Persian Heritage

من نخواهم کرد ترک لعل یار و جام می

زاهدان معذور داریدم که اینم مذهب است

It's a matter of creed for me: goblets of wine,

My Love's lips are just like rubies. This is my doctrine

I won't forsake. Puritans, I offer you apologies.

From ancient times Persian literature has featured many references to the 'Religion of Love, represented as being the only true faith, the creed most acceptable in the eyes of God.

 

Sanai of Ghazna

The earliest major Persian Sufi poet to make Love an axiom of an individual mystical theology and personal religious creed was Sanā'ī of Ghazna.

one verse, Sanā'ī thus identifies both his Sufi path (ṭarīqat) and his sectarian creed (kīsh) as being 'Love' itself:

Why do you ask about my creed and faith tradition?

It's clear. My creed is Love. Amor is my canon.

از کیش و طریقتم چه پرسی

عشقست مرا طریقت و کیش

In Eros lies transcendent heights that rise

And summon us to immortal music.

Save to seek those erotic highs

One should never dance, never revel. ( Rumi )

قامت عشق صلا زد که سماع ابدی است

جز پی قامت او رقص و هیاهوی مکن

 

Nizami of Ganja

Niẓāmī of Ganja (d. 598/1202), the leading author of epic romantic poetry in Persian literature, must also be counted among the chief prophets of the Religion of Love in Persian belles lettres. In his romantic epic poem Khusraw and Shīrīn,

Niẓāmī teaches that the only role that man is fit to play in the entire theatre of Existence is that of the lover in the following verses, where Love is featured as a kind of Anima Mundi:

Naught else but Love's my labor: that's my logo;

So long as I'm alive, don't offer me another motto.

All face towards Love to supplicate in every

Temple under Heaven's eye. The galaxy

Itself wouldn't have an earth unless across

The surface Eros' water coursed to save its Face.

Become a slave to Love! All righteous thought consists

Of this, for that's the task of the heart's adepts.

The cosmos is Love in sum and all the rest deceit;

Save Amor's play, and all else's an idle game and sport

مرا کز عشق به ناید شعاری

مبادا تا زیم جز عشق کاری

فلک جز عشق محرابی ندارد

جهان بی‌خاک عشق آبی ندارد

غلام عشق شو کاندیشه این است

همه صاحب دلان را پیشه این است

جهان عشقست و دیگر زرق سازی

همه بازیست الا عشقبازی

اگر بی‌عشق بودی جان عالم

که بودی زنده در دوران عالم

کسی کز عشق خالی شد فسردست

کرش صد جان بود بی‌عشق مردست

Niẓāmī, long before Newton, had posited that a reciprocally acting gravitational force permeated the entire scale of creation and Nature that he named 'Love':

Attraction works on human temperament its lure

And that attraction sages predicate of Love,

So when you ponder this in-depth, then you'll perceive

That Eros holds the cosmos up all stands through Love,

And if once Eros loses its grip on Heaven's wheel

The great globe itself would forfeit its bloom and weal

طبایع جز کشش کاری ندانند

حکیمان این کشش را عشق خوانند

گر اندیشه کنی از راه بینش

به عشق است ایستاده آفرینش

گر از عشق آسمان آزاد بودی

کجا هرگز زمین آباد بودی

Devoid of Eros, life appeared to me soulless.

I sold my heart, and in its place, a soul purchased.

I've filled the rims and cornices of the globe.

With Amor's smoke. I've made the eyes of reason doze.

چو من بی‌عشق خود را جان ندیدم

دلی بفروختم جانی خریدم

ز عشق آفاق را پردود کردم

خرد را دیده خواب‌آلود کردم

کمر بستم به عشق این داستان را

صلای عشق در دادم جهان را

 

Attar of Nishapur

After Niẓāmī, the next great Prophet of the Religion of Love in Persian poetry was 'Aṭṭār of Nishapur (d. 618/1221 or 627/1229). As the poets mentioned above, 'Aṭṭār believed the only commend- able and worthwhile connection between man and God to be a Lover–Beloved relationship. Like many other Muslim mystics before him, 'Aṭṭār emphasized that the superiority and pre-eminence of Adam over the other angels lay in Adam's/man's love-passion and agony.

Love (dard). That is why he asks for that passion for being increased:

Give me an ounce of pain,

O you Who cures all pain

for left without Your pain, my soul will die.

To heretics, let heresy apply,

And to the faithful – grant them faith;

But for the heart of 'Aṭṭār, let

One ounce of your pain remain

 

Ibn al-Arabi

Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-'Arabī (d. 638/1240) of Andalusia in Spain, known as the Shaykh al-Akbar, the 'Supreme Shaykh', was one of the first Sufis to describe the Religion of Love in a specifically ecumenical sense. In his theosophical works composed in Arabic, he gave explicit theological expression to a separate religious creed that he called the Religion of Love – a faith that embraced all manifestations of reality – while encompassing yet transcending their divergent appearances. The following verses are among the most famous and admired lines ever composed in Islamic – if not world – civilization on the theme of this transcendental erotic religious creed:

Pasture between breastbones and innards.

Marvel,

a garden among flames!

My heart can take on any form:

for gazelles, a meadow

a cloister for monks,

For the idols, sacred ground,

Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,

the tables of the Toráh,

the scrolls of the Qur'án.

I profess the religion of Love; wherever its caravan turns along the way, that is the belief, the faith I keep.

 

RUMI

The Religion of Love in Rūmī

It will be worthwhile to explore Rūmī's own understanding of this transcendental "Religion of Love" since he devotes so many verses of his ecstatic poetry to claiming that the religion of Love transcends not only Islam but every other religion as well. He thus begins one long ghazal announcing the supra-Islamic Nature of Eros as follows:

در خلاصه عشق آخر شیوه اسلام کو

در کشوف مشکلاتش صاحب اعلام کو

In the summa of Amor

Where's the idiom of Islam?

ًWhere's one master exegete

of Eros, whose lore suffices

to crack the code of its complexities?

In another ghazal, Rumi delineates the above distinction between the esoteric creed of Love and exoteric Islam in greater detail:

Get lost! The lover's secta amoris is the reverse

Of other faiths and creeds, for from the one you love

Untruth and perfidy beats kindness and sincerity,

Her fabrications inspirations, Her sin all gratuity,

All ill from Her is just, her taunts all right and meet,

Her temple is the Ka'ba, silk-soft her adamant.

The nettle's sting from Her I think is better than

Rose petals and sweet basil.

If scoffers, then poke fun And say: 'It's deviant – this crooked creed you've got!'

Reply: 'Her eyebrow is my creed. I bid for it.

And laid down life for this – the "creed of crookedness"!

It's all I need; I'll waste no words. Go read the rest in silence .

رو مذهب عاشق را برعکس روش‌ها دان

کز یار دروغی‌ها از صدق به و احسان

حال است محال او مزد است وبال او

عدل است همه ظلمش داد است از او بهتان

۳

نرم است درشت او کعبه‌ست کنشت او

خاری که خلد دلبر خوشتر ز گل و ریحان

آن دم که ترش باشد بهتر ز شکرخانه

وان دم که ملول آید خوش بوس و کنار است آن

وان دم که تو را گوید والله ز تو بیزارم

آن آب خضر باشد از چشمه گه حیوان

۶

وان دم که بگوید نی در نیش هزار آری

بیگانگیش خویشی در مذهب بی‌خویشان

کفرش همه ایمان شد سنگش همه مرجان شد

بخلش همه احسان شد جرمش همگی غفران

گر طعنه زنی گویی تو مذهب کژ داری

من مذهب ابرویش بخریدم و دادم جان

۹

زین مذهب کژ مستم بس کردم و لب بستم

بردار دل روشن باقیش فرو می خوان

شمس الحق تبریزی یا رب چه شکرریزی

گویی ز دهان من صد حجت و صد برهان

We find him again extolling in a quatrain the superiority of Love's 'crooked creed' over the so-called 'straight' way of formalistic Islam:

Her tresses' tip our fetish-cult

And eye that's drunk and impudent –

That is the creed which we adopt.

They say that healthy piety is something else,

Assert sound faith is different; aside from these,

But from their 'sound faith' and 'creed of wholesomeness,'

We choose her deviant, uneven ways and crookedness.

ما مذهب چشم شوخ مستش داریم

کیش سر زلف بت‌پرستش داریم

گویند جز این هر دو بود دینِ درست

از دین درست ما، شکستش داریم

This same strict distinction and difference between the formal creed of Islam and the higher transcendental religion of Love، is reaffirmed by Rūmī in several other quatrains in his Dīvān as well. In the following two quatrains, he maintains that Love's esoteric faith supersedes conventional religion and is something apart from the other world's traditional sects:

Erotomaniacs is what we are: lovesots;

The Muslims they're a different lot.

We're spindly ants; King Solomon's another sort.

A burning, aching heart and sallow faces seek of us:

The abattoir's on a different street

ما عاشق عشقیم و مسلمان دگر است

مامور ضعیفیم و سلیمان دگر است

از ما رخ زرد و جگرپاره طلب

بازارچهٔ قصب فروشان دگر است

Know it for sure that the lover's not a Muslim

For in the creed of Love, there's neither infidelity

Or faith –

once you fall in Love, you have no body,

No soul, no heart, no mind: who ain't like this, ain't nothin.

عاشق تو یقین دان که مسلمان نبود

در مذهب عشق کفر و ایمان نبود

در عشق، تن و عقل و دل و جان نبود

هرکس که چنین نگشت او آن نبود

 

Hafez

Ḥāfeẓ is Persia's greatest erotic lyricist who remains the supreme – and in some senses the last – Prophet of the "Religion of Love" in Persian literature. There are many verses in his ghazals that appear as a manifesto of this transcendental creed:

Both human beings and spirits take their sustenance From the Existence of Love. The practice of devotion Is an excellent way to arrive at happiness in both worlds

طفیل هستی عشقند آدمی و پری

ارادتی بنما تا سعادتی ببری

Become a lover; if you don't, one day,

the affairs of the world Will come to an end,

and you'll never have had even

One glimpse of the purpose of the workings of space and time

عاشق شو ار نه روزی کار جهان سر آید

ناخوانده نقش مقصود از کارگاه هستی

Hafez and Rumi, Both poets were prophets; both composed poetic Scriptures that remain miracles of Beauty in Persian, their verses appearing as divine signs of loveliness and grace. For Ḥāfeẓ, the entire world reflects the grace and magnificence of the divine countenance,

for, insofar as 'Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God, that Face reveals and casts a ray of the infinite divine Beauty in the mirrors of man, cosmos, microcosm, and macrocosm:

7-

Your beautiful face divulged to us

the chapter and verse of divine grace,

which is why nothing exists save grace and comeliness

in our scriptural exegesis.

روی خوبت آیتی از لطف بر ما کشف کرد

زان زمان جز لطف و خوبی نیست در تفسیر ما

This same theophany of Beauty also cast its ray upon Ḥāfeẓ's verse, gleams of which were reflected through various poetic images such as 'Idol' (bot), 'Christian child' (tarsā-bachchih), 'Magian child' (mugh-bachchih), 'Cup-bearer' (sāqī) and 'Friend' (yār).

When these images are apprehended by any reader attuned to Ḥāfeẓ's symbolic universe, they arouse intoxication and selflessness, freeing one from conceit, self-centredness, and egotism.

Thus, in the following verse in his Dīvān, we see how the 'Magian child' appears to rob the poet of his egocentric faith and initiate him into Love's esoteric creed:

8-

Just when the Magi's child strolled along (the thief of hearts and wrecker of belief)

At once, the Muslim puritan was carried off , from all his friends and divorced himself.

مُغْبَچه‌ای می‌گذشت راهزنِ دین و دل

در پِی آن آشنا از همه بیگانه شد

Ḥāfeẓ's religion of Love teaches devotion to that essential Beauty whose loveliness repeatedly reappears in the guise of various symbols among other Sufi poets. This is particularly evident in the lines from the following ghazal, which is one of the most famous erotic poems in all of Persian literature:

9.

Her hair was still tangled, her mouth drunk

And laughing, her shoulders sweaty, the blouse

Torn open, singing love songs, her hand holding a wine cup.

Her eyes were looking for a drunken brawl, her mouth full of jibes. And this being sat down

Last night at midnight on my bed.

She put her lips close to my ear and said

In a mournful whisper, these words: 'What is this? Aren't you my old lover – Are you asleep?'

The friend of wisdom who receives

This wine that steals sleep is a traitor to love If he doesn't worship that exact wine.

زلف‌آشفته و خِوی‌کرده و خندان‌لب و مست

پیرهن‌چاک و غزل‌خوان و صُراحی در دست

نرگسش عربده‌جوی و لبش افسوس‌کنان

نیم شب دوش به بالین من آمد بنشست

۳

سر فرا گوش من آورد به آواز حزین

گفت ای عاشق دیرینهٔ من خوابت هست؟

عاشقی را که چنین بادهٔ شبگیر دهند

کافر عشق بود گر نشود باده پرست

برو ای زاهد و بر دُردکشان خرده مگیر

که ندادند جز این تحفه به ما روز الست

۶

آن چه او ریخت به پیمانهٔ ما نوشیدیم

اگر از خَمر بهشت است وگر بادهٔ مست

خندهٔ جامِ می و زلفِ گره‌گیر نگار

ای بسا توبه که چون توبه حافظ بشکست

As the last stanza indicates, Ḥāfeẓ professes that anyone who does not revel in drinking the wine of Love is a heretic and traitor to Love's creed (kāfar-i 'ishq). This statement makes better sense if we decode the reference to wine as being metaphorical of the theophany of Beauty in the raiment of mortal beings.

That Transcendent Beloved Being then spoke, stating that any gnostic who is a confidant of the arcane mysteries, who recognizes the true face of such an affair, when given such a wine – that is, Beauty and loveliness decked out in the garb of the veiled presentment of a figurative mortal sweetheart – will only end up veiling and concealing this display of God, this divine theophany, unless he does becomes a worshipper of Beauty [ḥusn-parast]. This is because it is through the forms of mortal Beauty that God-as-Absolute, in reality, attracts the hearts of lovers to Himself.

 

The Principles of the Religion of
Love in Classical Persian Poetry
Husayn Ilahi-Ghomshei
translated by Leonard Lewisohn