Treasury of Secrets,’ ‘Khusrev and Shírín,’ ‘Leylí and Mejnún,’ Heft-Peyker or ‘The Seven Effigies,’ and the Iskender-Náme or ‘Book of Alexander.’ ‘The Treasury of Secrets’ is a didactic-mystic work in which the author discusses a number of questions bearing on conduct, each of which he elucidates by the addition of some appropriate anecdote. Works of this description became very popular both in Persia and Turkey. The ‘Khusrev and Shírín’ and the ‘Leylí and Mejnún’ are romances on famous love-stories. ‘The Seven Effigies’ is a romance on the adventures of King Behrám-i Gur and his lady-loves. ‘The Book of Alexander’ consists of two parts, of which the first is sometimes called the Sheref-Náme or ‘Book of Glory’ or the Iqbál-Náme or ‘Book of Fortune,’ and the second the Khired-Náme or ‘Book of Wisdom;’ it deals with the romantic history of Alexander the Great. As these books were afterwards reproduced in Turkish, we shall examine their subjects more closely farther on.
1 Mevláná. (in Arabic, ‘Our Lord’) is a title prefixed to the names of great dervish sheykhs and eminent members of the ῾ulemá.
2 Eflákí, who was a disciple of Jelál’s grandson Chelebi Emír Ἅrif, wrote at the request of his teacher a biographical work on the early Mevleví fathers, which he called Menáqib-ul-Ἅriffín or ‘The Acts of the Adepts.’ A number of translated extracts from this work. which was completed in 754 (1353), are prefixed to Sir J. W. Redhouse’s translation of the First Book of the Mesneví (Trübner, 1881).
1 The full title of this famous book is Mesneví-i Ma῾neví or ‘The Spiritual Couplets;’ but it is usually styled simply The Mesneví, as being the Mesneví among all mesnevís.
2 A selection of ghazels from Jelál’s Díwán along with translations and valuable critical notes has been published by Mr. R. A. Nicholson under the title of ‘Selected Poems from the Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz’ (Cambridge University Press, 1898.)
3 The so-called ‘dancing dervishes’ are members of this order. The mystic dance which certain among them perform every week was instituted by Jelál himself who describes it in more than one poem in his Díwán, where he represents it as symbolic of the universal life with its movements multiplex yet one.
4 Sheykh Ghálib.
1 Rúm is an Oriental form of Rome. The names ‘Greece’ and ‘Greek’ are unknown: Yúnán represents Ionia. So powerfully did the Roman conquest of Greece and Asia Minor affect the Asiatic mind that to the Orientals not only all the subsequent, but all the former movers in these lands have ever since been ‘Romans.’ Thus Alexander the Great is known throughout the East as Iskender-i Rúmí ‘Alexander the Roman;’ while all the later dwellers in these regions,-Byzantines, Seljúqs and Ottomans, have likewise been indiscriminately callēd Rúmís, that is ‘Romans;’ and their emperor, Christian or Muslim, is the Qaysar-i Rúm or ‘Cæsar of Rome.’ And so the Ottoman Empire is, and has always been, styled the ‘Roman Empire,’ or simply ‘Rome,’ by Persians, Tartars, Afghans and Indians; an Ottoman Turk is called by these a ‘Roman,’ and the Ottoman language, the ’Roman language.’ The name Rúm is thus virtually a geographical term and represents the territories ruled in succession by Roman, Byzantine, Seljúq and Ottoman; and it is in this sense that it is used in Persian and literary Turkish. The name Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín-i Rúmí therefore means etymologically ‘Our Lord Jelál-ud-Dín the Roman (or, of Rome),’ but practically, ‘Our Lord Jelál-ud-Dín the Seljúq Turk (or, of Seljúq Turkey).’
1 See an article entitled Edebíyát-i Islámíya or ‘Muslim Literature’ by Mehemmed Veled Chelebi in the special number of the journals Terjumán-i Haqíqat and Servet-i Funún published in aid of the destitute Muhammedans ol Crete in 1313 (1897).
2 The office of him who is to be thy brother on the mystic journey is arduous and vital, so it behoves thee to choose him with the utmost care.
3 Quzum ‘my lamb’ is a common form of familiar address among all classes in Turkey; but ‘my black lamb,’ if used at all now, must be provincial.
4 ‘The tongueless,’ i. e. those who are wrapt in silent contemplation of the Divinity, who have reached that stage where speech is not only inadequate but is misleading.
5 i. e. ‘I would learn thy language so as to entertain thee.’ So at least Veled Chelebi explains the words: —
1 Larende is the old name of the town Qaraman; it is still used in official documents.
2 The ‘Intimacy’ alluded to in this title is that between God and the mystic.
3 The generalship of the Mevleví order is still in the family of Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín. The General bears the special title of Chelebi Efendi. The headquarters of the order are and ever have been at Qonya. The mausoleum of Jelál in that city is a beautiful building surmounted by a dome which is covered with blue tiles. The mausoleum is consequently famous throughout the Muslim world as the Qubbe-i Khazrá or ‘Green Dome.’ As we shall have frequent occasion to remark, the Easterns do not regard blue and green as distinct colours, but merely as different shades or tints of one colour.
1 Professor Vámbéry announced his discovery of these Greek verses in a letter to the Athenæum of January 7th, 1888. Veled Chelebi says that Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín also has some verses in Greek.
1 The attention of Western scholars was first drawn to the Turkish verses in the Rebáb-Náme by Von Hammer who pUblished the text and a German translation in 1829, in the 48th. vol. of the Jahrbücher der Literatur. Prof. Moriz Wickerhauser published a revised text (transliterated) and translation in the 20th. vol. of the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft; while Dr. Behrnauer and Prof. Fleischer contributed some interesting and valuable notes on this revision to the 23rd. vol. of the same journal. In 1891 M. C. Salemann published, under the title of ‘Noch Einmal die Seldschukischen Verse,’ the text of the whole of the hundredth section, with a German translation, and, in an appendix, the Greek verses. The MS. from which M. Salemann printed this edition belongs to the Asiatic Museum of St. Petersburgh, and differs in some points from that preserved at Vienna, which contains the text used by the earlier editors.
2 Mevláná Jelál-ud-Dín, the poet’s father.
3 The Pole or Centre round which others revolve, or to which others are drawn. ‘The Pole of Saints’ is an honorific title, applied sometimes to others. besides Jelál-ud-Dín .
4 ‘The Way’ or ‘the Path,’ i. e. the mystic teaching that leads to absorption in God.
5 i. e. these Words that point the Way of Life.
1 By ‘Words’ here and elsewhere in this and similar poems we must understand the idea or thought which is behind the uttered word and of which this is the expression; thought and word must be regarded as inseparable, as but two aspects of the same intellectual act; exactly as in the case of the Greek Logos, from which indeed the conception originally came.
2 This line is the question of the ‘wise’ enquirers.
3 The Face of God.
4 In the text published by M. Salemann there here follow five couplets omitted in the Vienna MS. These are to the effect that if Light be in a man’s eye, he doth see Light, and the Light of the sun cometh to him; for Light is one thing, and must not be regarded as two. So if Soul be in a man, he shall see Soul. Whatsoever is from thee is not from Him, though such things (i. e. as come from thee) be many in the world. Wisdom is necessary that one may see Wisdom: how should the fool, who hath no Wisdom, see it? Know this that thy (rational) wisdom cannot know Him, even as the soulless cannot see the soul. The central idea here is that like only can apprehend like, that in order to really understand anything, one must become identified with it; and so to know God, one must be merged in God, become conscious of the Godhead in one’s soul. The same idea occurs farther on in the poem.
1 i. e. so far (but no farther) may the Verities be expressed by language; yet this account will point the wise the way to the higher Truths.
2 The mystic, rapt and beside himself at the vision of Eternal Beauty, glories in describing himself as ‘mad.’
3 The figure here was probably suggested by this passage from the Koran, ii, 263: ‘The likeness of those who expend their wealth in the way of God is as the likeness of a grain that groweth to seven ears, in every ear an hundred grains, for God will double unto whom He pleaseth; for God encompasseth and knoweth.’
4 In dream-land.
5 Compare Koran, xxxix, 43: ‘God taketh souls at the moment of their death; and those that die not (He taketh) in their sleep; He restraineth those on whom He hath decreed death, and He sendeth back the others till their appointed term; — verily, in that are signs to a people who reflect.’
6 The moment of death was considered peculiarly critical, the idea being that Satan appeared to the man just about to die and offered him a cup of water on condition of his recognising him as a God. Sa῾dí alludes to this near the end of the Bústán, where in a prayer, which he puts into the mouth of a devotee, he implores God: —
‘In that vortex of the last breath
‘Do Thou save me from the shame of saying Two!’
i. e. from confessing that there are two Gods.
1 i. e. thy faith in the Unity.
2 i. e. a mystic, one who is in love with the Divine Beauty. The ‘Lover’ is the mystic’s favourite name for himself.
3 i. e. it is by means of such holy ones that the spiritual life is preserved in the world.
4 i. e. the bodily eye which is adapted to perceive material objects alone.
5 Understanding is the eye adapted to see the thought lying behind words.
1 This and the two foregoing couplets teach that man must identify himself with what he seeks; so if he seek the soul, he must eliminate the earthly and become all soul; a conception to which, as we have observed, the poet has already alluded.
2 i. e. the messenger.
3 The Truth, i. e. God.
4 I here follow Salemann who conjecturally regards the obscure word 
as a corruption of the Persian 
taken in the sense of ‘light, rather than Fleischer who takes it to mean ‘daily bread.’
5 It was commonly believed that squint-eyed people see double.
1 However much and often the Lover speak, his real subject is always the same; and from his speeches there is at last developed an inward eye capable of perceiving The Truth.
2 The Slave, i. e. the human soul.
3 The Sultan, i. e. God.
4 This legend, which occurs in the Ninth Story of the Second Book of the Mesneví offers a striking parallel to Matthew, xxv, 36–40.
5 Does one show his regard for a friend by neglecting him when he is ill?
1 We may take the Radiance to be God, the dwelling to be the poet’s heart, and the thief mentioned in the third couplet to be his ego or selfhood.
2 By ‘head’ selfhood is meant; so in the language of the mystics ‘headlessness’ means self-annihilation, absorption into the Divine. Jelál-ud-Dín says in one of his ghazels: —
‘Draw in thy head, O comrade, for this is not the season of speech;
‘In the headlessness of Love why raisest thou thy head? Do it not.’
And Háfiz: —
‘A wondrous path is the Path of Love, for there
‘He who uplifteth his head is he who is headless.’
1 Sa῾d-ud-Dín Efendi was born in Constantinople in 943 (1536–7) and died there in 1008 (1599–1600). His history of the first nine Ottoman Sultans, called Táj-ut-Tewáríkh or ‘The Crown of Chronicles,’ is very famous and is reckoned an admirable example of the Turkish prose of its period. It is popularly called Khoja Táríkhi or ‘The Khoja’s History,’ the author having been khoja or preceptor to Sultan Murád III.
1 Ἅli adds that Tapduq Imre was a friend of the celebrated saint Hajji Bektash; but many of his stories concerning these holy men of old are so obviously legendary that little reliance can be placed on his statement.
1 i. e. from the physical to the spiritual plane, see pp. 55–6.
3 Lisán-ul-Ghayb, lit. ‘the Tongue of the Unseen World,’ such as that wherewith spoke the prophets and saints when under inspiration. Háfiz is sometimes called ‘the Voice from the Unseen,’ because it was usual to draw auguries by opening his Diwán at hazard and judging from the first passage that caught the eye. This species of divination was once common in Europe, where the Bible and the works of Virgil were generally used.
4 The ‘lines and curves,’ i. e. the letters of the alphabet.
5 The original word is Warsaghi, which is the name of a kind of ballad (presumably) invented by, or learned from, the Warsaqs, a nomadic Turkish tribe scattered in the Qaraman district. The word is however used also by the Eastern Turks.
6 ‘Ilm-i Tevhíd ‘the Knowledge or Perception of the Unity,’ i. e. that aspect of mysticism which discloses to the saint the ultimate Oneness of all existing things.
1 Lithographed in 1302 (1884–5).
2 See p. 72.
1 That is Zelíkhá, Potiphar’s wife, of whom we shall hear much.
2 For Mansúr, see p. 21, n. 2.
1 See the ghazel printed on pp. 331–2 of Mr. Nicholson’s Selections from the Dīwāni Shamsi Tabrīz.
1 The Kacba or ‘Cubical House’ at Mekka is the centre of the Muhammedan world. Towards it the Faithful turn when they worship, and to visit it they go on pilgrimage from every land. Here Yúnus takes it to typify Islam, the ‘idol’ standing for the (conventionally) false religions; he would identify himself with every form of religion, non-Muhammedan as well as Muhammedan.
2 i. e. He who makes the spheres revolve.
3 This line refers to an incident in the legendary history of Hamza the uncle of the Prophet.
4 For the mountain-chains of Qáf see p. 38.
5 Probably an allusion to the well-known Hadís 
‘the heart of the believer is the house of God.’
6 i. e. He who while thus universal condescends to individual, physical birth.
1 In allusion to this famous passage of the Koran, xxiv, 35: ‘God is the light of the heavens and the earth; His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp is in a glass, the glass is as though it were a glittering star; it is lit from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the east nor of the west, the oil of which would well-nigh give light though no fire touched it, — light upon light! — God guideth to His light whom He pleaseth, and God striketh out parables for men, and God all things doth know.’
2 i. e. Fire (Nár), this is contrasted with ‘what coalless burns,’ i. e. Light (Núr). Light (Núr) and Fire (Nár) are often taken to symbolise respectively the Beautiful (Jemál) and the Awful (Jelál) Attributes of God. See p. 66, n. 2.
3 The circling Time that brings healing on its wings.
4 In the Koran, ii, III, we read, ‘And when He decreeth a matter, He doth but say unto it ‘Be!’ and it is.’ This phrase, ‘Be! and it is,’ expressing the Divine command and its instantaneous effect, summarises the creative power of God, and is repealed again and again in the Koran. It finds a parallel in the Biblical text, ‘He spake; and it was done.’ (Psalms, xxxiii, 9.) where ‘done’ is printed in italics, as not being in the original Hebrew.
5 He who while the grain is yet growing assigns to each creature its daily portion.
6 An allusion to Koran, ii, 147, where God says, ‘Remember me, and I will remember you; thank me, and be not ungrateful.’
1 This Khizr is a very vague personage, but one whom we are continually encountering in Oriental poetry. He is mentioned in the Koran, and is believed to have been one of the ancient Prophets, being confused by some with Elias and St. George, both of whom are called Khizr-Ilyás. It is generally in connection with the Stream of Life, of which he is often represented as the guardian, that he is mentioned by the poets. Having drunk of that Living Water, he is, of course, immortal, and it is said that sometimes, under the form of an aged man, he appears to pious Muslims in distress and helps them out of their troubles, but disappears as soon as his identity is suspected. In the Alexander-legend Khizr, as we shall see by and by, is represented as an officer in the army which accompanies the great conqueror on his quest of the Fountain of Life, and is the only man in all the host to find and drink of the wondrous Stream. The name Khizr is Arabic, and is etymologically connected with the idea of greenness, the connection perhaps being through evergreen to immortal.
Yúnus in the present passage means to say that to him the Water of Life which Khizr might offer is as nothing, that indeed it is he (Yúnus) who forgives that holy one (Khizr) his sins.
2 ‘Throne and Stool,’ in the original, Ἁrsh and Kursí (see p. 35); as these are spoken of as rotating, the poet may possibly mean them to be taken here as the Ninth and Eighth Spheres (see p. 68).
3 It is said by some that the ‘Names’ of God are one thousand and one.
4 ‘He of the Koran,’ i. e. the Author of the Koran, i. e. God.
1 ‘The Loved One,’ i. e. God.
2 ‘The Friend,’ i. e. God.
3 Ἁzrá᾽íl is the name of the Angel of Death.
4 The ‘lover’ is of course the mystic.
5 Even as we read in the Koran, iv, 32, ‘For man was created weak.’
1 The devil-crammed prison may perhaps be the world, perhaps the human heart.
2 ‘Musmul’ the word in the original, is a corruption of ‘bismil’ which is applied to the flesh of animals slaughtered for food according to the requirements of the Law. In this line the poet confesses that he has at times transgressed the Law, but insinuates that he has done so under the compulsion of circumstances beyond his control.
3 This refers to the Bridge Sirát ‘finer than a hair and sharper than a sword’ which according to common belief — though there is no mention of it in the Koran — spans the gulf of hell, and over which, it is said, all must pass after the Last Judgment, the wicked to fall into the abyss. This fable, the allegorical origin of which is obvious, is common to the Jewish and Magian traditions, whence doubtless it found its way into popular Islam.
4 This again alludes to the allegorical Balance (also taken literally by the vulgar) in which God will on the Judgment Day weigh the good and evil deeds of men. It is referred to in several passages of the Koran, such as the following (vii, 7–8): ‘And the balance on that Day is Truth; and whosesoever scales are heavy, they are the prosperous; and whosesoever scales are light, they are those who lose themselves.’ Here, as when speaking of the Bridge, the poet satirizes the idea of God punishing man whom He created so frail.
1 By this line the poet would show that it is not the way of God (whom he loves) that he is assailing, but only a false and degrading conception thereof.
2 i. e. a mortal man.
1 The Seljúq Sultan, Ghiyás-ud-Dín II, succeeded to the throne in 634 (1236–7). The Mongols under Hulagu invaded Western Asia in 641 (1243). Ghiyás was defeated and surrendered in 643 (1245–6), whereupon he was deposed from the Sultanate. He was put to death in 657 (1259). Ghiyás-ud-Dín II was the last Seljúq Sultan to wield any real power.
2 Jengíz began his career of foreign conquest early in the thirteenth century; it continued unchecked until his death in 624 (1227).
1 Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, vol. i, pp. 43–4.
2 Hist. Emp. Ott. vol. i, p. 262, note.
3 Jenábí is an Ottoman historian who wrote in Arabic a history of the Muhammedan dynasties down to 997 (1588–9), under the title of El-Bahr-uz-Zakhkhár, ‘The Flowing Tide.’ He died in 999 (1590–1).
4 Under the entry ‘Qaramau’ in his Biographical and Geographical Dictionary Sámí Bey speaks of Baba Ilyás as ‘one of those sheykhs who took up dervishhood as a pretext for acquiring position ahd fortune,’ and adds that he was killed. The story of his winning the Sultan’s favour may perhaps arise from a confusion between him and his disciple Núr-ud-Dín the Súfí. From all accounts Baba Ilyás seems to have been one of those ‘Súfís’ whose acts contributed to bring the name of the sect into ill repute.
5 The name Ionia (Yúnán) used sometimes to be given by the Turks to the region (more or less) which is generally called Qaraman.
1 According to Von Hammer (Hist. Emp. Ott. vol. i, p. 262), during the reign of Ghiyás-ud-Dín’s predecessor Ἁlá-ud-Dín, which extended from 616 (1219) to 634 (1236–7), ‘Nour Sofi,’ an Armenian by birth and one of the most fanatical disciples of Baba Ilyás, settled in Qonya, where his son Qaraman won the favour of the Sultan who gave him his daughter in marriage and appointed him to a high office at court. ‘Nour Sofi’ succeeded by a ruse in getting possession of the stronghold of Selefke — till then in Byzantine hands — whereupon Ἁlá-ud-Dín invested Qaraman with the government of the same, adding thereto that of the town of Larende. This was the beginning of what on the Seljúq collapse became the Kingdom of Qaraman, originally the strongest in the Decarchy and for a century and a half the stoutest rival of the Ottoman. Tash-köpri-záde says that after Sheykh Mukhlis Baba had been King in Ionia (Yúnán) for six months he seated in his place Qaraman, a five-year-old son of Núr-ud-Dín, one of Baba Ilyás’s Súfís.
As will be noticed, the historians differ as to the age of Qaraman; Von Hammer makes him a married man and court official during Ἁlá-ud-Dín’s reign; Tash-köpri-záde says he was a child at the time of the fall of Ghiyás-ud- Dín, Ἁlá-ud-Dín’s successor. Possibly the Qaraman who succeeded Sheykh Mukhlis was a grandson of Núr-ud-Dín the Súfí.
1 This Hajji Bektash has always been a saint of great repute in Turkey. Early in the eighth century of the Hijre (the fourteenth century A. D.) he came from Níshápúr in Khurásán to Anatolia, where he was visited by Sultan Orkhan who received his blessing. When that Sultan founded the famous regiment of the Janissaries,he went to the cell of the saint accompanied by a few representatives of the newly instituted corps on which he implored the blessing of the holy man. Hajji Bektash in response held out his arm over the head of the foremost soldier, pronounced his blessing, and at the same time named the regiment Yeñi-Cheri or ‘New-Troop,’ which name we have corrupted into Janissary. Hajji Bektash lived on into the time of Sultan Murád I, who reigned from 761 (1359) to 792 (1390). He is buried at a place near Qir-Shehri called after him Hajji Bektash, and his tomb has ever been a favourite place of visitation. Numerous stories, many of which are recorded in Ἅlí’s work, are current concerning the miracles he is alleged to have worked. The dervishes of the Bektashí order, which takes its name from him, have always regarded him as their Pír or spiritual chief; the rules of the order were not, however, drawn up by him, but by one of his disciples, Balim by name, who is looked upon as the second Pír of the order.
‘He came to the world in kh῾, he went away in zlj,
‘The 13th. day of Safer, the night of Tuesday, O so-and-so!’
Here the numerical values of the letters 
kh῾ give 670, those of 
zlj give 733. ‘So-and-so’ is the reader.
3 Kátib Chelebi likewise gives 733 as the year of Ἅshiq’s death both in his Taqwím-ut-Tewáríkh or ‘Chronological Tables’ and in his great bibliographical dictionary called Keshf-uz-Zunún. Von Hammer’s statement, for which he gives no authority, that the poet lived on into the reign of Murád I is therefore incorrect.
1 The only verse of ῾Ulwán Chelebi’s that I have seen is the following which is quoted in the Crimson Peony: —
‘Still is ῾Ulwán the most lowly of the servants of the saints;
‘He is lowliest, he is lowliest, lowliest of the lowly he.’
The author of the Peony says that in his youth he visited the tomb of ῾Ulwán and was much edified and benefited in consequence thereof. He says that ῾Ulwán was the author of a Diwán.
2 Although not countenanced by the Koran, the practice of visiting the tombs of holy men is common in Muhammedan countries. The object of these pious visitations varies with the intellectual status of the pilgrim. The most ignorant members of the community, more especially women of the lower classes, go there in order to implore some temporal or material favour (very often a son), and sometimes these even address their prayers to the saint himself. Persons somewhat higher in the intellectual and social scale look upon such spots as holy ground and believe that prayers offered there have a peculiar efficacy. The better educated among the strictly orthodox visit such shrines out of respect for the holy man and in order to salute the place where his remains repose. The object with which the mystics, with whom must be included most of the poets as well as writers like Tashköpri-záde, make such pilgrimage is that they may enjoy what they call muráqaba or ‘spiritual communion’. with the soul of the holy man. The pilgrim in this case fixes his heart or soul wholly on that of the saint, the result being that it experiences an ecstatic communion with this in the Spirit World, whereby it is greatly strengthened and rejoiced on its return to the earthly plane. It is not, we are expressly told, because the soul of the saint is supposed to linger about his tomb that the mystic goes thither for his muráqaba; but because it is easier for the mystic to banish all outside thoughts and fix his heart wholly and exclusively on that of the saint in a place which is hallowed by associations with the latter.
1 The Sum of the Universe is frequently expressed as: Alláh (i. e. ‘God’) plus Má-sewá-lláh i. e. ‘What is beside God.’ This phrase ‘What is beside God’ thus represents the phenomenal or contingent universe. Contracted to Má-sewá ‘the what is beside,’ ‘the all beside,’ or ‘the what is else,’ ‘the all else,’ it is constantly used by poets and other writers, generally with a sense similar to that of our expression ‘the world, the flesh and the devil,’ namely, material or earthly objects that engross man to the exclusion of things Divine.
2 In his admirable Catalogue of the Turkish MSS. in the British Museum, 1888.
3 The Gharíb-Náme is unprinted. There are two MSS. in the British Museum, one perfect (Harl. 5511), and one imperfect (Add. 7932).
4 This title might allude to the state of man as an exile in this world, far from his Heavenly home, or to the position of the writer as a stranger in the town of Qir-Shehri.
1 Koran, xiv, 4.
2 Arabic and Persian.
3 The mystic life is often figuratively spoken of as a Way or a Journey with many Stages all of which are carefully mapped out and well known to the initiate.
5 Thus Veled Chelebi in the article already referred to speaks of Ἅshiq’s poem as the Gharíb-Náme.
6 Kátib Chelebi and Hajji Khalífa are the surnames given to Mustafa bin-Ἁbdulláh, a very distinguished Ottoman scholar and man of letters who flourished during the seventeenth century, dying about the year 1068 (1657–8). He left many valuable works on various branches of knowledge, the most important being the great bibliographical dictionary entitled Keshf-uz-Zunún. This work, which is in Arabic, was published along with a Latin translation by G. Fluegel in 1835–58. European writers generally speak of this author by his surname of Hajji Khalífa (which they usually corrupt into Hajji Khalfa); Turkish writers generally call him Kátib Chelebi. I prefer to follow the Turks.
1 Sometimes in the Turkish form, Ἅshiq Pasha Díwáni; sometimes in the Persian, Díwán-i Ἅshiq Pasha.
1 We learn this from the following lines that occur in the epilogue: —
1 The Remel-i Museddes or ‘Hexametric Remel’ (see p. 108) is so called because each couplet consists of six feet, thus: —
1 The only rhetorical figure that recurs with any frequency is the variety of homonymy known as merfú or ‘repaired’ which is described on page 117, and, as there remarked, has always been a favourite with the Turkish poets.
2 Tajik is a name given in some parts of Central Asia to the descendants of the Persians who remained in the cities of those regions after their occupation by the Turks.
1 For the Microcosm and Macrocosm see pp. 62–3.
2 The terms Nasb, Jerr, Ref῾, Sukún; here rendered by ‘Fixture,’ ‘Traction,’ ‘Elevation’ and ‘Rest,’ are in Arabic grammar technically applied to the vowels, upon the position and interchange of which almost the whole mechanism of the language depends; these may thus be justly described as the ‘Four Pillars’ of the Arabic tongue. It is in like manner on the Four Elements and the interchanges that take place among these that the structure of the physical world rests (see pp. 47–8); wherefore these are often called the ‘Four Columns.’ Water may be compared to Nasb, ‘Fixture,’ because it is as it were tied down to Earth and is unable to rise to the higher spheres; Air to Jerr, ‘Traction,’ as the wind carries along things, such as ships at sea; Fire to Ref῾, ‘Elevation,’ as it is the lightest and most subtle of the elements, and ever seeks to ascend to its own, the highest of the elemental spheres (see p. 46); and Earth to Sukún, ‘Rest,’ as it is stationary in the centre of the Universe.
3 This famous Súfíistic aphorism, which is attributed to Ἁlí, has been already mentioned (see p. 63).
4 This is the verse from the Koran, xiv, 7.
1 An allusion to the Hadís: ‘I was a Hidden Treasure, therefore was I fain to be known, and so I created creation in order that I should be known.’ See pp. 16–7.
2 Probably in reference to the term Ἅlem-i Mulk, the ‘World of the Kingdom,’ which the mystics so often give to the physical plane. See p. 56.
3 An allusion to the Koranic phrase ‘Be! and it is.’ See p. 171, n. 4.
4 The Primal or Universal Intelligence, the first emanation from the One. See p. 42.
1 The already quoted Koranic verse which serves as text for the homily that follows.
1 Koran, xciii, II.
2 All the elements being inferior to man who is the crown and compendium of the entire creation.
3 Referring to what the old physicians called the ‘Kind, or Kindly, (i. e. Natural) Heat’ (Haráret-i Gharízíye), that is, the heat of the thick blood of the heart, in which the life resides. It represents the normal high temperature of the body.
4 ‘This cage,’ i. e. the body in which the soul is, as it were, imprisoned.
5 ‘O saintly one’ is an address to the pious reader.
1 Sa῾dí says in the Preface to the Gulistán, ‘Every breath when it goeth down prolongeth life, and when it cometh forth it rejoiceth the soul; so in every breath are two blessings, and for every blessing a separate thanksgiving is due.’
2 Ey Safá, ‘O Joy’ or ‘O Calm;’ this again is an address to the ‘gentle reader.’ The old mystic poets are fond of thus apostrophizing their readers, who were doubtless almost always mystic philosophers like themselves. Thus addresses like Ey Hakím! or ‘O Sage!’ Ey Ján! or ‘O Soul!’ Ey Deli! or ‘O mad one!’ are of constant occurrence.
1 Here again the mystic reader is addressed. As we have already seen, the mystics are fond of speaking of themselves as ‘mad.’
2 These two couplets reflect the Arabic proverb, 
‘a hint sufficeth for the wise, but a thousand speeches profit not the heedless.’
3 Here the poet refers to the aphorism quoted in the rubric.
4 i. e. he whose mind is collected, is calm, being possessed of knowledge.
5 i. e. such an one, knowing the laws of nature, is able to judge of them, and to determine many things through them; while he, in common with all, is subject to them. Moreover, he has reached the point where he sees that the knower and the known, that subject and object, are one.
1 The caravan of human individuals; these never remain, but like the months of the year they are ever passing away, others coming on to take their place. A caravanseray is an inn or hostelry where caravans halt on their journey.
2 The human body.
1 Man is the Microcosm, the summary and epitome of all things, so his body (form) has its share in his lofty rank.
2 Another allusion to the favourite Hadís.
1 i. e. the Seven Folds.
2 The original word implies not only buildings but all the external signs of the cultivation and prosperity of a country.
3 Another address to the reader. The word here rendered ‘father’ is Dede which literally means ‘grandfather,’ but is a style given to dervishes, especially to members of the Mevleví order.
1 The sense of the word here translated ‘Soul’ fluctuates between that and ‘life.’
2 i e. in the body.
1 Ἱlm.
2 Ἁql.
1 The word here rendered ‘lusts’ is nefs, and possibly stands for Nefs-i Nebátíye ‘the Soul Vegetable,’ or Nefs-i Haywáníye ‘the Soul Sensible,’ — the vital and sentient principles in a living organism (see p. 48–50), Reason being here personified as such.
The word might also refer to the Nefs-i Emmáre, the first of the three states of the carnal mind. These three states are called: (1) the ‘Commanding Flesh’ (Nefs-i Emmáre) when the carnal mind is thoroughly dominant; (2) the ‘Upbraiding Flesh’ (Nefs-i Levwáme) when the carnal mind is resisted but still unsubmissive; (3) the ‘Pacified Flesh’ (Nefs-i Mutma’inne) when the carnal mind is totally subdued. The term Nefs-i Mutma’inne is sometimes applied to the pious mind of a saintly man obedient to all holy impulses, in which case it is better rendered as the ‘Peaceful Spirit.’
1 ‘This Kingdom,’ i. e. the stages in the physical world, the World of the Kingdom, that lead up to Man (see pp. 48 and 56).
