This sublime fragment of a longer qasidah (ode) about a saint who falls madly in love with a beautiful maiden in a black veil (recalling the story of Shaykh San’an ) is sublimely performed in Mauritanian style by Dimi Mint Abba:
Translation:
Tell the beauty in the black veil
What have you done to the pious worshipper?
He was rolling up his sleeves, getting ready for his prayers
when you stopped him at the door of the mosque
God is Greater! God is Greater!
O you who call to God with upraised hands
beseeching and begging for aid
If you seek his intercession tomorrow (on the Day of Judgement)
Tell the beauty in the black veil
For she has stolen from him his religion and certainty
and left him bewildered, without guidance
His prayers and fasts will return to you
Don’t kill him for the sake of the religion of Muhammad
His prayers and fasts will return to you
Don’t kill him, for the sake of Jesus and Ahmad
God, there is no god but God…
Original:
قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود ماذا فعلت بناسك متعبد
قد كان شمر للصلاة ثيابه حتى وقفت له بباب المسجد
الله أكبر الله أكبر
يا داعيا لله مرفوع اليد متوسلا متضرعا للمنجد
يا طالبا منه الشفاعة في غد قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود
فسلبت منه دينه ويقينه وتركته في حيرة لا يهتدي
ردي عليه صلاته وصيامه لا تقتليه بحق دين محمد
ردي عليه صلاته وصيامه لا تقتليه بحق عيسى وأحمد
الله لا اله الا الله …..
Among the people are some who take peers apart from God, loving them as if loving God. And those who believe are more intense in love for God. If only those who were unjust could see, they would see the punishment/sweetness: that all power is God’s and God is intense in punishment/sweetness.
Tafsir Maybudi
They say that a man met a woman recognizer, and her beauty exercised its influence over his heart. He said, “’My all is busy with your all.’ O woman! I have lost myself in love for you.”
She said, “Why don’t you look at my sister, who is more beautiful and lovely than I?”
He said, “Where is your sister so that I may see her?”
She said, “Go, idler! Passion is not your work. If your claim to love me were true, you would not care about anyone else.”…
Shiblī said, “I learned Sufism from a dog that was sleeping at the door of a house. The owner came out and was driving the dog away, but the dog kept on coming back. I said to myself, ‘How base this dog is! He drives him away, and he keeps on coming back.’ The Exalted Lord brought that dog to speech and it said, ‘O Shaykh! Where should I go? He is my owner.’”
I will not leave the Friend at a hundred iniquities and cruelties.
Even if He increases them, I will not be troubled,
It is I who chose Him over everyone else;
if I complain about Him, I will have no excuse.
Tafsir Kashani
But the believers love God more ardently, than any other, because they only love God. Their love for Him is not confounded with love of others and is not subject to change. They love things through [their] love of God and for God and in the measure that they find in these [things] a divine aspect…
or [it means that] they love [God] more than they love their deities because they love things in themselves for themselves and so inevitably their love changes [for these things] when they themselves change the accidents of their souls upon fear of perdition and the harm that the soul brings upon them. Believers love God through their spirits and their hearts, nay, through God and for God. Their love [for Him] does not change because it is selfless. They expend their spirits and their souls for the sake of His countenance and His approval, abandoning all of their desires for His desire, loving His acts even when they conflict with their caprices, as one of them said: “I desire to connect with Him while He desires to abandon me, so I abandon what I desire for what He desires.”
Tafsir Anon.
Nothing but God is loved, nothing but God is worshipped— Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him (17:23)— indeed nothing but God is. However, some limit their love of God to a particular form or forms of His, an idol of sorts.
Those who love God in a limited form, in idols or “peers,” love a limited form, and thus their love is limited. Those who love God, Who is beyond all limitation (and is even beyond the limitation of being beyond limitation) love Him in each and every form, without limitation. Thus their love is unlimited, and more intense. He loves them and they love Him (5:54).They love Him with His love. Those who love the “idols” of a particular form or forms only love “as if with the Love of God” (كحبّ الله), but those who believe, who love of God is not limited by these forms, love God with His own unlimited love—God loves Himself through them.
Those who wrong themselves by limiting their love to a particular form or forms, if they could only see, would know the intense sweetness of love unlimited, and the severe punishment of limited love, especially when compared to sweetness of unlimited love. The pain of regret and envy is severe punishment.
Ibn ‘Arabi
Faṣṣ Harūn:
Have you seen him who has taken desire for his God? (45:23)
The greatest and most exalted locus of self-disclosure wherein He is worshipped is that of desire. Remember that He has said, Have you seen him who has taken his desire for his God? It is the greatest object of worship since nothing is worshipped except through it, and it is only worshipped by itself. Concerning this I say:
The truth of desire is that desire is the cause of desire
If not for desire in the heart, desire would not be worshipped
و حق الهوى إن الهوى سبب الهوى لو لا الهوى في القلب ما عُبِدَ الهوى
Do you not see how perfect God’s knowledge of things is, how He perfects one who worships is desire and takes it has his divinity?… He sees this worshipper worshipping only his his desire, complying with its command to worship the individual whom he worships. Even his worship of God comes from his desire. If one did not have desire for the Divine—which is a will based on love—one would not worship God, nor would one prefer Him to another. Likewise, anyone who worships some form of the world and makes it a divinity only does so because of desire. The worshipper is forever under the influence of his desire. Now, he sees the objects of worship diversified amongst the worshippers, and each one who worships something, denies one who worships something else. One who has the least bit of awareness will be bewildered at the unanimity of desire, nay by the oneness of desire, for it is the same essence in every worshipper. God led him astray, that is, bewildered him, out of knowledge that every worshipper only worships his own desire, and only seeks to worship his desire whether it coincides with the prescribed command or not.
The perfect Knower is he who sees every object of worship as a locus of self-disclosure of the Real wherein to worship Him.
This is why a human being does not become totally annihilated and enraptured by love except in love for His Lord or for someone who is the locus of disclosure for his Lord [that is, another human being, created in God’s image].
The entities of the cosmos are all lovers because of Him, whatever the beloved may be, since all created things are the pedestals for the Real’s self-disclosure. Their love is fixed, they are loving, and He is the Loving. The whole situation is concealed between the Real and creation through creation and the Real. That is why God brought the name Forgiving along with the name Loving [in the verse He is the Forgiving, the Loving, Lord of the Throne, the Glorious (85:14-15)]. After all, Forgiving means literally ‘curtaining’. Thus it is said that [the famous Arab lover] Qays loved Layla, since Layla derives from the locus of disclosure. In the same way, Bishr loved Hind, Kuthayr loved ‘Azza, Ibn al-Durayj loved Lubna, Tawba loved al-Akhyaliyya, and Jamil loved Buthayna. But all these women were pedestals through which the Real disclosed Himself to them.
The beloved is a pedestal even if the lover is ignorant of the names of what he loves. A man can see a woman and love her, without knowing who she is, what her name is, who her relatives are, and where she lives. Love, by its very essence, requires that he seek out her name and her home so that he may attend to her and know her in the state of her absence through the name and the relationship. Thus he will ask about her if he lacks the witnessing of her.
So also is our love for God. We love Him in His loci of self-disclosure and within the specific name, which is Layla, Lubna, or whatever, but we do not recognize that the object is identical with the Real. So here we love the name but we do not recognize that it is identical with the Real. Thus we love the name and do not recognize the entity.
In the case of the created thing, you know the entity and you love. It may be that the name is not known. However, love refuses anything but making the beloved known. Among us are those who know God in this world, and among us are those who do not know Him until they die while loving some specific thing. Then they will come to understand, when the covering is lifted, that they had loved only God, but they had been veiled by the name of the created thing.
Longing, though it be perfect, for this pleasure to stay with me forever
Original:
فلِلّهِ، كَم من لَيلَة ٍ قد قَطَعتُها بِلَذّة ِ عيشٍ، والرّقيبُ بِمَعزلِ
ونقلي مدامي والحبيبُ منادمي وأقداحُ أفْراحِ المَحَبّة ِ تَنجَلي
ونلتُ مُرادي، فوقَ ما كنتُ راجياً، فواطَرَبا، لو تَمّ هذا ودامَ لي
Amir Khusrau
Translation:
Many nights I was with a moon, where have all those nights gone?
Night has come again, but now it’s black from the smoke of my cries
Happy where the nights I spent with her, sometimes drunk, sometimes giddy
My world goes dark when I remember those nights
I repeat the tale of her eyebrows and lashes over and over again
just like children reciting the surah of “Nun wa qalam” at school
What would happen if one night she asked a lonely stranger beneath her walls
how he passes these lonely nights?
Come, you who are the life of every form,
let lovers—forms without life—live again in your alley
Even though you’ve taken my heart and soul, look at me
See how nicely that smile came from those lips into these eyes
Don’t grieve for your life Khusrau, though the Friend slays you
For the beautiful faced ones have so many sects that act like this.
Original:
بسي شب با مهي بودم کجا شد آن همه شبها کنون هم هست شب، ليکن سياه از دود ياربها
خوش آن شبهاکه پيشش بودمي گه مست و گه سرخوش جهانم مي شود تاريک چون ياد آرم آن شبها
همي کردم حديث ابرو و مژگان او هر دم چو طفلان سوره نون والقلم خوانان به مکتبها
چه باشد گر شبي پرسد که در شبهاي تنهايي غريبي زير ديوارش چگونه مي کند شبها
بيا، اي جان هر قالب که تا زنده شوند از سر به کويت عاشقان کز جان تهي کردند قالبها
اگر چه دل بدزديدي و جان، اينک نگر حالم چه نيکو آمد آن خنده، درين ديده ازان لبها
مرنج از بهر جان، خسرو، اگر چه مي کشد يارت که باشد خوبرويان را بسي زين گونه مذهبها
My heart left me, but longing for you won’t leave my heart
My heart broke apart, but the pain of you won’t lessen
The moon at night rises opposite your face
but the day will never come when the moon can oppose it
My face is pale gold, and I grind it with the dust of your door
but to be united with you is an unattainable alchemy
At your hands, my tears are a sash
hung over heaven’s shoulders
but my hands cannot hang draped around your neck
I sit in sorrow: though my soul departs, my heart cannot rise up and leave
My heart is a waystation of grief, but no caravan of patience can reach it
or escape the brigands of absence
Khusrau fell into the whirling abyss of longing
the ship of his desire will not make shore
English Translation from: In the Bazaar of Love by Paul Losensky and Sunil Sharma
Original:
دل رفت و آرزوی تو از دل نمی شود
دل پاره گشت و درد تو زائل نمی شود
مه می شود مقابل روی تو هر شبی
یک روز با رخ تو مقابل نمی شود
رویم زر است و بر در تو خاک می کنم
وصل تو کیمیاست که حاصل نمی شود
شد اشک من حمایل گردون ز دست تو
دستم به گردن تو حمایل نمی شود
بنشسته ام به غم که ز عشق تو خاستن
با آنکه جان همی شودم، دل نمی شود
دل منزل غم آمد و از رهزنان هجر
یک کاروان صبر به منزل نمی شود
خسرو در اوفتاد به غرقاب آرزو
چون کشتی مراد به ساحل نمی شود
English Translation: I have become you, and you me, I am the body, you, the soul; So that no one can say hereafter, That you are someone, and I, someone else.
Orginal (transliteration): Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari
Ḥallāj
I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I
two spirits dwelling in one body
if you see me, you see Him,
and if you see Him, you see us.
Original:
أنا من أهوى و من أهوى أنا نحن روحان حللنا بدنا
فإذا أبصرتني أبصرته و إذا أبصرته أبصرتنا
Amir Khusrow
Khusrau raen suhaag ki, jaagi pi ke sung,
Tun mero mun pi-u ko, dovu bhaye ek rung.
Khusrau (the bride) spends the eve of her wedding
Awake with her beloved, (in such a way that)
The body belongs to her, but heart to the beloved,
The two become one.
Khusrau baazi prem ki main khelun pi ke sung,
Jeet gayi to piya moray, haari, pi kay sung.
I, Khusrau, play the game of love with my beloved,
If I win, the beloved’s mine, defeated, I’m beloved’s.
English Translation: The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers, Appreciating its music is beyond the ears of the wise.
A well-known and oft-quoted Sufi classic by the 14th C Egyptian poet, Ibn bint Mayliq
Whoever tastes the flavour of the drink of the people knows it
and whoever becomes aware of it tomorrow [the Day of Resurrecton] will give his soul for it
Even if he risked his spirits, and sacrificed them
with every blink of the eye, it would still not equal it
A drop of it suffices all creation, had they but tasted,
they would declare themselves above all the worlds in drunken pride
The possessor of love, were he given the universe as a cup
to drink as many times as the number of souls, he still would not be quenched
Original:
من ذاقَ طعم شرابِ القوم يدريهِ ومن دراه غداً بالروح يشريهِ
ولو تعرّضَ أرواحاً وجاد بها في كل طرفةِ عين لا يُساويهِ
وقطرةٌ منه تكفي الخلقَ لو طعموا فيشطَحونَ على الأكوان بالتيه
وذو الصبابة لو يسقى على عددِ الأن فاسِ والكون كأساً ليس يرويهِ
