The Four Men and the Grapes

Four Names for One Fruit

The disagreement of mankind is caused by names: peace ensues when they advance to the reality (denoted by the name).A certain man gave a dirhem to four persons: one of them (a Persian) said, “I will spend this on angúr.”The second one was an Arab: he said, “No, I want ‘inab, not angúr, O rascal!”The third was a Turk; and he said, “This (money) is mine: I don't want ‘inab, I want uzum.”The fourth, a Greek, said, “Stop this talk: I want istáfíl.”These people began fighting in contention with one another, because they were unaware of the hidden meaning of the names.In their folly they smote each other with their fists: they were full of ignorance and empty of knowledge.If a master of the esoteric had been there, a revered and many-languaged man, he would have pacified them;And then he would have said, “With this one dirhem I will give all of you what ye wish.When without deceit ye surrender your hearts (to me), this dirhem will do all this for you.Your one dirhem will become four—the result desired: four enemies will become one through unanimity.What each one of you says produces strife and separation; what I say brings you agreement.Therefore be ye mute, keep silence, that I may be your tongue in speech and talk.”

Masnavi II.3680–3692 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926

First attested

1278The text is Mathnawī II.3680–3692. No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya (Konya) manuscript, which Nicholson designated G and describes as “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī died. He translated Books I and II in 1926 from other copies; in 1930 he printed an Appendix “showing the changes required in order to bring the translation of Books I, II and III (vv. 1-2835) into agreement with” G, and it lists no change for these lines. Every English phrase quoted here is Nicholson's, from the 1926 translation.

Claimed

the 1260sasserted by Rūmī's own proem to Book II dates its beginning: “The date of beginning this gainful (spiritual) traffic was in the year six hundred and sixty-two” (II.7, Nicholson 1926) — A.H. 662, a year that began in 1263 and ended in 1264; C. E. Wilson's commentary (1910, p. 5, note 11) gives it as “the year 1263 A.D.” Book II carries no later date, and Rūmī died on 17 December 1273.

A Persian, an Arab, a Turk and a Greek come to blows over one coin: each wanted grapes, in his own word.

Mathnawī II.3680–3692. The tale is the second of a pair on names and the reality they name: before it, a king's envoy searches India for years for a tree whose fruit gives endless life, until a shaykh tells him it is “the tree of knowledge in the sage”, named now tree, now sun, now sea (II.3641–3679). Here a man gives four companions a dirhem. The Persian wants angúr, the Arab ʿinab, the Turk uzum, the Greek istáfíl — four words for grapes — and they come to blows, “unaware of the hidden meaning of the names”. Rūmī imagines a “many-languaged man” who would have made the one coin serve all four, if they would keep silence and let him be their tongue. The lines after it turn to the Shaykh, whose discourse brings union, and to Solomon, who knew the language of all birds.