When the Names Were Not

I Gazed Into My Own Heart

I was on that day when the Names were not,Nor any sign of existence endowed with name.By me Names and Named were brought to viewOn the day when there were not ‘I’ and ‘We.’For a sign, the tip of the Beloved’s curl became a centre of revelation;As yet the tip of that fair curl was not.Cross and Christians, from end to end,I surveyed; He was not on the Cross.I went to the idol-temple, to the ancient pagoda;No trace was visible there.I went to the mountains of Herāt and Candahār;I looked; He was not in that hill-and-dale.With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Qāf;In that place was only the ‘Anqā’s habitation.I bent the reins of search to the Ka‘ba;He was not in that resort of old and young.I questioned Ibn Sīnā of his state;He was not in Ibn Sīnā’s range.I fared towards the scene of “two bow-lengths’ distance”;He was not in that exalted court.I gazed into my own heart;There I saw Him; He was nowhere else.Save pure-souled Shamsi TabrīzNone ever was drunken and intoxicated and distraught.

Dīvān-e Shams, ode XVII · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1898
First attested
1441The only manuscript in which Nicholson found this ode is V, the Hofbibliothek copy at Vienna dated 4th Muḥarram 845 A.H. (1441), which he followed for the Persian; a footnote records one further couplet in V that he left out because it repeats the rhyme. His list at the foot of the Persian reads R V. His note adds that Forbes's text agrees with R, Rosenzweig's Auswahl (Vienna, 1838); his Preface says three of his odes had already appeared there, and his Appendix III lists this one under R alone. He cautions that his references to L and V are somewhat defective. Ibrahim Gamard lists it among seven of Nicholson's forty-eight odes not in the earliest manuscripts of the Dīvān.

Nicholson's note: “Unfortunately the text is not found in any of the MSS. which I have consulted except V” (Vienna). His introduction counts it among “Three of the finest poems in this selection” that “occur in a single manuscript”, and next says “several spurious pieces are included”. Gamard lists it among seven not in the earliest manuscripts.

Nicholson, Selected Poems (1898): note on ode XVII, p. 247; Introduction p. l; Appendix III, p. 347; Ibrahim Gamard, “About the Odes/Ghazals”, dar-al-masnavi.org/about_odes.html

He searches the Cross, Kaʿba and Ibn Sīnā for Him and finds Him in his heart. Rūmī's authorship is disputed.

Ode XVII in Nicholson's twelve couplets, printed here entire; a footnote records one more couplet in the Vienna manuscript, left out because it repeats the rhyme. The speaker was there on the day when the Names were not, and goes looking: Cross and Christians, idol-temple and pagoda, the mountains of Herāt and Candahār, Mount Qāf, where only the ʿAnqā has its habitation, the Kaʿba, Ibn Sīnā (in Nicholson's note a champion of free-thought against dogma), and “two bow-lengths' distance”, Qurʾān 53:8–9, which Nicholson glosses as Gabriel's approach to the Prophet and the Ṣūfīs read as Muḥammad's own approach to the divine presence. He is in none of them; looking into his own heart, the speaker sees Him there. Nicholson called it “this magnificent ode”. Its attribution to Rūmī is disputed: he found the Persian only in the Vienna manuscript, and Ibrahim Gamard lists it among seven of his odes no longer considered authentic Rūmī poems.

Light

It gives the search its full length before the turn: the Cross, the idol-temple, mountain and Mount Qāf, the Kaʿba, Ibn Sīnā and the Prophet's nearness are each tried in earnest, so that finding Him in the heart reads as the end of a journey rather than a refusal to make one.

Shadow

The Kaʿba stands in its list of places where He was not found, beside the idol-temple and the Cross, and Ibn Sīnā, whom Nicholson's note calls a champion of free-thought against dogma, is set in the same list. Its Persian stood, for Nicholson, in only one manuscript; Ibrahim Gamard lists it among seven of his forty-eight odes no longer considered authentic Rūmī poems, adding that they remain authentic Ṣūfī poems whoever wrote them.

Sources and verification4 sources · 5 links

Primary source

Scholarship

  • Reynold A. Nicholson, Selected Poems from the Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz, notes to ode XVII, 1898, pp. 247–251“With this magnificent ode, which has been admirably rendered in English verse by Professor Falconer (Forbes's Persian Grammar, p. 159)”, the reader should compare Henry Vaughan's “The Search” and “The Dwelling-place”; on couplet 1, the pre-existence of the soul and the ḥadīth “I was a prophet when Adam was water mingled with clay”; on the word Names, “and He taught Adam the names of all things” (Kor. II. 29); on couplet 9, Ibn Sīnā; on couplet 10, Kor. LIII. 8–9 and the Ṣūfī reading of it; on couplet 11, “He who knows himself knows his Lord” and T. 331. 2a.

    Unfortunately the text is not found in any of the MSS. which I have consulted except V

The tradition itself

Where this claim originates

Linked entries

  • Attributed toRūmīDisputed

    Nicholson printed it in his selection of Rūmī's odes, following the Vienna manuscript, the only one he found it in; Ibrahim Gamard lists it among seven of Nicholson's odes no longer considered authentic Rūmī poems and not in the earliest manuscripts.

  • Part ofThe Dīvān-e Shams-e TabrīzīDisputed

    Ode XVII of Nicholson's forty-eight selections, in neither the Tabriz nor the Lakhnau edition by his own table, and on Gamard's report not in the earliest manuscripts of the Dīvān.

  • Derives fromReynold A. NicholsonAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his note points readers to Professor Falconer's verse rendering and to two poems of Henry Vaughan.

  • Set againstNeither Christian nor JewA modern connection

    Both go through the religions and places of the world: in ode XXXI the speaker is none of them, here God is found in none of them.

  • Set againstShow Thy FaceA modern connection

    Both are searches: there He is sought at the Cross, the idol-temple, Mount Qāf and the Kaʿba and found only in the heart; here the searchers say He is not to be found, and that is exactly what the speaker desires.

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