“O Thou who seest me ever prone to sin,
While Thee I see not willing to upbraid:
How oft I see Him grant His grace's aid
While me He sees not seeking grace to win.”
In this connection I cannot do better than quote what Gobineau, * with his usual insight into the mind of the East, says of a much later philosopher, Mullá Sadrá, for his words are equally true of Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín and his congeners. “Le soin qu'il prenait de déguiser ses discours, il était nécessaire qu'il le prit surtout de déguiser ses livres; c'est ce qu'il a fait, et á les lire on se ferait l'idée la plus imparfaite de son enseignement. Je dis á les lire sans un maître qui posséde la tradition. Autrement on y pénétre sans peine. De génération en génération, ses éléves ont hérité sa pensée véritable, et ils ont la clef des expressions dont il se sert pour ne pas exprimer mais pour leur indiquer á eux sa pensée. C'est avec ce correctif oral que les nombreux traités du maître sont aujourd'hui tenus en si grande considération, et que, de son temps, ils ont fait les délices d'une société ivre de dialectique, âpre á l'opposition religieuse, amoureuses de hardiesses secrétes, enthousiaste de tromperies habiles.” The Fuṣúṣu'l-Ḥikam is seldom met with unaccompanied by a commentary, and it is doubtful if even with such commentary its ideas can be fully apprehended without assistance from those who move in those realms of speculation in which their author lived and from which he drew his intellectual energy. No mystic of Islám, perhaps, with the possible exception of Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, has surpassed Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín in influence, fecundity, or abstruseness, yet, so far as I am aware, no adequate study of his works and doctrines has yet been made in Europe, though few fields of greater promise offer themselves to the aspiring Arabist who is interested in this characteristic aspect of Eastern thought.
In a book dealing primarily with Persian literature it would,
perhaps, be out of place to speak at much greater length of a
writer whose only connection with Persia was the influence
exerted by him, even to the present day, through his writings.
One of the Persian mystic poets and writers of note who came
most directly under his influence was Fakhru'd-Dín 'Iráqí, who
attended Ṣadru'd-Dín Qúnyawí's lectures on the Fuṣuṣu'l-Ḥikam,
his master's magnum opus, and was thereby inspired to write his
remarkable Lama'át, which long afterwards (in the latter part
of the fifteenth century of our era) formed the text of an
excellent and elaborate commentary by Mullá Núru'd-Dín
'Abdu'r-Raḥmán Jámí, entitled Ashi'atu'l-Lama'át. Awḥadu'd-
The following is a specimen of his verse, of which the Arabic original will be found in al-Maqqarí's Nafḥu't-Ṭíb (ed. Cairo, A.H. 1302), vol. i, p. 400.
“My Soul is much concerned with Her,
Although Her Face I cannot see:
Could I behold Her Face, indeed,
Slain by Her blackened Brows I'd be.
And when my sight upon Her fell,
I fell a captive to my sight,
And passed the night bewitched by Her,
And still did rave when Dawn grew bright.
Alas for my resolve so high!
Did high resolve avail, I say,
The Beauty of that Charmer shy
Would not have made me thus to stray.
In Beauty as a tender Fawn,
Whose pastures the Wild Asses ken;
Whose coy regard and half-turned head
Make captives of the Souls of Men!
Her breath so sweet, as it would seem,
As fragrant Musk doth yield delight:
She's radiant as the mid-day Sun:
She's as the Moon's Effulgence bright.
If She appear, Her doth reveal
The Splendour of the Morning fair;
If She Her tresses loose, the Moon
Is hidden by Her night-black Hair.
Take thou my Heart, but leave, I pray,
O Moon athwart the darkest Night,
Mine Eyes, that I may gaze on Thee,
For all my Joy is in my sight!”
Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ whose full name was Sharafu'd-Dín Abú Ḥafṣ 'Umar, must next be noticed, for though, like Ibnu'l-'Arabí,
'Umar ibnu'lFáriḍ. he had no direct connection with Persia, he was one of the most remarkable and talented of the mystical poets of Islám; a fact which it is important to emphasise because of the tendency which still exists in Europe to regard Ṣúfíism as an essentially Persian or Aryan manifestation, a view which, in my opinion, cannot be maintained. Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ, according to different statements, was born at Cairo in A.H. 556 (= A.D. 1161), or A.H. 566 (A.D. 1170-71), or (according to Ibn Khallikán) on Dhu'l-Unlike Ibnu'l-'Arabí, he was by no means a voluminous writer, for his literary work (at any rate so far as it is preserved) is all verse, “of which the collection,” as Ibn Khallikán says (vol. ii, p. 388, of de Slane's translation), “forms a thin volume.” His verses are further described by this writer (loc. cit.) as displaying “a cast of style and thought which charms the reader by its grace and beauty, whilst their whole tenour is in accordance with the mystic ideas of the Ṣúfís.” Besides his strictly classical verses, he wrote some more popular poetry of the kind entitled Mawáliyát. Of these Ibn Khallikán gives some specimens, one of which, on a young butcher, is remarkable not only for its bizarre character, but as being almost identical in sense with a quatrain ascribed in the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída to the Persian poetess Mahsatí (or Mahastí, or Mihastí).*
Like Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín, Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ saw the Prophet
in dreams, and received instructions from him as to his literary
work.
*
He never, it is said, wrote without inspiration; sometimes,
as Jámí relates,
*
he would remain for a week or ten
days in a kind of trance or ecstasy, insensible to external
objects, and would then come to himself and dictate thirty,
forty, or fifty couplets—“whatever God had disclosed to him
in that trance.” The longest and most celebrated of his
poems is the Tá'iyya, or T-qaṣída, which comprises seven
hundred and fifty couplets. “He excels,” says al-Yáfi'í, “in
his description of the Wine of Love, in his Díwán, which
comprises the subtleties of gnosticism, the Path, Love, Yearning,
Union, and other technical terms and real sciences
recognised in the books of the Ṣúfí Shaykhs.”
*
In personal
appearance he was, according to his son Shavkh Kamálu'd-