Fourthly, this religion’s essential message is one of friendship, affection, peace
and living with mutual toleration of others. The tranquillity and peace
generated by love’s faith also inculcates such basic values as courtesy, kindness,
compassion and mutual respect of others.
Fifthly, the principles of this erotic faith appear in all the world’s advanced cul-
tures whether in East or West. Its prophets feature as the greatest poets, sages and
saints of all the oriental and occidental civilizations.
Sixthly and lastly, the religion of love is the universal faith of all existing beings.
From a cosmological standpoint, all beings, from the tiniest atom up to the most
complex of organisms, all things, whether animate or inanimate, are followers
of the religion of love, and ultimately whatever they do is subservient to Love’s
command. As Niẓāmī says:
Don’t fall foul and get in trouble
over these living, breathing idols.
They’re demigods, yet worship not
themselves, so follow not their cult.
Each wanders round caught up in a daze,
distracted and dizzy as a compass;
They quest and probe throughout the east and west
to seek the One from whom they’re manifest.^108Notes
(^1) Mannakhvāhamkardtarkla‘l-iyārujām-imay/Zāhidānma‘dhūrdārīdamkiīnammadhhab-ast.Dīvān-i
Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī,ghazal30: 6. All renditions of the poetry in this essay, unless otherwise indicated,
are by the translator.
(^2) Nafīsī (ed.),Muḥīt-izindigīvaaḥwāluash‘ār-iRūdakī, p. 503.
(^3) ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadhānī,Tamhīdāt, p. 22.
(^4) Tamhīdāt, pp. 114–15.
(^5) Dīvān-iḤakīmAbū’l-MajdMajdūdb.ĀdamSanā’īGhaznavī, ed. Mudarris Raḍavī, p. 913.Azkīshuṭarīqatam
chipursī?‘Ishq-astmarāṭarīqatukīsh.
(^6) Rūmī,Kulliyāt-iShams, ed. Furūzānfar, IV, p. 225,ghazal1992, v. 21067. I will revisit Rūmī’s teachings
on love later on.
(^7) From hisKhusrawuShīrīn, in Dastgirdī (ed.),Kulliyāt-iḤakīmNiẓāmīGanjavī, p. 95 (12: 2–4).
(^8) KhusrawuShīrīn, inibid., p. 96 (12: 23–5).
(^9) KhusrawuShīrīn, inibid., p. 96 (12: 26–7).
(^10) See Qur’ān II: 33–4.
(^11) [For further discussion ofdardin ‘Aṭṭār, see Waley, ‘Didactic Style and Self-Criticism in ‘Aṭṭār’, pp.
215–16. Ed./trans.]
(^12) Manṭiqal-ṭayr, ed. Gawharīn, p. 14, vv. 251–2. See also my introduction to myGuzīda-yiManṭiqal-ṭayr.
(^13) The translation featured here is by Sells,Stations of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn ‘Arabi, pp. 72–3;
for the original Arabic, see Ibn ‘Arabī,The Tarjumán al-Ashwáq, ed. and trans. Nicholson, Ode XI,
p. 19.
(^14) Translation by Homerin,‘UmarIbnal-Fāriḍ:SufiVerse,SaintlyLife, pp. 47, 51.
ḤāfiẓandtheSchoolofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry 103