Muntakhab al-tawarikh 379: A masnavi.
Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 379
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A masnavi.
379.1
“Two couplets one day seared my heart, As the singer was chanting them to his guitar: Many Junes, Decembers, and Aprils Will come after we have become dust and bricks, While those who are now invisible to me Will come and pass over my dust.” Praise be to God! My pen, in its atrabiliousness, has, like a madman, dealt drily and coolly with everybody, and has poured out from the cup of its heart every drop of black bile wine poet, sometimes under the name of Samai and sometimes under that of Vafi, but at last settled on the poetical name (Hashim) which is now given to him. He had most excellent taste in poetry. The following verses are his:— ‘O turtle-dove, whatever thou bewailest in the garden, Thou must surely be thinking on her cypress-like form. Like a sparrow I am caught in thy snare, And thou neither slayest nor releasest me.
379.2
“I wander in the garden when thy face is not before me, shedding tears of the colour of tulips; I sit beneath each rose and tears of blood stream from my eyes. In my grief for thee I am filled with blood as a flask is filled with wine, and I desire To pour out at thy banquet like wine the blood with which I am filled. I shed not tears from my eyes except on the dust at thy door; How shall I pour forth my honour in the dust at every door? Remembering her wheat-coloured face I sow in the plot of desire The grains of my tears which are the seeds of love’s madness. I, Hashim, like the wine-flask, shed every moment red tears, while I sigh like an organ thinking on her wine-coloured lip.” ‘It is not thy mole, O silver-bodied one, that casts its reflection in the wine; It is the pupil of my eye, drowned in my heart’s blood.’ A quatrain: “O thou whose ringlets are the fetters of my love-sick heart, I am distracted by those two ringlets like ambergris in colour and perfume.
379.3
is in the position of that beast which shall come forth as the first sign of the Judgment Day, for it stamps on the foreheads of the circumstances of the folk of this last age the words ‘this one is a Muslim,’ or ‘this one is an infidel,’ exalting some to God's mercy and setting apart others as accursed, and the saying of the prophet (may God bless and assoil him,) is clear on this point, ‘O God, I have not blessed in my prayers any but him whom Thou hast blessed, and I have not cursed in my cursings any but him whom Thou hast cursed.’ It is related that that chief of the prophets (may God bless and assoil him while the sun and the moon shall rise) invoked curses on the polytheistic ‘Arabs and on the chiefs of the Quraish, and particularly on one mentioned by name, for a whole month after he had been slandered by the wicked, and said, ‘O God, curse the infidels, who stray from Thy way, who make Thy prophet a liar, and who slay Thy saints. Thou art Lord of this world and the next. O God, preserve me in safety, and join me to the pious!’ And, since the end is but a return to the beginning, there is, in these days when the faith is exiled (for ‘the faith appears as a stranger, and verily, it has become as it appears’) every occasion for the constant recital of the following prayer, ‘O God, assist him who assists the religion of Muhammad and forsake him who forsakes the faith of Muhammad!’ The author of the Mirsadu-l-'Ibad four hundred years ago uttered his complaint and said:
379.4
“O kings of the earth, hasten, all of you, That you may catch the perfume which is all that is left of the faith! had in its spot of original sin and given forth from the columns of its fingers all that came to its tongue, so that (I am not sure) what those who come after me will say when, in their search for treasure, they have hastened in the tracks of the crows' feet of this impudent (pen), or what answer I shall give in respect of all my idle gossip. I fear that in accordance with the saying, ‘Thou shalt be treated as thou hast treated others,’ they will deal with me as I have dealt with these poets: “Thou hast called me a promise-breaker, but I fear That this accusation will be laid to thy charge on the day of resurrection.” But there is here a subtle distinction if the discriminating neglect it not, and it is this, that I have apportioned eulogy and execration according to the canon of the unmistakable sacred law, and have bestowed praise and blame in accordance with my zeal for the faith, and my case is similar to that of the boor who entered a company seated at table and began to eat without any regard to the others, and collected all the dishes round himself.
379.5
One of the company said, ‘Sir, who are you, and why do you thus intrude upon us?’ He replied, ‘I am a Turk, and I am a servant of the darogha, and I am hungry.’ But if others, besides myself, should be jealous for the faith I shall not resent their criticism, nay, rather, my life is a sacrifice for those people who shall apprise me of my faults. But if they be not jealous for the faith let them hang their heads and hold their peace, for in truth the bird of my pen, with its sharp bill and its sublime able, confirming the truth of the verse, ‘These are they who have purchased error at the price of true direction;
379.6
but their traffic hath not been gainful.’ I am convinced that the people of succeeding generations who shall see their false fables and all their unprofitable prolixity will, in accordance with the saying ‘he who hears dispenses with the solution of his difficulties,’ with another class of men, regretful not in the least, be perplexed, and will expect and await (something else), and therefore, that the veil may be drawn aside, it is incumbent on me, who am acquainted with some, at least, of the affairs narrated, and have even been intimately connected with these transactions, to place on record what I have seen and what I have heard, for my evidence regarding these things is that of an eye-witness who is certain of what he relates, and does not spring from mere supposition and guess-work (‘and when can that which is heard resemble that which is seen?’) in order that, on the one hand, my record may be an expiation of the writings, past and present, which I have been compelled and directed to undertake, and, on the other, right may be proved to be on the side of the Muslims. Islam has gone from your hands, and ye heed it not, Infidelity has captured the world, and ye sleep!”
379.7
Forsaking the custom of authors, who have in respect of each of their works of whatever sort, a hundred hopes of favour from the age and from the people of the age, and, having dedicated a work to somebody, make it a means of being admitted to the intimacy of kings, of begging for rewards, and of attaining their objects: I, without desire or expectation (of material gain, but) seeking aid from God, trusting in Him, and firmly laying hold of the skirt of his universal favour and his bounty well-known in bygone times, have placed these, my first fruits on the dish of speech merely for the sake of virtuosos among those to come, who may be desirous of, and anxious for, information regarding our times, that haply its flavour may please the palates of their souls, and also that some relish from the morsels on the table of their favour may become the lot of the palate of the compiler of the work, who is, as it were, their gardener. If thou drink wine, pour a draught out on the ground, Fear not that sin which carries some gain to others! I shall now explain what it was that originally led me to collect these fragments.
379.8
Since a complete revolution, both in legislation and in manners, greater than any of which there is any record for the past thousand years, has taken place in these days, and every writer who has had the ability to record events and to write two connected sentences has for the sake of flattering the people of this age, or for fear of them, or by reason of his ignorance of matters of faith, or of his distance from court, or for his own selfish ends, concealed the truth, and, having bartered his faith for worldly profit, and right guidance for error, has adorned falsehood with the semblance of truth, and distorted and embellished infidelity and pernicious trash until they have appeared to be laud then the people of this world set their faces towards the resurrection, And raise their heads in bewilderment from the dust, Captured, by their evil fate, in disobedience, Their faces blackened with shame for their sins, When, in that confusion, in the heat of the Resurrection-Day, The rocks shall become water from the fierceness of the sun’s ray, When there shall not be, in all that plain full of grief, Any refuge but the shadow of the Most High, Of Thy bounty, O Creator, Lord of many claims, Cast the shadow of Thy favour on my head!
379.9
When the balance of justice is brought into the midst, And the deficiency and excess of all shall be made apparent, When I shall have in my company mountains of sin, Beside which the mountains shall seem no larger than a blade of grass, It is not impossible to Thine illimitable mercy To weigh down the scale of my obedience: In that place of fear and confusion, When the records of each one’s acts shall fly open, And my record shall be so black That it will be impossible to enter any fresh sin therein, Wash my record with the cloud of Thy clemency, And, by that washing, raise me to honour: When the fire of hell shall leap forth as a banner To draw to itself all the people of the world, Pour, of Thy grace, some water on my fire, And bring me forth purified from that fire. When over hell the narrow bridge shall appear can, in justice, be nothing but mere boasting and vaunting, which are repugnant to refined natures, and so far am I from vainglory and pride in this matter that I am ashamed of them, and if I should attempt any lofty flights regarding them this base coin of mine, this worthless and contemptible merchandise, my faulty and unappreciated style, is sufficient to refute and falsify my claim. In these matters nobody knows me as well as I know myself.