Thursday, May 19, 2005

Persia-The Home of Poetry

It was in Iran that Sufi Poetry reached its zenith. Sufism produced men who were not only true mystics, but also poets. Persia, the abode of poetry, produced more poet-mystics, inspired by the most profound spiritual experience, than any other country had done.

Sheikh Sa'di Shirazi (d.1292), Hafiz Shirazi (d.1389), Omer Khayyam (d.1122), Sanai (d.1389), Attar (d.1220), Rumi (d.1273), and Jami (d.1492) were not only poets of the first rank but they were sufi masters too.

Dr Schimmel has quoted Piere Loti who wrote: 'All poets can envy that country, Persia, where neither form nor thoughts nor language change, and where nothing falls into oblivion'.

The Persian Poets took themes from Hallaj, Ibn al-Arabi and al-Jili, and crystallized them into their qasidahs, ghazals, rubais, mathnavis.

Rumi's love for mankind:

Come, come, whatever you are, it doesn't matter
Whatever you are an infidel, an idolator or a fireworshipper,

Come, our covenant is not a place of dispair.
Come, even if you violated your swear
A hundered times come again!

Rumi on poetry

And When I write a poem
and seek a rhyming word,
The one who spreads the rhymes out
within my thought, is He!

(Taken from Professer Saeed Ahmad Hamdani's 'The role of Sufis'. He is a renowned author in sufism from Sultan Bahu Research Institute, Lahore, Pakistan)