(1)

“The chief representative of saintship, who is actually Shaykh Ṣafí,
Was for nearly ninety years the guide on this road.
His soul at the moment of its departure sneezed * and exclaimed,
‘O Angel of Death, I have attained unto God!’
When the Angel saw his condition he was amazed and cried,
‘O Shaykh, a thousand times may God have mercy upon thee!’
Thou art utterly consumed, O Qásimí, by separation from the Master;
Be patient in separation: may God give thee patience!”

Jámí, in the notice which he consecrates to Qásimu'l-Anwár in the Nafaḥátu'l-Uns, * alludes to the suspicions Suspected of heresy and antinomianism which fell upon him in connection with the attempt on Sháh-rukh's life in 830/1426-7 and which led to his banishment, and also observes that opinions differed as to his character, but that most of his disciples with whom he was personally acquainted had abandoned the observances of Islám, for which they expressed contempt, and had adopted a kind of communism. There is therefore good reason to suspect that Qásimu'l-Anwár was at any rate something of an antinomian, even if he had not some quasi-political relation with the Shí'ite partisans of the still uncrowned Ṣafawís, or with the still more irreconcilable Ḥurúfí heretics.

The literary work of Qásimu'l-Anwár consists of an unpublished Díwán of lyrical and some mathnawí poetry, of which I possess two good manuscripts, one dated 861/1456-7, only 24 years after the author's death. Several of these poems are in Turkish and others in some dialect of Persian. The poems are followed in this older manuscript by two treatises, written wholly or partly in prose, entitled respectively Anísu'l-'Árifín (“the Gnostics' Familiar”) and the Anísu'l-'Áshiqín (“Lovers' Familiar”), or Risála-i-Amána (“Treatise of the Trust”). There is also a poem beginning:

<text in Arabic script omitted> in which there is supposed to be a reference to Tímúr's death, though it is so vague as to be capable of application to any public calamity.

The poetry of Qásimu'l-Anwár, so far as a foreigner may venture to judge it, is only of average merit, and is generally of the same mystical character as that of Maghribí and other kindred poets. Of its general type the two following ghazals may serve as fair specimens.

(2)

<text in Arabic script omitted> * “Of thy favour, Cup-bearer, fill me up that clear and crystalline bowl,
That spirit of holy sanctity, that high and exalted soul!
What day thou givest a cup of wine to settle our whole affair
Bestow, I pray, of your charity a draught on yon Preacher rare!
Woulds't thou that the motes of the universe may with thee in the
dance be whirled?
Then toss aside in thy dance's stride thy tresses tangled and curled!
O chiding mentor, get thee hence: desist and cease thy strain,
For never thy windy talk can drive from our heads this passion and
pain.
‘Lose thyself,’ thou didst say, ‘that thou to thyself the way may'st
gain!’
But this riddle dark and inscrutable I cannot solve or explain.
Whenever I cast my life away, a hundred I win in its place:
Who can limit the miracles of Christ and His healing grace?
Qásim ne'er of his own free will would play the lover's part,
But what can one do when the matter lies with the Lord of the Soul
and Heart?”

(3)

“Ere ever cloistered cell was built, or Somnath's ancient fane
We dwelt with Thee in every phase of life on Being's plane.
'Twixt us all talk of Messenger and Message * falls away:
What need of Messenger when Thou dost bide with me for aye?
Can I oppose the Loved One's will, when ever with the Friend
I hold communion sweet in moods and musings without end?
From mention of all ‘others’ * let thy tongue be cleansed and freed,
Since those in whom the Spirit works of ‘others’ take no heed.
Sober to tread the mystic Path no obligation's thine:
Each atom in the Universe intoxicates like wine.
O Zealot, press me not, I pray, in language harsh and rude,
For unto those of goodly kind allowed are all things good. *
O Qásim, silence! to the steed of speech apply the rein,
That Love's High Priest may speak of things that neither fade nor
wane.”*

The following ode is interesting as showing traces of Ḥurúfí ideas:

(4)

<text in Arabic script omitted> * “‘In six days’ runs God's Word, while Seven
Marks the divisions of the Heaven.
Then at the last ‘He mounts His Throne’; *
Nay, Thrones, to which no limit's known.
Each mote's a Throne, to put it plain,
Where He in some new Name doth reign: *
Know this, and so to Truth attain!
‘Fie, fie!’ the zealot answers back
Whate'er I say. I cry ‘Alack!’

‘Who from the Prophet's cup drinks free
God's Wine, escapes calamity,
And over-boldness to dispense
With proper forms of reverence!’ *
O drunk with fancies, cease to bawl,
Nor plague us with thy drunken brawl!
To glory in thine ignorance
Is but thy blindness to enhance.
O Qásimí, what canst thou find
In jurists blind with leaders blind?
Repeat a Fátiḥa, * I pray,
That so this plague may pass away!”

Although the traces of Ḥurúfí influence in this poem are unmistakeable, it cannot on such evidence alone be proved that Qásimu'l-Anwár was actually a member of that sect, though his association with an admitted disciple of Faḍlu'lláh of Astarábád and the suspicion which he thereby incurred * afford strong corroboration of this conjecture. But his saints and heroes were many, and we find in his poems encomiums of theologians like al-Ghazzálí, mystics like Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Jám, Báyazíd of Bisṭám, and Khwája 'Abdu'lláh Anṣárí, and theosophic poets like Shaykh Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár and Mawláná Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, whose works he bids his readers bind together in one volume:

It is indeed likely that one of his half-Turkish poems with the refrain Chelebí, bizi onutma (“O Chelebí, forget us not!”) may be addressed to the “Chelebí Efendi,” or hereditary superior of the Mawlawí or Mevleví order of darwíshes, of Qonya in Asiatic Turkey. Of these Turkish or half-Turkish poems there are only two or three, nor are they of a high quality. The poems in some Persian dialect (probably that of Gílán) are more numerous and more interesting, though our knowledge of these dialects in their mediæval forms is insufficient as a rule to enable us fully to interpret them. The text of one, based on the two MSS., is here given as a specimen.

(5)

“Thou art the Qibla of my soul, O Gíl * with the colour and fragrance
of an angel,
The Moon of the Heaven of Nobility, the Cypress of the Gardens
of Desire.
Thou art not a Gíl but an angel, compounded of heart and soul,
How should any Gíl be thus Ḥúrí-like and of such angelic temper?
May my heart and faith be thy sacrifice! Take them if thou wilt, * for
thou art very fair:
Thou art the Qibla: why should I wander from city to city, from
street to street?
The tyranny which thy musky tresses have wrought upon me
I will explain to thee hair by hair, if opportunity offers.
If the reflection of thy beauty reaches the mirror for a moment
How [much the more] should it reach him who is ever face to face
with thee?
Last night thou didst signify to me by hints, ‘Tomorrow I will not
leave thee in sorrow’: *
Once again of thy clemency repeat the tale of yesterday!
I said to her, ‘O Desire of the Soul, thou didst give me a promise
of union!’
She said, ‘Seek not to recall those stories, for that has gone by!’
I said to her, ‘O my Dear, I have been brought low by thy love!’
She said, ‘No, regard not as low one who has spoken with me lip
to lip!’ *
I said, ‘I am thy lover: what is the cure for my pain?’
She said, ‘Thou speakest this word being beside thyself, and it will
yield no result.’ *
Qásimí, through separation and grief, is lost and heedless of himself:
Of thy clemency seek to win back him who is lost in separation!”

That Qásimu'l-Anwár was familiar with Gílán and other regions bordering on the Caspian Sea is confirmed by other poems in which he mentions Ástárá, Láhiján, Ardabíl and other places in that part of Persia. Further facts about him might undoubtedly be deduced from an attentive examination of his poems, but space only permits me to give two more extracts from them, both taken from his mathnawí poem the Anísu'l-'Árifín, in the prose preface to which he gives his full name as “'Alí b. Naṣír b. Hárún b. Abu'l-Qásim al-Ḥusayní at-Tabrízí, better known as Qásimí.” The first extract is an allegory of the sinner who clings to his sin because it is sweet to him.