The Dream of the Treasure in Cairo

The Detour Was the Delivery

Ah! many earnest suppliants wail forth prayers,Till the smoke of their wailing rises to heaven;Yea, the perfume of the incense of sinners’ groansMounts up above the lofty roof of heaven.Then the angels supplicate God, saying,“O Thou that hearest prayer and relievest pain,Thy faithful slave is bowing down before Thee.He knows of none on whom to rely save Thee;Thou bestowest favours on the helpless.Every suppliant obtains his desire from Thee.”God makes answer, “The delay in granting his prayerIs intended to benefit him, not to harm him.His pressing need draws him from his negligence to me;Yea, drags him by the hair into my courts.If I at once remove his need he will go away,And will be destroyed in his idle sports.Though he is wailing with heartfelt cry of ‘O Aider!’Bid him wail on with broken heart and contrite breast.His voice sounds sweet in my ears,And his wailing and cries of ‘O God!’In this way by supplication and lamentationHe prevails with me altogether.”

Masnavi VI · tr. E. H. Whinfield, 1887
First attested
1278Mathnawī VI 4206–4385, dictated to Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī in Rumi's last years; Book VI is unfinished and stops at line 4916. The evidence is the Konya manuscript at the Mevlâna Museum, completed in 677/1278, five years after Rumi's death — the oldest dated witness to his work, and the copy Nicholson designated G. That the tale is older than the poem rests on a later report: Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 1434) quotes it naming al-Tanūkhī (d. 994). The Nights witnesses carrying it belong to the Egyptian manuscripts and early printed editions (Marzolph and van Leeuwen); the night number, 351, is Burton's, and is what Borges printed as his source.
Claimed
10th centuryasserted by Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 1434), who quotes the story in Thamarāt al-awrāq and names the tenth-century Baghdad judge al-Tanūkhī (d. 994) as his source — an attribution reported by Marzolph and van Leeuwen, The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia (2004), 353–354. It asserts the tale is roughly three centuries older than Rumi; no surviving work of al-Tanūkhī has been checked here to confirm it.

The claim runs about 300 years ahead of the evidence.

The familiar moral — it was at home all along — is only half of Rumi's: the chapter heading in Nicholson's 1934 translation has the man seeking nowhere but in his own house, and the treasure "would really and truly be gained only in Cairo".

Masnavi VI: a ruined Baghdadi dreams of treasure in Cairo, and is beaten there into hearing it lies at home.

Mathnawī VI 4206–4385. A Baghdadi who has squandered his inheritance dreams of a voice promising treasure in Cairo — Rumi writes Miṣr, which Whinfield rendered Egypt and Nicholson Cairo. Arriving penniless in a burglary scare, he is seized and beaten by the night-patrol, who then mocks him with his own repeated dream of treasure in Baghdad, naming the street, the house and the man himself. It sits inside the tale of the three princes, which Book VI leaves unfinished at Rumi's death in 1273. Neither he nor the Nights need have invented it: Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 1434) quotes the tale naming the Baghdad judge al-Tanūkhī (d. 994) as his source, and folklorists index it as AT 1645, The Treasure at Home. Borges retold it in 1934, moving the cities to Cairo and Isfahan; Coelho's The Alchemist (1988) runs on the same reversal.

Light

Rumi's defence of misspent effort. At VI 4341 the man praises God for making "that very aberration" the means of "reaching the right road"; at 4342 Rumi generalises it — God "maketh losing the way an avenue to (true) faith". The blows were the courier.

Shadow

Nicholson, who edited and translated the whole poem, judged Books V and VI to "show signs" of "failing power", with "certain motifs, such as that of 'the hidden treasure,'" called "overworked". The tale that reached Borges and Coelho sits where its editor's interest flagged.

Sources and verification9 sources · 8 links

Primary source

  • Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī; ed., trans. and comm. Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawī of Jalālu'ddīn Rūmī, vol. VI: translation of Books V and VI (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series), 1934, Book VI, lines 4206–4385; the prose heading preceding 4206; lines 4313–4316 (the blockquote) and 4341–4342The text of the tale, its line numbers, the chapter heading quoted in the lesson, the patrolman naming the street, house and the dreamer's own name as quoted in the blockquote, and the lines quoted in the Light panel — the man's at 4341 and Rumi's own generalisation at 4342.

Scholarship

  • Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawī of Jalālu'ddīn Rūmī, vol. VI, Introduction, 1934, Introduction to the volume, opening pagesNicholson's own judgement that Books V and VI 'show signs, I think, of failing power' and that 'certain motifs, such as that of "the hidden treasure," are overworked'; also that Book VI breaks off unfinished and that the so-called Seventh Book is a forgery.
  • Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen, with Hassan Wassouf, The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO), 2004, 353–354, s.v. 'Ruined Man Who Became Rich Again through a Dream, The' (tale no. 99, Burton from the Calcutta II edition); 502–503, s.v. 'Borges, Jorge Luis'That the Nights version — their tale no. 99, Burton from the Calcutta II edition — 'is contained in the Egyptian manuscripts and the early printed editions'; that it is 'also quoted in Ibn Hijja al-Hamawi's (d. 1434) Thamarat al-awraq, mentioning al-Tanukhi (d. 994) as source'; that it 'corresponds to the international tale-type AT 1645: The Treasure at Home'; and, at 502, that Borges's Historia de los dos que soñaron 'is an elaboration of' it. The encyclopedia gives no night number, and none is claimed from it here.
  • Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, rev. ed., 2008Rumi's chronology, the dictation of the Mathnawī to Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī, and the poem's textual history and Western reception.

The tradition itself

  • Masnavi VI, the tale of the Baghdadi and the treasure in CairoThe esoteric reading given on this entry

Where this claim originates

  • Jorge Luis Borges, '2 que soñaron', later 'Historia de los dos que soñaron', collected in Historia universal de la infamia (Buenos Aires: Tor), 1934, Crítica: Revista Multicolor de los Sábados 1.46 (13 May 1934), p. 2, per the Borges Center bibliography (University of Pittsburgh); book publication 1935, with the printed source note 'Del Libro de las 1001 Noches, noche 351'Borges's dates, his relocation of the journey to Cairo and Isfahan with the treasure under the fountain in his own garden, that the night number 351 is his own printed source note (Burton's numbering), and that he credited the Nights and never Rumi.
  • Paulo Coelho, O Alquimista / The Alchemist, 1988, The closing reversal: Santiago is beaten at the pyramids and told by his attacker of a dream of treasure beneath a sycamore in the ruined Andalusian church where Santiago had sleptThat the novel's plot turns on the same reversal. No claim is made here about where Coelho got it.

Further reading

Linked entries

  • Set againstThe Chickpea to the CookA modern connection

    Two Masnavi arguments about being hurt — the chickpea is being cooked into fitness, whereas here the beating is only the courier that carries the message.

  • Set againstThe Elephant in the DarkAttested

    Both are tales Rumi inherited rather than invented: the elephant from Sanāʾī and ultimately India, this one from Arabic prose that names al-Tanūkhī (d. 994).

  • Set againstThe Song of the ReedA modern connection

    The reed mourns the distance from its bed; this tale needs that distance, because the news of home could only be heard abroad.

  • Part ofThe MasnaviAttested

    A tale from Book VI of the Masnavi: the man of Baghdad who dreamt of treasure in Cairo.

  • Attributed toRūmīAttested

    A tale of Rūmī's Masnavi, Book VI.

  • Received fromReynold A. NicholsonAttested

    Book VI reached English only in his translation, the volume published in 1934 whose introduction he signed at Cambridge on 19 April 1933. The chapter heading that tale turns on, and the line that the treasure would really and truly be gained only in Cairo, are his wording.

  • Set againstAyāz and His SheepskinAttested

    The courtiers break into Ayāz's chamber expecting buried treasure and find old shoes; the man of Baghdad travels to Egypt for a treasure that lay under his own house.

  • Set againstThe Faqir and the Hidden TreasureAttested

    Two Book VI treasure tales sent by a voice in a dream: the man of Baghdad must travel to Egypt to learn the treasure is at home; the faqir must stop shooting far to find it close.

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