THE MESNEVĪ (USUALLY KNOWN AS THE MESNEVĪYI SHERĪF, OR HOLY MESNEVĪ) OF MEVLĀNĀ…

BOOK THE FIRST.

TOGETHER WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND ACTS OF THE AUTHOR, OF HIS ANCESTORS, AND OF HIS DESCENDANTS;

Illustrated by a Selection of Characteristic Anecdotes, AS COLLECTED BY THEIR HISTORIAN, MEVLĀNĀ SHEMSU-’D-DĪN AHMED, EL EFLĀKĪ, EL ‘ĀRIFĪ.

TRANSLATED, AND THE POETRY VERSIFIED, BY JAMES W. REDHOUSE, M.R.A.S., ETC.

LONDON: TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1881. [All rights reserved.]

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“Mathnaoui ou Methnevi (in Persian and Turkish: Mesnevī). C’est le nom d’un des plus fameux Livres de l’Orient, composé en vers Persiens sur un grand nombre de différentes matières de Religion, d’Histoire, de Morale, et de Politique.

“Il a été composé par Gelaleddin Mohammed, fils de Mohammed, Al Balkhi, Al Konoui, environ l’an 600 de l’Hegire.

“Les surnoms de Balkhi et de Konoui sont donnés à cet Auteur, parce qu’il était natif de la ville de Balkh en Khorassan, et qu’il vint s’établir ensuite dans celle de Cogni en Natolie.

“Ce fut dans cette même ville qu’il institua un ordre de Derviches plus spirituels que les autres, lesquels on appelle ordinairement Mevlevis, qui font leur Capital de l’ouvrage de leur Maistre, auquel ils ne portent guères moins de respect qu’ à l’Alcoran. C’est pourquoi on donne aussi souvent au Mathnaoui le surnom de Mevlevi.

“Il y a un grand nombre de Commentaires Persiens et Turcs sur ce Livre, dont la poésie est estimée si excellente, que tous ses vers en sont cités, comme autant de sentences.”—D’Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale.

v

CONTENTS.

vii

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.1

The historian El Eflākī was a disciple of Chelebī Emīr ‘Ārif, a grandson of the author of the Mesnevī. ‘Ārif died in A.D. 1320; but as the dates of ‘Ārif’s successors are carried down to A.H. 754 (A.D. 1353), when Eflākī’s collection of anecdotes was completed, the historian must have outlived this last date. As a disciple of the Emīr ‘Ārif, he was a dervish of the order named Mevlevī, as being followers of the rule and practices of Mevlānā Jelālu-’d-Dīn, er-Rūmī, commonly known in English literature as “the dancing dervishes,” expressed by Americans: “whirling dervishes.” The dervishes of the order do not all dance or “whirl.” Some are musicians, and some singers or chanters, who may, however, be occasional dancers also.

Eflākī’s work gives a sufficiency of dates to fix the principal events that he commemorates. His dates do not agree exactly with those found in other historians. They are, however, sufficiently near for general purposes not of a chronologically critical nature. They commence with A.H. 605 (A.D. 1208), and thus cover a period of 145 years dated, besides another 30 years of the lifetime ofviii Jelāl’s grandfather undated, who was a noble of such high standing and of so great a reputation for learning and sanctity at Balkh, that the king gave him his only daughter in marriage, unsolicited. His mother was also a princess of the same royal house with his wife.

This royal house was the one known in history as that of Kh’ārezm-shāh or the Kharezmians. They were overthrown, and Balkh (the ancient Bactra, or Zariaspa), their capital, destroyed, by Jengīz Khān in A.D. 1211. A remnant of their kingdom was continued for twelve years longer by the last of the line, who died, at once a fugitive and an invader, in Azerbāyjān, in a battle fought against the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor.

Jelāl’s family claimed descent from Abū-Bekr, a father-in-law and the first successor of Muhammed, the lawgiver of Islām. One of the descendants of Abū-Bekr was among the conquerors of the ancient Bactria, when it was first brought under Muslim rule, in about A.D. 650, under the Caliph ‘Ūthmān; and his children had maintained a prominent position in that country, possessed of great wealth, until the time immediately preceding the irruption of Jengīz.

Jelāl was the youngest of three children, two being sons, born of the princess, his mother, in Balkh. The eldest, a daughter, was already married, and remained behind with her husband, when her father and brothers left their native city some time between A.D. 1208 and 1211, in which latter year they were at Bagdād. There is no further mention of Jelāl’s elder brother. Jelāl was five years old when they left Balkh. By way of Bagdād they went to Mekka, thence to Damascus, and next toix Erzinjān, in Armenia; thence to Larenda, in Asia Minor. Jelāl’s mother was still with the party. He was now eighteen years old; and was married, at Larenda, to a lady named Gevher (Pearl), daughter of a certain Lala Sherefu-’d-Dīn of Samarqand, in A.D. 1226.2 She bore him two sons there, ‘Alā’u-’d-Dīn (afterwards killed in a tumult at Qonya) and Bahā’u-’d-Dīn Sultān Veled, through whom the succession of the house was continued. She appears to have died rather young; for Jelāl afterwards married another lady of Qonya, who outlived him, and by

whom he had two other children, a son and a daughter. (See Anecdotes, Chap, iii., No. 69, for a variant.)

After the birth of Sultān Veled at Larenda, Jelāl’s father was invited to Qonya by the Seljūqi king, ‘Alā’u-’d-Dīn Kayqubād, where he founded a college, and where he died in A.D. 1231. The king built a marble mausoleum over his grave, with this date inscribed on it. The king himself died, five years later, in A.D. 1236.

At his father’s death, Jelāl went to Aleppo and Damascus for several years to study, and then returned to Qonya, where he was appointed professor of four separate colleges. His reputation for learning and sanctity became very great.

But before this journey to Damascus, he appears to have paid a visit to Larenda. For, a former pupil of his father’s at Balkh, who had become a great saint and anchoret, came to Qonya to seek Jelāl, and was the cause of his returning from Larenda to the capital.

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This was the Sheykh and Seyyid Burhānu-’d-Dīnn, who became Jelāl’s spiritual teacher for some time. The dates given do not agree in the various branches of Eflākī’s compilation; for he here gives a period of nine years’ spiritual study at Qonya under Burhān.

After Burhān’s instructions and departure from Qonya to Qaysariyya, where he died, and after Jelāl’s studies at Aleppo and Damascus, with his subsequent return to Qonya and appointment to the four colleges, another great saint came to visit Jelāl at this latter city. This was Shemsu-’d-Dīn of Tebrīz, for whom Jelāl conceived a very great friendship. He is mentioned in the Mesnevī several times in very high terms. He appears to have been exceedingly aggressive and domineering in his manner. This roused a fierce animosity against him, which at length broke out in a tumult. Jelāl’s eldest son, ‘Alā’u-’d-Dīn, was killed or mortally hurt in this disturbance. The local police seized Shemsu-’d-Dīn in consequence, and he was never again seen alive by his friends. Jelāl went himself to Damascus, in hopes that he might have been sent away, or have got away, privately. But the effort was fruitless. Later traditions cause his corpse to have been recovered and buried at Qonya, differing, however, as to the place of interment.

When Jelāl found that he required assistance in conducting all the various duties that fell on him, he selected first for that office his former fellow-student-, Sheykh Salāhu-’d-Dīn Ferīdūn, surnamed Zer-Kūb (the Goldbeater), from his business. He assisted Jelāl for about ten years, and died in A.D. 1258.

Jelāl now took as his assistant his own favourite pupil,xi Hasan Husāmu-’d-Dīn, surnamed the son of Akhī-Turk, through his being descended from some man of celebrity of the name or designation of Akhī-Turk. There appears to have been a large family of very influential men residing at Qonya and other towns of Asia Minor, all calling themselves Akhī, and distinguished as Akhī Ahmed, Akhī Eshref, &c. The word “Akhī” is Arabic, and signifies “my brother.” It may also mean “one related to a brother,” as a servant, slave, client, &c., of some prince, &c.; or of some dervish “brother” of some religious order. Indeed, these very numerous individuals named Akhī, may have been each a “brother” of such a fraternity or fraternities, or even of some industrial guild.

Ten years after Husām was taken as his assistant by Jelāl, this latter was called to his rest in December A.D. 1273; and was buried in his father’s mausoleum, leaving Husām as his successor. But meanwhile, at Husām’s suggestion, and with himself as the first amanuensis thereof, the Mesnevī had been composed, in six volumes, books, or parts, by Jelāl. The second volume was commenced in A.D. 1263. There had been an interval of two years between the completion of the first and this, caused by Husām’s grief at the death of his wife. The whole work is stated to contain twenty-six thousand six hundred and sixty couplets. A seventh volume or book has been also attributed to the Mesnevī, to make up the number to that of the “seven planets;” some say it was composed or collected by Sultān Veled. The anecdotes of Eflākī make mention of many hundreds of odes composed also by Jelāl.

xii

He is said to have instituted his peculiar order of dervishes, with their special dress, the Indian garb of mourning, in memory of his murdered friend, Shemsu-’d-Dīn of Tebrīz; and to have adopted the use of instrumental music, the flute, the rebeck, the drum, and the tambourine, with singing or chanting, as an accompaniment to the holy dance, on account of the lethargic nature of the “Romans.” As a child is tempted to take a salutary medicine by the exhibition of a little jam or honey, so Jelāl judged that the “Romans” might be tempted to a devotional love for God through the bait of sweet sounds addressed to their outward senses. Dancing or twirling by dervishes was of much older date, as will be recollected in one of the tales of the Arabian Nights.

Husām died in A.D. 1284, just ten years after his teacher Jelāl; whose son, Bahā’u-’d-Dīn, Sultān Veled, succeeded Husām as chief of the order, and died in A.D. 1312. His son, Chelebī Emīr ‘Ārif, succeeded him, and passed away in A.D. 1320; two of his half-brothers becoming chiefs of the order after him in succession.

Eflākī informs us that he undertook the compilation of his work at the express desire of his spiritual teacher, Chelebī Emīr ‘Ārif. The preface gives the year A.H. 710 (A.D. 1310) as that of its commencement, and the colophon at the end mentions A.H. 754 (A.D. 1353) as the date of its completion. He thus spent forty-three years in his labour of love. The copy used for the present translation was written in A.H. 1027 (A.D. 1617), and belongs to the library of the India Office, being No. 1670. It is a quarto volume of 291 numbered folios of two pages each folio, and twenty-three lines in each page. It is subdividedxiii into a preface, of two folios, and ten chapters of very different lengths, thus:

The work contains many hundreds of anecdotes, related to Eflākī by trustworthy reporters, whose names are generally given, and a few for which he vouches himself as an eyewitness. Every anecdote is the account of a miracle wrought by the living or the dead; or is the narrative of some strange or striking event. It is, in fact, a species of the Acts of the Apostles of the Mevlevī dervish fathers, and is a rare specimen of what fervid religious enthusiasm can invent or exaggerate, pious credulity can believe, and confiding ignorance accept. In these days of Christian “Spiritualism,” let not the reader be over-shocked at learning that Muslim “Saints,” lovers of their Creator, and beloved by Him in return, hold themselves and are held by their dervish brethren to be the successors and spiritual inheritors of the prophets, from Adam to Muhammed; that, in virtue of this spiritual communion with God, they know all the secrets and mysteries of heaven and earth, and not only suspend or overrule the laws of nature at xivtheir will, but also deal out death or disease by their

anger, health or prosperity by their blessing; the whole in strict accordance, however, with the eternal will and foreknowledge of Him by whom alone all things are made.

The anecdotes translated are chosen as being characteristic of various points of dervish credence or assertion. Most of them inculcate some moral truth or point of practical wisdom. A few will be found, however, to go far beyond the credible; and one or two, unless totally misunderstood by the translator, are simply and grossly blasphemous. These last are here given as specimens of the exaggerated dervish doctrines which cause the orthodox among the ‘Ulemā3 of Islām to hold all such quasi-religious associations to be more or less heterodox.

The dervishes of Islām appear to be a kind of Gnostics. They style themselves Poor, Impassioned, Adepts, and Perfect. In many respects their doctrines correspond with those of Buddha, Pythagoras, and Plato, making all souls that are destined to salvation to be emanations from the divine Light or Glory of God, in which they will be again congregated; and all those doomed to perdition to have been formed out of the Fire of His wrath, to which also they will eventually be consigned.

It is but too patent to the translator that he is bound to sue for the kind indulgence of a critical public, in offering them the present volume in verse. He has no claim xvto being a poet himself; and had never practised the art of metrical composition until very lately. Sensible himself to the earnestness of thought and beauty of diction imbedded in the writings of the great poets of Islām, and keenly aware of the condition of dry bones to which literal prose translation almost always reduces a songster’s numbers, he has preferred to clothe his author in a presentable garb, though it be but a crumpled wrap, rather than exhibit him to readers of taste as a mangled mass, stripped of all beauty, and in great measure divested even of cognisable form, through the conflict of dictions and diversities of ideas.

He is in the position of the raindrop sung by Sa’dī (see Chap, iii., No. 14, of the Anecdotes), and mentioned of old by Chardin, Addison, and Sir William Jones. May the thoughts in the Mesnevī be the gems that will make his effort acceptable to the British public. At most, he is but the diver who risks extinction in the hope that he may have a chance to offer an acceptable pearl of price to those for whom he has worked:—

SELECTED ANECDOTES

FROM THE WORK ENTITLED THE ACTS OF THE ADEPTS

(MENĀQIBU ’L ‘ĀRIFĪN),

BY SHEMSU-’d-DĪN AHMED, EL EFLĀKĪ.

3

THE ACTS OF THE ADEPTS.4

CHAPTER I.

Bahā’u-’d-Dīn, Veled, Sultānu-’l-‘Ulemā (The Beauty of the Religion of Islām, Son, Sultan of the Doctors of the Law).

1.

The king of Khurāsān,5 ‘Alā’u-’d-Dīn Muhammed, Khurrem-Shāh, uncle of Jelālu-’d-Dīn Muhammed Kh’ārezm-Shāh, and the proudest, as he was the most handsome man of his time, gave his daughter, Melika’i-Jihān (Queen of the World), as to the only man worthy of her, to Jelālu-’d-Dīn Huseyn, el Khatībī, of the race of Abū-Bekr.

An ancestor of his was one of the original Muslim conquerors of Khurāsān. He was himself very virtuous and learned, surrounded with numerous disciples. He had not married until then; which gave him many an anxious and self-accusing thought.

He himself, the king, the king’s daughter, and the king’s Vazīr were all four warned in a dream by the Prince of the Apostles of God (Muhammed) that he should wed the princess; which was done. He was then thirty years old. In due course, nine months afterwards, a son was born to4 him, and was named Bahā’u-’d-Dīn Muhammed. He is commonly mentioned as Bahā’u-’d-Dīn Veled.

When adolescent, this latter was so extremely learned that the family of his mother wished to raise him to the throne as king; but this he utterly rejected.

By the divine command, as conveyed in the selfsame night, and in an identical dream, to three hundred of the most learned men of the city of Balkh,6 the capital of the kingdom, where he dwelt, those sage doctors unanimously conferred upon him the honorific title of Sultānu-’l-‘Ulemā, and they all became his disciples.

Such are the names and titles by which he is more commonly mentioned; but he is also styled Mevlānāyi Buzurg (the Greater or Elder Master). Many miracles and prodigies were attributed to him; and some men were found who conceived a jealousy at his growing reputation and influence.

2.

In A.H. 605 (A.D. 1208) he, Bahā’u-’d-Dīn Veled, began to preach against the innovations of the king and sundry of his courtiers, declaiming against the philosophers and rationalists, while he pressed all his hearers to study and practise the precepts of Islām. Those courtiers maligned him with the king, calling him an intriguer who had designs on the throne. The king sent and made him an offer of the sovereignty, promising to retire elsewhere himself. Bahā answered that he had no concern with earthly greatness, being a poor recluse; and that he would willingly leave the country, so as to remove from the king’s mind all misgivings on his score.

He accordingly quitted Balkh, with a suite of about forty souls, after delivering a public address in the great mosque before the king and people. In this address he foretold the advent of the Moguls to overturn the kingdom, possess the country, destroy Balkh, and drive out the king, who5 would then flee to the Roman land, and there at length be killed.

So he left Balkh, as the prophet (Muhammed) had fled from Mekka to Medīna. His son Jelālu-’d-Dīn was then five, and the elder brother, ‘Alā’u-’d-Dīn, seven years old.

The people everywhere on his road, hearing of his approach or forewarned in dreams of his coming, flocked to meet him and do him honour. Thus he drew near to Bagdād. Here he was met by the great Sheykh Shahābu-’d-Dīn, ‘Umer, Suherverdī, the most eminent man of the place, deputed by the Caliph Musta’zim to do him honour. He became the guest of the Sheykh.

The Caliph sent him a present of three thousand sequins, but he declined the gift as being money unlawfully acquired. He also refused to visit the Caliph; but consented to preach in the great mosque after the noon service of worship on the following Friday, the Caliph being present. In his discourse he reproached the Caliph to his face with his evil course of life, and warned him of his approaching slaughter by the Moguls with great cruelty and ignominy. The Caliph again sent him rich presents in money, horses, and valuables, but he refused to accept them.

Before Bahā’u-’d-Dīn quitted Bagdād, intelligence was received there of the siege of Balkh, of its capture, and of its entire destruction, with its twelve thousand mosques, by the Mogul army of five hundred thousand men commanded by Jengīz in person (in A.H. 608, A.D. 1211). Fourteen thousand copies of the Qur’ān were destroyed, fifteen thousand students and professors of the law were slain, and two hundred thousand adult male inhabitants led out and shot to death with arrows.