Rumuz-e-Bekhudi

(Rumuz-e-Bekhudi-28-Book Complete) A'rz-e-Hal-e-Musanif Ba Huzur Rahmatul-lil-Alameen (S.A.W.)

The author’s memorial to him who is a mercy to all living beings

O thou, whose manifesting was the youth
Of strenuous life, whose bright epiphany
Told the interpretation of life’s dreams,
Earth attained honour, having held thy court,
And heaven glory, having kissed thy roof.
Thy face illumes the six‐directioned world;
Turk, Tajik, Arab—all thy servants are.
Whatever things have being, find in thee
True exaltation, and thy poverty
Is their abundant riches. In this world
Thou litst the lamp of life, as thou didst teach
God’s servitors a godly mastery.
Without thee, whatsoever form indwelt
This habitat of water and of clay
Was put to shame in utter bankruptcy;
Till, when thy breath drew fire from the cold dust
And Adam made of earth’s dead particles,
Each atom caught the skirts of sun and moon,
Suddenly conscious of its inward strength.
Since first my gaze alighted on thy face
Dearer than father and dear mother thou
Art grown to me. Thy love hath lit a flame
Within my heart; ah, let it work at ease.
For all my spirit is consumed in me,
And my sole chattel is a reed‐like sigh,
The lantern flickering in my ruined house.
It is not possible not to declare
This hidden grief; it is not possible
To veil the wine in the translucent cup.
But now the Muslim is estranged a new
Unto the Prophet’s secret; now once more
God’s sanctuary is an idols’ shrine;
Manat and Lat, Hubal and Uzza – each
Carries an idol to his bosom clasped;
Our shaykh – no Brahman is so infidel,
Seeking his Somnath stands within his head.
Arabia deserted, he is gone
With all his being’s baggage, slumberous
To drowse in Persia’s wine‐vault. Persia’s sleet
Has set his limbs a‐shiver; his thin wine
Rune colder than his tears. As timorous
Of death as any infidel, his breast
Is hollow, empty of a living heart.
I bore him lifeless from the doctors’ hands
And brought him to the Prophet’s presence; dead
He was; I told him of the Fount of Life,
I spoke with him upon a mystery
O the Quran, a tale of the Beloved
Of Najd; I brought to him a perfume sweet
Pressed from the roses of Arabia.
The Candle of my music lit the throng;
I taught the people life’s enigma; still
He cried against me, “These are Europe’s spells
He weaves to bind us with, the psaltery
Of Europe that he strikes into our ears.”
O thou, that to Busiri gavest a Cloak
And to my fingers yielded Salma’s lute,
Grant now to him, whose thoughts are so astray
That he can no more recognize his own,
Perception of the truth, and joy therein.
Be lusterless the mirror of my heart,
Or be my words by aught but the Quran
Informed, O thou whose splendour is the dawn
Of every age and time, whose vision sees
All that is in men’s breasts, rend now the veil
Of my thought’s shame; sweep clean the avenue
Of my offending thorns; choke in my breast
The narrow breath of life; thy people guard
Against the mischief of my wickedness;
Nurse not to verdure my untimely seed,
Grant me no portion of spring’s fecund showers,
Wither the vintage in my swelling grapes
And scatter poison in my sparkling wine;
Disgrace me on the Day of Reckoning,
Too abject to embrace thy holy feet.
But if I ever threaded on my chain
The pearl of the Quran’s sweet mysteries,
I to the Muslims I have spoken true,
O thou whose bounty raises the obscure
Unto significance, one prayer from thee
Is ample guerdon for my word’s desert;
Plead thou to God my cause, and let my love
Be locked in the embrace of godly deeds.
Thou hast accorded me a contrite soul,
A part of holy learning; establish me
More firm in action, and my April shower
Convert to pearls of great and glittering price.
Since first I cast the baggage of my soul
In this world’s caravanserai, one more
Desire I ever nourished, like my heart
Dwelling within my breast, mine intimate
From life’s dawn; since first I learned thy name
From my sire’s lips, the flame of that desire
Kindled and glowed in me. My roll of days
As heaven lengthens, in life’s lottery
Marking me loser, ever lustier grows
The youth of my desire; this ancient wine
Gains greater body with the passing years.
This yearning is gem beneath my dust,
A single star illumining my night.
Awhile with rosy checks did I consort,
Played love with twisted tresses, tasted wines
With lustrous brows, the lamp of godly peace
Rudely extinguished; lightnings danced about
My harvest; my heart’s store of merchandise
By highwaymen was plundered. Yet this draught
Was spilled not from the goblet of my soul,
This gold refined not scattered from my skirt.
My reason diabolical resolved
To wear the Magian girdle; its impress
Stamped o’er my spirit’s furrows. Many years
I was doubt’s prisoner, inseparable
From my too arid brain. I had not read
One letter of true knowledge, and abode
Still in philosophy’s conjecture‐land;
My darkness was a stranger to the light
Of God, my dusk knew not the glow of dawn.
And yet this yearning slumbered in my heart,
Close‐shrouded as the pearl within the shell;
But lastly from the goblet of mine eye
It slowly trickled, and within my mind
Created melodies. And now my soul
Is emptied of all memories but thee;
I will be bold to speak of my desire,
If thou wilt give me leave. My life hath been
Unfurnished in good works, and therefore I
Might not aspire to worthiness of this,
Which to reveal I am too much ashamed;
Yet thy compassion maketh me more bold.
The honey of thy mercy comforteth
The whole round world; and this my yearning is,
That I be granted in Hijaz to die!
A Muslim, stranger to all else but God –
How long shall he the heathen girdle wear
And keep the temple? O the bitter shame
If, when his earthly days are at an end,
A pagan shrine receives his mortal bones.
If from thy door my scattered parts arise,
Woe to this day, that morrow how sublime!
O happy city that thy dwelling was,
Thrice‐blessed earth wherein thou dost repose!
“My friend’s abode, the city of my king –
True patriotism, the lover’s creed.”
Give to my star an even‐wakeful eye,
And in the shadow of the wall a place
To slumber, that my spirit’s quicksilver
Be stilled; that I may say unto the skies,
“Behold me, tranquil; ye who looked upon
My first beginning, witness now my close.”

[Translated by A.J. Arberry]

(Rumuz-e-Bekhudi-27) Khulasa Mutalib-e-Masnvi - Dar Tafseer Surah-e-Ikhlas

Summary of the purport of the poem in exegesis of the Surah of Pure Faith
“Say: He is God, One”

I dreamed one night I looked upon Siddiq
And plucked a rose that blossomed at his feet
–
He, that most generous was of all mankind
Unto our Master, he that stood the first
Like Moses on the Sinai of our Faith,
Whose zeal was as a cloud that showered rain
Upon the tilth of our community,
Second to own Islam, to share the Cave,
Badr, and the Tomb. “O chosen of Love’s choice,”

I cried to him, “whose love is the first line
In the collected poetry of Love,
Whose hand established on a firmer base
A remedy for our immediate woes.”
“How long”, said he, “wilt thou be prisoner
To base desire? Get lustre, and new light
To light thee, from the Surah of Pure Faith.”
This one breath, winding in a hundred breasts,

Is but one secret of the Unity;
Get thee its colour, to be like to it,
Reflective to its beauty in the world.
He, who bestowed this Muslim name on thee,
Drew thee to Oneness from Duality;
’Tis thou thyself hast called thee Afghan, Turk
–
Ah, thou remainest as thou ever wert!
Deliver now the named from all the names;
Have done with cups; ally thee to the jar!
Thou hast become a scandal to thy name,
A leaf that fell untimely from thy tree;
Attune thee unto Oneness; be thou gone
From Twoness; nor dissect thy Unity.
Thou who art servant unto One, if thou

Art thou, how long wilt thou to school of
Two?
Lo, thou hast shut thy door upon thyself;
Take to thy heart that which thy lips imbibed.
A hundred nations thou hast raised from one,
On thy own fort made treacherous assault.
Be one; make visible thy Unity;
Let action turn the unseen into seen;
Activity augments the joy of faith,
But faith is dead that issues not in deeds.
“God, the Self‐Subsistent”
If thou hast bound thy faithful heart on God
The Self‐subsistent, thou hast overlept
The rim of things material. No slave
To things material God’s servant is;
Life is no turning of a water‐wheel.
If thou be Muslim, be not suppliant
Of other’s succour; be the embodiment
Of good to all the world. Make not complaint
Of scurvy fortune to the fortunate,
Nor from thy sleeve reach out a beggar’s hand.
Like Ali, be content with barley‐bread;
Break Marhab’s neck, and capture Khyber’s fort.
Why bear the favour of the bountiful,
Why feel the lancet of their nay and yea?
Take not the sustenance from mean, base hands;

Thou art a Joseph; count thyself not cheap.
And if thou be an ant, and lackest wings
And feathers, go not unto Solomon
To plead thy want. The road is arduous;
Go light‐accoutred, if thou wouldst attain;
Unfettered live thy days, unfettered die.
Count o’er the rosary of Take thou less
Of this world’s goods, and thou shalt riches win
In living free. So far as in thee lies
Become that Stone of the philosophers,
Not the base dross; a benefactor be,
Not a petitioner for others’ alms.
Thou knowest well bu Ali’s eminence,
Accept from me this draught, drawn from his cup –

“Trample Kai‐Kaus’ throne beneath thy foot;
Yield up thy life, but not thy self‐respect!”
The tavern door stands open of itself
To those whose bowls are empty, whose needs none.
Harun Rashid, that captain of the Faith
Whose blade to Nicephor of Byzance proved
A deadly potion, unto Malik spoke
Upon this fashion: “Master of my folk,
The dust before whose door illuminates
My people’s brow, melodious nightingale
Carolling mid the roses of good words,
I am desirous to be taught by thee
The secrets of those words. How long art thou
Content in Yemen to conceal the glow
Of thy bright rubies? Rise, and pitch thy tent
Here, in the homestead of the Caliphate.
How fair the brightness of the shining day,
The captivating beauty of Iraq!
The Fount of Khizer gushes from its vines,
Its earth is healing for the wounds of Christ.”
“I am the Prophet’s servant,” Malik said,
“And only him I love, with all my heart.
Bound to his saddle‐bow, I will not quit
His holy sanctuary. By the kiss
Of Yathrib’s dust I live; my night to me
Is fairer that Iraq’s pellucid day.
Love says, ‘Obey my ordinance; sign not
The articles of service even to kings.’
Thou wouldst become my master, overlord
Of this freed slave of God, that I should wait
Upon thy door to teach thee, and no more
Serve the community, being bound to thee.
Be it thy wish some portion to attain
Of godly knowledge, in my circle sit
And study with the rest. Indifference
To worldly needs engenders fine disdain,
And holy pride takes many splendid shapes.”
Godly indifference is to put on
The hue of God, and from thy robe to wash
The dye of otherness. But thou hast learned
The rote of others, taking that for store,
An alien rouge to beautify thy face;
In those insignia thou takest pride,
Until I know not if thou be thyself
Or art another. Fanned by foreign blasts
Thy soil is fallen silent, and no more
Fertile in fragrant roses and sweet herbs.
Desolate not thy tilth with thy own hand;
Make it not beg for rain from alien clouds.
Thy mind is prisoner to others’ thoughts,
Another’s music throbs within thy throat,
Thy very speech is borrowed, and thy heart
Dilates with aspirations not thine own.
The song thy ring‐doves sing, the leafy gowns
That deck thy cypresses, are meanly begged;
Thou takest wine from others in a bowl
Itself from others taken upon loan.
If he, whose glance contains the mystery
Erred not the sight – if he should come again
Unto his people, he whose candle‐flame
Knows its own moth, who can distinguish well
His own from strangers standing at the gate,
Our master would declare, Thou art not mine.
Woe, woe, alas for us upon that day!
How long wilt thou content thyself to live
The life of stars, that in the risen morn
Lose all their being? Thou hast been deceived
By the false dawn, packed up thy goods and gone
From the broad firmament. Thou art the sun;
Look on thy self a little; purchase not
Some shreds of radiance from others’ stars!
Thou hast engraved thy heart with alien shapes,
Gambled the alchemy and gained the dross;
How long this glittering with others’ shine?
Shake off heavy fumes for foreign grapes!
How long this fluttering about the flame
Of party lanterns? If thou hast a heart
Within thy breast, with thine own ardour burn!
Be like the gaze, wrapped round in thy own veils;
Rise on the wing, but ever wheel back home;
Bubble‐like bar thy little privacy
Against the intruder, if thou wouldst be wise.
No man to individuality
Ever attained, save that he knew himself,
No nation came to nationhood, except
It spurned to suit the whim of other men.
Then of our Prophet’s message be apprised,
And have thou done with other lords but God.
“He begat not, neither was He begotten”
Loftier than hue and blood thy people are,
And greater worth one Negro of the Faith
Than are a hundred redskin infidels.
A single drop of water Qanbar took
For his ablutions is more precious far
Than all the blood of Caesar. Take no count
Of father, mother, uncle; call thy self
An offspring of Islam, as Salman did.
See, my brave comrade, in the honeyed cells
That constitute the hive a subtle truth;
One drop from a red tulip is distilled,
One from a blue narcissus; none proclaims,
“I am of jasmine, of lily I!”
So our community the beehive is
Of Abraham whose honey is our Faith.
If thou hast made of our community
Lineage a part essential, thou hast rent
The fabric of true Brotherhood; thy roots
Have struck not in our soil, thy way of thought
Runs counter to our Muslim rectitude.
Ibn‐i‐Mas‘ud, that lantern bright of Love,
Body and spirit blazing in Love’s flame,
Being distressed upon a brother’s death
Dissolved in tears, a mirror liquefied,
Nor any term to his lamentings saw
But in his grief; as of her child bereaved
A mother weeps, so uncontrollably
He sobbed: “Ah, scholar of humility,
Alas, my comrade in the schools of prayer!
My tall young cypress, fellow traveller
Upon the pathway of the Prophet’s love!
O grief, that he is now denied the courts
Of God’s Apostle, while mine eyes are bright
With gazing fondly on the Prophet’s face!
The bond of Turk and Arab is not ours,
The link that binds us is no fetter’s chain
Of ancient lineage; our hearts are bound
To the beloved Prophet of Hijaz,
And to each other are we joined through him.
Our common thread is simple loyalty
To him alone; the rapture of his wine
Alone our eyes entrances; from what time
This glad intoxication with his love.
Raced in our blood, the old is set ablaze
In new creation. As the blood that flows
Within a people’s veins, so is his love
Sole substance of our solidarity.
Love dwells within the spirit, lineage
The flesh inhabits; stronger far than race
And common ancestry is Love’s firm cord.
True loverhood must overleap the bounds
Of lineage, transcend Arabia
And Persia. Love’s community is like
The light of God; whatever being we
Possess, from its existence is derived.
“None seeketh when or where God’s light was born;
What need of warp and woof, God’s robe to spin?”
Who suffereth his foot to wear the chains
Of clime and ancestry, is unaware
How He begat not, neither was begot.
“And there is not any equal unto Him”
What is the Muslim, that hath closed his eyes
Against the world? This heart attached to God,
What is its nature? On a mountain‐top
A tulip blowing, that hath never seen
The trailing border of the gatherer’s skirt;
The flame is kindled in his ardent breast
From the first breaths of dawn; heaven suffers not
To loose him from her bosom, deeming him
A star suspended; the uprising sun
Touches his lips with dawn’s first ray, the dew
Bathes from his waking eyes the dust of sleep.
Firm must the bond be tied with There is none
If thou wouldst an unequalled people be.
He who is Essence One, unpartnered is;
His servant too no partner can endure;
And whoso in the Highest of the High
Believeth, cannot suffer any peer
In his high jealousy. Wrapt round his breast
The robe of Do not grieve, borne on his brow
The crown Ye are the highest, he transports
On his broad back the burden of both worlds,
Protects both land and sea in his embrace;
His ear attentive to the thunder’s roar,
His shoulders bared to take the lightning’s scourge,
Against the false he is a sword, a shield
Before the truth; evil and good are proved
Upon the touchstone of his ordinance
And prohibition. Knotted in his coals
A hundred conflagrations lurk; life’s self
Derives perfection from his essence pure.
Through the broad spaces of this clamorous world
No music sounds but his triumphant song,
His loud Allahu Akbar. Great is he
On justice, clemency, benevolence;
Noble his temper, even in chastisement.
At festival his lyre delights the mind;
Steel melts before his ardour in the fight.
Where roses blossom, with the nightingale’s
His sweet song mingles; in the wilderness
No falcon is more swift upon the prey.
His heart untranquil scorns to take repose
Beneath the heavens; in the spreading skies
He makes his dwellings, as on soaring wing
He rises far beyond yon ancient hoop
That spans our firmament, to whet his beak
Against the gleaning stars.
Thou, with thy frail
Unspread pinion, tentative to fly,
Art like some chrysalis, that in the dust
Still slunmbers on; rejecting the Quran,
How meanly thou hast sunk, base caviller
Protesting of the turn of Fortune’s wheel!
Yet, lying abject as the scattered dew,
Thou hast within thy grip a living Book;
How ling shall earth content thee for thy home?
Life up thy baggage; hurl it to the skies!

(Rumuz-e-Bekhudi-26) Khitab Ba Mukhdarat-e-Islam

Address to the veiled ladies of Islam

O thou, whose mantle is the covering
That guards our honour, whose effulgence
Our candle’s capital, whose nature pure
To us a mercy, our religion’s strength,
Foundation of our true community!
Our children’s lips, being suckled at thy breast,
From thee first learn to lisp No god but God.
Thy love it is, that shapes our little ways,
Thy love that moulds our thoughts, our words, our deeds.
Our lightning‐flash, that slumbered in thy cloud,
Glitters upon the mountain, sweeps the plain.
O guardian of the blessings of God’s Law,
Thou from whose breath the Faith of God draws fire,
Coxcomb and crafty is the present age,
Its caravan a highwayman, well armed
To seize and spoil Faith’s riches; blind its brain,
That knoweth naught of God; ignoble they
Who are the captives of its twisted chains;
Bold is its eye, and reckless; swift to snatch
The talons of its lashes; its poor prey
Calls itself free, its victim vaunts it lives!
Thine is the hand that keepeth fresh and green
The young tree of our Commonwealth, as thou
Guardest inviolate the capital
Of our Community. Fret not thyself
To calculate the profit and the loss,
Being content to tread the well‐worn path
Our fathers went before. Be wary of
Time’s depredations, and to thy broad breast
Gather thy children close; these meadowchicks,
Unfledged as yet co fly, have fallen far
From their warm nest. High, high the cravings are
That wrestle with thy soul; be conscious still
And ever of thy model, Fatima,
So that thy branch may bear a new Husain,
Our garden blossom with the Golden Age.

(Rumuz-e-Bekhudi-25) Dar Ma'ani Aynke Syedda-Tu-Nisa Fatima-Tu-Zahra Aswah-e-Kamila Aeest Bara'ay Nisa'ay Islam

That the Lady Fatima is the perfect pattern of Muslim womanhood

Mary is hallowed in one line alone,
That she bore Jesus; Fatima in three.
For that she was the sweet delight of him
Who came a mercy to all living things,
Leader of former as of latter saints,
Who breathed new spirit into this dead world
And brought to birth the age of a New Law.
His lady she, whose regal diadem
God’s words adorn Hath there come any time,
The chosen one, resolver of all knots
And hard perplexities, the Lion of God,
An emperor whose palace was a hut,
Accoutred with one sword, one coat of mail.
And she his mother, upon whom revolves
Love’s compasses, the leader of Love’s train,
That single candle in the corridor
Of sanctity resplendent, guardian
Of the integrity of that best race
Of all God’s peoples; who, that the fierce flame
Of war and hatred might extinguished be,
Trod underfoot the crown and royal ring.
His mother too, the lord of all earth’s saints
And strong right arm of every freeborn man,
Husain, the passion in the song of life,
Teacher of freedom to God’s chosen few.
The character, the essential purity
Of holy children from their mothers come.
She was the harvest of the well‐sown field
Of self‐surrender, to all mothers she
The perfect pattern, Fatima the chaste.
Her heart so grieved, because one came in need,
She stripped her cloak and sold it to a Jew;
Though creatures all, of light alike and fire,
Obeyed her bidding, yet she sank her will
In her good consort’s pleasure. Fortitude
And meekness were her schooling; while her lips
Chanted the Book, she ground the homely mill.
No pillow needed she to catch her tears,
But wept contrition’s offering of pearls
Upon the skirt of prayer; which Gabriel stooped
To gather, as they glistened in the dust,
And rained like dew upon the Throne of God.
God’s Law a fetter locks about my feet
To guard secure the Prophet’s high behest,
Else had I surely gone about her tomb
And fallen prostrate, worshipping her dust.

(Rumuz-e-Bekhudi-24) Dar Ma'ani Aynke Baqa'ay Nou Az Amomat Az Wa Hifz Wa Ehtiram...

That the continuance of the species derives from motherhood, and that the preservation and honouring of motherhood is the foundation of Islam

The instrument of man sings melodies
When struck by woman’s plectrum; his soul’s pride
Swells of her deference. The woman clothes
The nakedness of man; the loveliness
Of the beloved a garment weaves for love.
The love of God is nourished at her breast,
A lovely air struck from her silent hand;
And he in whom all beings make their boast
Declared he loved three things – sweet perfume, prayer,
And womankind. What Muslim reckons her
A servant, nothing more, no part has won
Of the Book’s wisdom. If thou lookest well,
Motherhood is a mercy, being linked
By close affinity to prophethood,
And her compassion is the prophet’s own.
For mothers shape the way that men shall go;
Maturer, by the grace of Motherhood,
The character of nations is, the lines
That score that brow determine our estate.
If thou art learned to attain the truth
Behind the form, our word community
Hath, in the Persian, many subtleties.
He, for whose sake God said Let there be life,
Declared that Paradise lies at the feet
Of mothers. In the honouring of the womb
The life communal is alone secured,
Else is life raw and brutish. Motherhood
Quickens the pace of life, the mysteries
Of life revealing; tortuously twists
The current of our stream, so that it flows
Bubbling and whirling on its rapid course.
Take any peasant woman, ignorant,
Squat‐figured, fat, uncomely, unrefined,
Unlettered, dim of vision, simple, dumb;
The pangs of motherhood have torn her heart,
Dark, tragic rings have underscored her eyes;
If from her bosom the community
Receive one Muslim zealous for the Faith,
God’s faithful servant, all the pains she bore
Have fortified our being, and our dawn
Glows radiant in the lustre of her dusk.
Now take the slender figure, bosomless,
Close‐cosseted, a riot in her glance,
Her thoughts resplendent with the Western light;
In outward guise a woman, inwardly
No woman she; she hath destroyed the bonds
That hold our pure community secure;
Her sacred charms are all unloosed and spilled;
Bold‐eyed her freedom is, provocative,
And wholly ignorant of modesty;
Her learning is inadequate to bear
The charge of motherhood, and on the dusk
And evening of her days not one star shines;
Better it were this rose had never grown
Within our garden, better were her brand
Washed from the skirt of the community.
Stars without number whispering No god
But God, ungleaming in the dark of time
And not yet risen from nonentity,
Still wait without the bounded territories
Of quality and quantity, being hid
Within the shadows of our patent life,
These our epiphanies still unbeheld;
Dew not descended on the rose’s bloom,
Buds not yet torn by the lascivious breeze.
This garden of potentialities,
These unseen tulips blossom from the bower
Of fertile Motherhood. A people’s wealth
Rests not, my prudent friend, in linen fine
Or treasured hoards of silver and of gold;
Its riches are its sons, clean‐limbed and strong
Of body, supple‐brained, hard‐labouring,
Healthy and nimble to high enterprise.
Mothers preserve the clue of Brotherhood,
The strength of Scripture and Community.