This is the poetical name of Mīr Muḥammad Ma‘ṣūm Ṣafavī, the orthodox and noble son of Mīr Sayyīd Ṣafā‘ī, who was one of the great Sayyids and respected elders of the city of Bhakkar. Mīr Muḥammad Ma‘sūm is at present enrolled among the amīrs of the empire, and holds some appointment in the imperial service in Sind and Qandahār. He is very strict in religion, in piety, praise and prayer, and in reading the Qur'ān, and somebody once said to him, ‘One cannot do without a director in these duties. You should get a director and receive instruction from him, and you can then take your leave of him.’ Nāmī replied, “I have at present two or three directors, what need have I of another? My first director was his majesty, for this reason, that when I came* from my dear native land to the capital I was so filled with the pride and aspirations of youth, which are the sources of extravagant hopes and desires, that I could not bring myself to consider the acceptance of anything so humble as a commandership of a thousand, or even of two thousand. When I arrived at court I tasted the sticks of the ushers and mace-bearers who 365 keep order, and had to endure insults, and when, after a long period of expectation, his majesty honoured me by bestowing on me a command of twenty men, all my extravagant claims took wings to themselves, and I, recognizing my proper rank and place, resigned myself to God's will, and bowed my head in acquiescence, and was at peace; and there is that proverb, “Although I struggled much to become somebody I became nothing, now I let myself alone in order that I may become whatever I am to become.”
“I am not grieved that my affairs have not turned out well
but have turned out ill,
‘It will be, it will be’ never comes to pass. Say
‘Be not,’ and see what comes to pass.”
No other religious director could possibly have given me better direction than this. My second director was Mīr Abū-l-Ghai of Bukhārā,* who in rank and dignity was many degrees greater than I, for until the time when I made his acquaintance, if my horses missed their corn and grass for one day I would be so vexed and angry that I would turn my head away from everybody, and not speak a word to any one; but after I fell into the company of the Mīr I observed that sometimes, for three or four consecutive days, there was neither corn nor grass in his stables, nor the smoke of any fire in his kitchen, and in spite of this state of things, he was so cheerful, merry, and jovial that no suggestion of his indigence and actual want was conveyed to anybody, and nobody was in a position to talk about his affairs. Wealth and want were always alike to him.
Take refuge from the shocks of fate among those Ṣūfīs
Who grieve for existence and rejoice at non-existence.
366 I then began to console myself by the thought that if times were
so hard with this great man and yet made no difference to him.
I had a much better reason for being cheerful and happy, seeing
that I had not a hundredth part of his state and pomp to keep
up. My third director is a slave-girl bestowed upon me by the
emperor. Quum enim, instantibus vel diaboli insidiis vel desi-
The Mīr is a most diligent student and has correct taste in poetry and in the composition of enigmas. He is high-minded and sublime in disposition. He has composed a dīvān, and a manavī* in the metre of the Yūsuf-u-Zulaikhā (of Niāmī). The following few couplets are productions of his brilliant imagination:—
“How sweet it is to think that when I am beside myself with
love thou wilt come to ask my condition.
And I shall explain it at length to thee in the speech in which
no tongue has part.”“When she saw my tears she concealed her smile
It is clear that my tears are not without their effect.”“In love there is an intoxication which revives tired lovers.
In absence there is a subtle delight which even union lacks.”“My moon-like beauty gave her message to the messenger
with a laugh.
The trace of that laugh still lingers in the message which she
sent.”
He sent the following qaṣīdah in praise of the prophet from Aḥmadābād to me in Āṭak:—
“The scar of love which has been on my heart from eternity.
Has been changed, by the blessings which even thy absence 367
can bestow, to naught but pain.
The flood of fire which my heart in its pain heaved up.
Has thrown confusion into the temperament of the earth and
the age.
The remembrance of my grief for thee gives me a taste of
sweet sorrow
The flavour of thy absence from me gives me an idea of the
sweet savour of death.
Happy is he who has set his foot in the path of love.
For he enjoys delights without sight, and a love without arts.
If thou find thy way to the Laboratory of Creation thou shalt
see
Both creation in action and love transformed to deeds.
My disquiet has drawn me from love to madness,Until at length I have become, through thee, a byword for
madness.
I have poured from my heart so much hot blood that it has
cast
All my life, entirely, and utterly, into a fiery slough.
My love for thee has thrown a thousand knotty difficulties in
my path
But has not yet solved even one of the difficulties caused by
thy absence.
On the one hand the fear of death offers the intoxication of
absence from thee.
On the other the delight of reunion with thee offers me the
fruition of all my hopes.
Though the dead have not risen the tumult of the resurrec-
tion has arisen.
From the fire which has flamed up from my heart.*
The eyes of a whole world are suffused with blood by that
eyelash of thine.
A whole people is sleeping in dust by reason of that collyrium-
tinged eye of thine.
In both worlds have I lighted the fire of madness.
368 But I have not given in my ode a hint of the secrets of thy
love.
That heart which I had, steeped in the love of thee
Is melted into blood and poured out on my body.
From my grief in thy absence I have at the end of each eye-
lash a cloud which rains sparks.
I have in my breast a hundred heaps of fire which burn in
thy absence.
The eyes of the age have no employment but to gaze upon thee
The eyes of principalities and powers are smitten with love
in thy service.
I desire to be released from the hell of separation from thee
By him who wipes out infidelity, who protects the faith, and
who guides peoples in the right way.The king of Najaf, ‘Alī, the saint, the king who passes not
away*
He it is whom the cash of all the prophets has gained for the
world.
He is the moon from whom the sun receives his light,
He is a lion beneath whose feet the lion of the heavens lies in
the mire.
His protection has thrown up a fortress around the people of
the world
From which, except by death and by the gate of death, no one
can pass.
If the arm of the sky should feel, even in a dream, the strength
of thy grasps, it would pluck from its joint* its withered
hand.
When thy majestic shout reaches a mountain range
It reverberates, coiling like a whip lash about the mountain
masses.
If one dot of the qāf* of thy power could be weighed against
Qāf (Causasus)
The dot would take the place of Qāf, and the scale of Qāf 369
would fly up as high as Saturn.
If thy hand should check the reins of eternity without end
It would fall a thousand stages behind eternity without be-
ginning.
The tree of the sky is but one leaf from the garden of
thy power.
The garden of the world is but half a mound from the cul-
tivated area of thy munificence.
Thy age has so sweetened the disposition of the world
That it is no longer possible to distinguish between poison
and honey.If thy auspicious glance should fall by chance on an onion.
The world beside it appears less than an onion.
In this thy age thy Ẕū-l-faqār* explains to thy enemy and
thy ‘Yea, verily’ to thy petitioner the meaning of ‘Nay’
and ‘Yea.’
If through thy mind there pass but the semblance of wrath.
Death trembles like a willow from fear.
The sky of thy might has such width that the sun
Would not wonder could be find shelter behind it as behind
a lofty mountain.
If thy dagger lend its tongue to the sword of discipline
Woe be to the sky with its crooked dealings, its fraud and
its many deceits.
Since eloquence is decked as a bride for thy praise,
I have decked her with striped garments of flowery speech.
Woe to thee Nāmī, and woe to those who shall arise with thee,
When the black book of your acts is opened before you at
the resurrection!
I am hopeful of obtaining a mediator like the sun
370 On that day on which there shall no longer remain any
shadow of hope,
Him who is the rain from the cloud of God's mercy, the cup-
bearer of the Day of Resurrection.
The greatest protection of the faith, and the lord even of
death.”