Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!
Here is the original:
Guyand kasan behesht ba hur khosh ast
Man miguyam ke ab-e angur khosh ast
In naqd begir o dast az an nesye bedar
K’avaz-e dohol shenidan az dur khosh ast
And here a more literal translation:
It is said that paradise, with its houris, is well.
I say, the juice of the grape is well.
Take this cash and let go that credit
Because hearing the sound of the drums, from afar, is well.26
Translating poetry is notoriously difficult, and some would say that it is a vain endeavor entirely. For example, the word khosh has a wide range of related meanings and is found in a series of compound words in Persian so that, with those, it takes up several pages in any dictionary. It means delicious, delightful, sweet, happy, cheerful, pleasant, good, and prosperous. One can see different shades of these meanings in each of the three lines in which it appears in this poem. The form of the poem is the quatrain, or ruba‘i—the plural is ruba‘iyat. Other Persian verse forms include the ghazal, the masnavi, and the qasida.
Most of Omar Khayyam’s surviving poetry is in the ruba‘i form, but there has been much doubt as to which of the thousand or more rubaiyat attributed to him were actually his work. It seems likely that the poems of others—poems that were of a skeptical or irreligious tendency and might therefore have attracted disapproval—were attributed to him in order to have the grace accorded his great name. At the same time, it may be that he set down doubts in his poems that were only part of his thinking about the deity. But one can read in his poems a rugged humanism in the face of the harsh realities of life, and an impatience with easy, consoling answers, that anticipates existentialism: a recognition of the complexity of existence, the intractability of its problems, and a principled acceptance. His philosophical writing largely revolved around questions of free will, determinism, existence, and essence.27
Niki o badi ke dar nahad-e bashar ast,
Shadi o ghami ke dar qaza o qadar ast
Ba charkh makon havale k’andar rah-e aql
Charkh az tu hezar bar bicharetar ast
Good and evil, which are in the nature of mankind,
Joy and sadness, which are in chance and fate
Do not attribute them to the machinery of the heavens, because in reason
That machine is a thousand times more helpless than you28
There are dozens of quatrains that one could bring forward to illustrate the subtlety and intellectual power of this great man, but this cannot be a book about just Omar Khayyam. The following poem belongs to a collection from an early manuscript attributed to Omar Khayyam by the British scholar Arberry, which since Arberry’s time has been considered doubtful. But it is known from other manuscripts, too, and many scholars still include this poem with Omar Khayyam’s best. If it is not by him, it nonetheless presents a defiant personal manifesto close to the spirit he expressed elsewhere:
Gar man ze mey-e moghaneh mastam, hastam
Var asheq o rend o botparastam, hastam
Har kas be khiyal-e khod gamane darad
Man khod danam, har anche hastam, hastam.
If I am drunk on forbidden wine, I am.
And if a worshipper of love, and roguery, and false gods, then I am.
Everyone has doubts to their own mind.
I know myself; whatever I am, I am.29
The eleventh century saw the first great upsurge in the unique mystical movement that is Sufism,30 and in this poem, as elsewhere, Omar Khayyam uses terms that were commonplace in Sufi poetry and were used as key concepts, often metaphorically. Mey-e moghaneh, for example, means Magian wine—forbidden wine bought from the Zoroastrians. Rend means a wild young man, a rogue or rake. Kharabat is the house of ruin, the tavern; and the saqi is the young boy who serves the wine and is the object of homoerotic longing. But although some commentators have claimed Omar Khayyam as a Sufi, and notwithstanding he may have had some sympathy for the Sufis, his voice is too much his own, too unique to be set in any religious category. And his skepticism is too strong.
Sufism is a huge and complex phenomenon, with very different aspects at different times and in different places, from eleventh-century Asia Minor to North Africa to modern Pakistan and beyond. Its origins are unclear, but Islam sustained a mystical element from the very beginning—as is shown, some would say, by the revelation of the Qor’an to Mohammad himself, in the wilderness outside Mecca. The essence of Sufism was a seeking after precisely this kind of personal spiritual encounter, and an abandonment of self and all kinds of worldly egotism in the presence of the divine.
But in practices and imagery it also partook of the religious turbulence of the centuries after the Islamic conquest, reflecting popular pre-Islamic ideas and influences, including the mystically inclined movements of Neoplatonism and gnosticism. These influences, along with a deliberate anarchic and antinomian tendency, set it up from the start in tension with the text-based, scholarly, urban tradition of the ulema and the urban preachers who solemnly read and re-read the Qor’an and hadith to assert anew the correct definition of shari‘a (Islamic law). There was tension and conflict, and a number of Sufis or mystically inclined thinkers—like al-Hallaj and Sohravardi, for example—were condemned as heretics by the ulema, and were executed (in 922 and 1191, respectively). It may be that the renewed rise of Sufism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had something to do with a reaction to the increasing concentration of Islamic practice and Islamic study in the madresehs, directly under the eye of the ulema, that was taking place at this time.
The significance of Sufism within the Islamic lands in this period has sometimes been neglected, but in reality it was all-pervasive. In Persia its cultural influence is indicated by its effect on Persian poetry, but everywhere in the land there were Sufi khanaqas—lodging houses for wandering Sufis that also served local people for religious gatherings. In the larger towns there might be khanaqas for different Sufi orders, as well as bazaar guilds and other associations that often had Sufi connections. Even small villages might have khanaqas. There are parallels here with the friaries set up for the mendicant orders in Europe in the Middle Ages. Like the friars, the Sufis were intimately involved in the religious lives of ordinary people and were responsible for missionary activity in the countryside and beyond Persia. Given the low level of literacy at the time, and the fact that the population lived overwhelmingly in the countryside, it becomes plain that the Sufis were central to the diffusion of Islam outside the towns and cities. The center of their activity was in Persia, and especially in Khorasan, but they probably were the prime means by which Persianate culture spread and consolidated its popular influence from the Bosphorus to Delhi and beyond.31
Many Sufis, in particular many of the Sufi poets, openly scorned what they saw as the self-important egotism of the ulema. The Sufis provoked and attacked them for their obsession with rules and their vain pride in observing them, which forgot the selflessness necessary for true spirituality. It is not difficult to see why some orthodox Muslims (especially Wahhabis and their sympathizers since the eighteenth century) have anathematized and persecuted Sufism. But in the period we are dealing with here, the missionary activity of traveling Sufis (known also as dervishes) was important, probably crucial, in the conversion of new Muslims. This was true in the remoter rural parts like Tabarestan, where orthodox Islam had been slow to penetrate, but especially in newly conquered territories like Anatolia, and among the Turks in their Central Asian homelands in the far northeast.
The first great theorist of Sufism was al-Ghazali (1058–1111), a native of Tus in Khorasan (though there were major Sufi figures much earlier, Junayd, for example, who died around 910). The relationship between orthodox Sunnism and Sufism was not one of simple opposition, and al-Ghazali was primarily an orthodox Sunni of the Shafi‘i mazhhab, who wrote works attacking the Mu‘tazilis, Avicenna,
and the introduction of ideas from Greek philosophy. But he also wrote an influential Sufi work called Kimiya-ye sa‘adat—The Alchemy of Happiness. In general he tried to remove the obstacles between orthodoxy and Sufism, presenting the latter as a legitimate aspect of the former. In the early centuries of Sufism, Shi‘a Muslims tended to be more hostile to the Sufi dervishes than the Sunnis.32
Sana’i was the first great poet with a clear Sufi allegiance, and some have compared his literary style with that of al-Ghazali. Sana’i’s long poem Hadiqat al-haqiqa (The Garden of Truth, completed in 1131) is a classic of Sufi poetry, but he wrote a large body of poems beyond that, and in them it is easy to see the fusion of the traditions of love poetry with the impulses of mysticism:
Since my heart was caught in the snare of love,
Since my soul became wine in the cup of love,
Ah, the pains I have known through loverhood
Since like a hawk I fell in the snare of love!
Trapped in time, I am turned to a drunken sot
By the exciting, dreg-draining cup of love.
Dreading the fierce affliction of loverhood,
I dare not utter the very name of love;
And the more amazing is this, since I see
Every creature on earth is at peace with love.33
Here, too, wine has become a metaphor for love, taking the imagery into another dimension of complexity. Where an orthodox Muslim might favor abstinence (zohd) in accordance with religious law, Sana’i says that in going beyond law into infidelity (kofr)—leaving behind his venal, carnal soul (nafs)—the Sufi can find another way to God. The point is that both love and wine can be ways in which a man may forget himself. They are familiar experiences in which the sense of self is changed or obliterated. Such an experience can give a taste of (and therefore provide a metaphor for) the loss of self experienced by the mystic in the face of God—the loss of self that is necessary for genuine religious experience, that is yearned for as the lover longs for the beloved.
The Seljuk period produced a profusion of poets, and it is not possible to do justice to them all, but Nizami Ganjavi, who composed his Khosraw va Shirin in 1180 and Layla va Majnoun in 1188, is too important to be overlooked. Though he wrote many others, both these long poems retold much older stories—the former a tale from the Sassanid court and the latter of Arab origin. Both are love stories that became hugely popular, but they have deeper resonances, reflecting Nizami’s religious beliefs. Layla and Majnoun fall in love, but then are separated, and Majnoun goes mad (Majnoun means “mad”) and wanders in the wilderness. He becomes a poet, writing to Layla through a third party:
Oh my love, with your breasts like jasmine! Loving you, my life fades, my lips wither, my eyes are full of tears. You cannot imagine how much I am “Majnoun.” For you, I have lost myself. But that path can only be taken by those who forget themselves. In love, the faithful have to pay with the blood of their hearts; otherwise their love is not worth a grain of rye. So you are leading me, revealing the true faith of love, even if your faith should remain hidden forever.34
Without hope in his love (Layla’s father will not let them marry), Majnoun spiritualizes it. In going into the desert, losing his selfhood in madness, stepping outside all ordinary conventions, and writing poetry, he has effectively become a Sufi.35 So even this overtly profane story has a spiritual dimension that is not immediately apparent. But to have psychological force, the metaphor and the spiritual message first require our sympathy with the lovers’ predicament. The poem is not simply about the Sufi’s approach to God. It is that, but also a love story—and therein lies its human appeal. It has been translated into almost every language in the Islamic world, as well as many others beyond it.
Farid al-Din Attar, who lived in Nishapur from around 1158 to around 1221 or 1229, wrote more than forty-five thousand lines of verse in his lifetime. Establishing the elements of a “religion of love,” Attar strongly influenced all subsequent Sufi poets. He developed the idea of the qalandar, the wild man, the outcast, whose only guide is the ethic of that religion:
Har ke ra dar ‘eshq mohkam shod qadam
Dar-gozasht az kofr va az islam ham
Whoever sets foot firmly forward in love
Will go beyond both Islam and unbelief36
The classic of Attar’s poetry is the Mantiq al-tayr (The Conference of the Birds), one of the best-known Persian poems of all. Embedded within the charming story of the birds questing for the mysterious phoenix—the simorgh—is the story of Shaykh San‘an, which brings out the full meaning of Sufism in its logical extreme. Deliberately provocative and shocking in the Islamic context, the story was important and influential in the later development of Sufism.
Shaykh San‘an is a learned, well-respected holy man who has always done the right thing. He has made the pilgrimage to Mecca fifty times, has fasted and prayed, and has taught four hundred pupils. He argues fine points of religious law and is admired by everyone. But he has a recurring dream, in which he lives in Rum (by which was probably meant the Christian part of Anatolia, or possibly Constantinople, rather than Rome itself) and worships in a Christian church there. This is disturbing, and he concludes that to resolve the problem he must go to the Christian territory. He sets off, but just short of his goal he sees a Christian girl—“In beauty’s mansion she was like a sun. . . .”
Her eyes spoke promises to those in love,
Their fine brows arched coquettishly above—
Those brows sent glancing messages that seemed
To offer everything her lovers dreamed.
And, as sometimes happens, the old man falls in love:
“I have no faith” he cried. “The heart I gave
Is useless now; I am the Christian’s slave.”
His companions try to get Shaykh San‘an to see reason, but he answers them in terms even more shocking and subversive. They tell him to pray, and he agrees—but instead of toward Mecca, as a Muslim should, he asks to know where her face is, that he may pray in her direction. Another asks him whether he does not regret turning away from Islam, and he answers that he only regrets his previous folly, and that he had not fallen in love before. Another says he has lost his wits, and he says he has, and also his fame—but fraud and fear along with them. Another urges him to confess his shame before God, and he replies, “God Himself has lit this flame.”
The shaykh lives for a month with the dogs in the dust of the street in front of his beloved’s house, finally falling ill. He begs her to show him some pity, a little affection, but she laughs and mocks him, saying that he is old—he should be looking for a shroud, not for love. He begs again, and she says he must do four things to win her trust—burn the Qor’an, drink wine, seal up faith’s eye, and bow down to images. The shaykh hesitates, but then agrees. Invited in, he takes wine and gets drunk:
He drank, oblivion overwhelmed his soul.
Wine mingled with his love—her laughter seemed
To challenge him to take the bliss he dreamed.
He agrees to everything the girl demands, but it is not enough—she wants gold and silver, and he is poor. Eventually she takes pity on him. She will overlook the gold and silver—if he will look after some pigs for a year as a swineherd. He agrees.
From this extreme point, the story takes a more conventional turn, as was necessary if the book was not to be banned and destroyed. A vision of the Prophet intervenes, the shaykh returns to the faith, the girl repents her treatment of the shaykh, becomes a Muslim, and dies. But this cannot draw the sting of the first part of the story—the message that conventional piety is not enough, that it may in fact lead down the wrong path, and that the peeling away of conventional trappings and the loss of self in love is the only way to attain a higher spirituality. As Attar wrote at the beginning, when he introduced the story:
When neither Blasphemy nor faith remain,
The body and the Self have both been slain;
Then the fierce fortitude the Wa
y will ask
Is yours, and you are worthy of our task.
Begin the journey without fear; be calm;
Forget what is and what is not Islam . . .
Taken as a whole, the story appears ambiguous, but it contains a startling challenge to the religious conventions of the time.37
Attar, the apostle of love, died at some point in the 1220s—massacred along with most of the population of Nishapur when the Mongols invaded Khorasan and Persia. The Mongol invasions were an unparalleled cataclysm for the lands of Iran. Where the Arabs and Turks had been relatively familiar and restrained conquerors, the Mongols were both alien and wantonly cruel.
The Seljuk Empire had been split toward the end of the twelfth century by the rise of a subject tribe from Khwarezm, whose leaders established themselves as the rulers of the eastern part of the empire. They were known as the Khwarezmshahs. In the early years of the thirteenth century, the ruling Khwarezmshah, Sultan Mohammad, became dimly aware that a new power was rising in the steppe lands beyond Transoxiana. There were impossible rumors—true, as it turned out—that the Chinese empire had been conquered. There may have been some attempts at diplomatic contact, but these were bungled, resulting in the deaths of some Mongol merchants and ambassadors. Contrary to popular perception, the Mongols were not just a ravening mob of uncivilized, semi-human killers. Their armies were tightly controlled, well disciplined, and ruthlessly efficient. They were not wantonly destructive.38 But their ultimate foundation was the prestige of their warlord, Genghis Khan, and an insult could not be overlooked. After the killing of the Mongol emissaries, what came next in Transoxiana and Khorasan was particularly dreadful because of the Mongols’ vengeful purpose. There followed a series of Mongol invasions, aimed initially at punishing Sultan Mohammad—who, veering from tragedy toward comedy, fled westward to Ray, pursued by a Mongol flying column, and then north until he died on an island off the Caspian coast. These invasions later developed into conquest and occupation. What this meant for the hapless Iranians can be illustrated by what happened at Merv, after the Mongols had already conquered and destroyed the cities of Transoxiana:
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