Why Does Not the Soul Take Wing

The Falcon Hears the Drum

Why does not the soul take wing, when from the glorious PresenceA speech of sweet favour comes to it, saying, ‘Aloft’?How should a fish not leap nimbly from the dry land into the water,When the sound of waves reaches its ear from the cold ocean?Why should a falcon not fly from the quarry towards the King,When it hears by drum and drum-stick the notice of “Return”?Why should not every Sūfī begin to dance, like a mote,In the sun of eternity, that it may deliver him from decay?Such grace and beauty and loveliness and bestowal of life!O misery and error, if any one dispense with Him!Fly, fly, O bird, to thy native home,For thou hast escaped from the cage, and thy pinions are outspread.Travel away from the bitter stream towards the water of life,Return from the vestibule to the high seat of the soul.Haste, haste! for we too, O soul, are comingFrom this world of severance to that world of union.O how long shall we, like children, in the earthly sphereFill our lap with dust and stones and sherds?Let us give up the earth and fly heavenwards,Let us flee from childhood to the banquet of men.Behold how the earthly frame has entrapped thee!Rend the sack and raise thy head clear.Take from Love this scroll with thy right hand;Thou art no child, not to know thy right from thy left.

Dīvān-e Shams, ode XXIX · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1898
First attested
1372The oldest dated witness Nicholson lists for this ode is B, British Museum Or. 2866, dated 1st Jumādā ’l Ākhir, 774 A.H. (late 1372). He printed the ode from the Leyden manuscript (L), dated 851 A.H., and the foot of the Persian on p. 116 lists B, Cowell's manuscript C (which he does not date), L, the Lakhnau edition, the Tabriz edition and the Vienna manuscript V. His Appendix III places it in the Tabriz edition at p. 38 and gives no Lakhnau reference. Ibrahim Gamard's Ghazals–Foruzanfar concordance lists it as Nicholson's no. 29 and Furūzānfar's ghazal 1353.

The falcon's “Return”, which Nicholson prints in italics, is the Arabic irjiʿī of Qurʾān 89:28 — in his note, “(O soul), return to thy Lord, well-pleased and well-pleasing.” Beside it he sets two couplets of the Dīvān (T. 343. 11a) in which the soul, a royal falcon, will break a thousand gyves and be “to us returning”.

Nicholson, Selected Poems (1898), note on XXIX. 3, p. 277, quoting Kor. lxxxix. 28 and the Tabriz edition, T. 343. 11a; the Persian of couplet 3 on p. 116

Fish, falcon and dancing Ṣūfīs answer their call; the soul is told it has escaped its cage and to fly home.

Ode XXIX asks why the soul does not rise when the Presence calls “Aloft”, since a fish leaps from dry land into the water at the sound of waves, a falcon flies from its quarry to the King at the drum's “Return”, and every Ṣūfī might dance “like a mote” in the sun of eternity. The bird has escaped its cage; the soul is to leave the bitter stream for the water of life and the vestibule for the high seat, give up children's play with dust and sherds, rend the sack of the body, and take Love's scroll in the right hand. Printed here are the first twelve of its fifteen couplets. Nicholson's notes gloss the vestibule as the lowest part of the room, where visitors remove their shoes and a darvish at fault stands on one foot holding his ears, and derive Ṣūfī from ṣūf, wool. His Persian follows the Leyden manuscript (L).

Light

It sets every creature that knows its way home — fish, falcon, a mote in the sun, the freed bird — beside the soul, so that the soul's return reads as nature rather than strain; these twelve couplets close on the soul's dignity: “Thou art no child”.

Shadow

Its summons leans on contempt for this life: the earth is dust and sherds for children to hoard, the body a sack to be torn open, the world a bitter stream.

Sources and verification5 sources · 4 links

Primary source

Scholarship

  • Reynold A. Nicholson, Selected Poems from the Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz, notes to ode XXIX, 1898, pp. 277–279On couplet 3, Kor. lxxxix. 28 and the falcon passage from T. 343. 11a (two couplets); on couplet 4, the derivation of Ṣūfī from ṣūf, wool, citing Nöldeke; on couplet 6, T. 256. 7, “I am a bird of the heavenly garden”; on couplet 7, the ṣaff-i niʿāl, “the lowest part of the room, beyond the carpet, where visitors remove their shoes”, and the darvish's penance there; on couplet 10, 1 Corinthians 13:11; on couplet 12, the book received in the right hand on the day of judgement.

    (O soul), return to thy Lord, well-pleased and well-pleasing.

The tradition itself

  • The Qurʾān, Sūrat al-Fajr 89:27–28The verse whose imperative, irjiʿī, “return”, the falcon hears from the drum: the tranquil soul told to return to its Lord, well pleased and well pleasing.

Where this claim originates

Further reading

Linked entries

  • Attributed toRūmīAttested

    An ode of the Dīvān that Nicholson printed as Rūmī's from the Leyden manuscript, listing five other witnesses at its foot, the oldest dated 774 A.H.; Ibrahim Gamard's concordance gives it a Furūzānfar number, 1353.

  • Part ofThe Dīvān-e Shams-e TabrīzīAttested

    Ode XXIX of Nicholson's forty-eight selections, fifteen couplets long; the Tabriz edition prints it at p. 38 by his table.

  • Derives fromReynold A. NicholsonAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his notes supply the Qurʾān verse behind the falcon's “Return” and the darvish custom behind the vestibule.

  • Set againstThe Mevlevi SemâA modern connection

    The fourth couplet asks why every Ṣūfī does not dance like a mote in the sun of eternity; the Mevlevi semâ is the turning ceremony Rūmī's order ritualised after his death.

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