The Tanner in the Perfume Market

Revived by the Smell of Dung

That stout tanner had a brother, (who was) cunning and sagacious: he came at once in hot haste.(With) a small quantity of dog’s dung in his sleeve, he cleft (his way through) the crowd and approached (the senseless man) with cries of grief.“I know,” said he, “whence his illness arises: when you know the cause (of a disease), the (means of) curing (it) is manifest.When the cause is unknown, the remedy for the illness is difficult (to find), and in that (case) there are a hundred grounds to which it may be referred;(But) when you have ascertained the cause, it becomes easy: knowledge of causes is the means of expelling ignorance.”He said to himself, “The smell of that dog’s dung is multiplied in his brain and veins.Up to the waist in filth, he is absorbed in the tanner’s craft till nightfall, seeking his livelihood.Thus then has the great Jálínús (Galen) said: ‘Give the patient that to which he was habituated (before his illness);For his illness arises from doing the contrary to (his usual) habit: therefore seek the remedy for his illness in that which is habitual (to him).’He (the tanner), from carrying dung, has become like the dung-beetle: the dung-beetle is made insensible by rose-water.The remedy for him consists in that same dog’s dung to which he is habituated and accustomed.”
Masnavi IV.269–279 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1930

Earliest record: 1278No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya manuscript (G), dated 677 A.H. = A.D. 1278. Nicholson judged it “the most authoritative text of the Mathnawi”. He wrote in April 1930 that his text “from Book III, v. 2836, to the end of Book IV is founded on that ancient and admirable MS.”, so this story, at IV.257–293, and its frame stand in that stretch.

The cure is medicine before allegory: the brother cites “the great Jálínús (Galen)”, give the patient what he was used to (IV.276).

Mathnawī IV.276–280, Nicholson's translation (1930); Qurʾān 24:26

A tanner faints in the perfumers' bazaar; his brother, knowing the cause, revives him with dog's dung.

More context

Mathnawī IV.257–293. A man walks into the bazaar of the perfumers and falls senseless at the scent. The crowd gathers, sprinkles rose-water on him, rubs his hands, burns aloes-wood, and smells his breath for wine or hashish. His brother, knowing he is a tanner who works up to the waist in filth till nightfall, arrives with dog's dung in his sleeve. He cites Galen, keeps the crowd back, and holds his dung-smeared palm to the tanner's nose, whispering as if reciting a charm. The man stirs, and the onlookers credit the charm. Rūmī frames the story with the stokers who boast of the filth they carry (IV.240–256) and turns it at IV.280 against those who find the perfume of the Revelation unbearable. The passage here is IV.269–279, the brother's diagnosis.

Light

A diagnosis before a sermon: what revives a person may be what they are used to, not what others find sweet.

Shadow

Rūmī applies it to polytheists, called najas because “they were born in dung from of old” (IV.296), unless God's light falls (IV.298–299).