ʿAlī and the Knight
The Sword of Clemency
Masnavi I.3975–3988 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926The Prince of the Faithful said to that youth, “In the hour of battle, O knight,When thou didst spit in my face, my fleshly self was aroused and my (good) disposition was corrupted.Half (of my fighting) came to be for God’s sake, and half (for) idle passion: in God’s affair partnership is not allowable.Thou art limned by the hand of the Lord: thou art God’s (work), thou art not made by me.Break God’s image, (but only) by God’s command; cast (a stone) at the Beloved’s glass, (but only) the Beloved’s stone.”The fire-worshipper heard this, and a light appeared in his heart, so that he cut a girdle.He said, “I was sowing the seed of wrong: I fancied thee (to be) otherwise (than thou art).Thou hast (really) been the balance (endued) with the (just) nature of the One (God); nay, thou hast been the tongue of every balance.Thou hast been my race and stock and kin, thou hast been the radiance of the candle of my religion.I am the (devoted) slave of that eye-seeking Lamp from which thy lamp received splendour.I am the slave of the billow of that Sea of Light which brings a pearl like this into view.Offer me the profession of the (Moslem) Faith, for I regard thee as the exalted one of the time.”Near fifty persons of his kindred and tribe lovingly turned their faces towards the Religion (of Islam).By the sword of clemency he (‘Alí) redeemed so many throats of such a multitude from the sword.
- First attested
- 1278No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya manuscript (G), “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī's death at Konya on 17 December 1273. Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book I was not made from it; his 1930 Appendix lists where G differs, and within the lines quoted here it differs once, at v. 3988: “Read so many throats and such”. The verse is given as Nicholson printed it in 1926.
The famous answer gives the reason only in general. At I.3788 ʿAlī is “the Lion of God”, not “the lion of passion”, and at I.3802 something “other than God has intervened”; what intervened — the spit roused his fleshly self, so half his fighting would be for passion — he names only at I.3975–3977, nearly two hundred lines on.
Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, vol. II (1926), Book I, the heading before v. 3787 and vv. 3787–3802; the heading before v. 3975 and vv. 3975–3977, p. 215; Book I ends at v. 4003, p. 217.
A knight spits in ʿAlī's face in battle; ʿAlī drops his sword, gives his reason, and the knight converts.
Mathnawī I.3721–3989, the story that closes Book I; the lines here are I.3975–3988. In battle ʿAlī overpowers a knight, who spits in his face, and ʿAlī at once throws his sword away. The astonished knight asks what he saw, and ʿAlī answers, “I am the Lion of God, I am not the lion of passion” (I.3788): something other than God had intervened. His discourse then wanders — through the stirrup-holder whom the Prophet foretold would kill ʿAlī — and names the cause only at I.3975: the spit aroused his fleshly self, so half his fighting would have been for passion, and “in God's affair partnership is not allowable”. The knight, now called the fire-worshipper, cuts his girdle, asks for the profession of faith, and near fifty of his kin follow. Whinfield's 1887 abridgement calls him “a Magian chief”.
Light
It finds the danger inside the righteous act: ʿAlī stops not because the enemy deserves mercy but because his own anger has entered the fight, and the restraint wins more than the blow would have — near fifty converts, “so many throats” redeemed.
Shadow
It is mercy told from the victor's side. The sword is lowered for the sake of ʿAlī's own sincerity rather than the knight's life, and the story closes only when the knight cuts his girdle — the Zoroastrian sacred thread, in Nicholson's note — and his kin follow him into Islam.
