The collected Ghazals of Hafiz

The Collected Ghazals of Hafiz; vol. 1, with the original Farsi poems, English translation & notes by Jamiluddin Morris Zahuri with Maryam Moghadam; ill.; 355 p.; 2017; Beacon Books; www.beaconbooks.net; Manchester. This is the opening verse of the Divan of Hafiz: O server of love-wine, pass round and be offering the cup, In the first place love looked easy, but problems came up. Another verse in the same ghazal is very well known: Colour the prayer mat with wine, if the Magian Pir tells you to, For knowledge he has of the Way and what you need to do. Jamiluddin Morris Zahuri has presented the Divan of Hafiz into these modern English verses. Maryam Moghadam has provided the original Persian…

Song of the Dervish

Have you ever heard a dervish sing? If not, use your imagination. Open your window and what do you hear? Imagine that you are hearing approaching footsteps, while someone is singing. It has to be a dervish, because his song is telling a Sufi tale, complaining of love’s separation. Do you like to listen to a song of a dervish in real life? Why don’t you visit the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi? It is the habit to go to the nearby shrine of his closest disciple first, i.e. Hazrat Amir Khusro. Music was prayer for Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, while Hazrat Amir Khusro created qawwali, devotional music, for his master. His poetry resounds in the songs of the…

Hazrat Mian Mir

The following information on the life and teachings of Hazrat Mian Mir has mostly been derived from chapter 111 of a forthcoming publication of Dr. Zahurul Hassan Sharib: Hazrat Mian Mir is a great Pir of the subcontinent of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. He is considered as an outstanding wali (friend of God) and an eminent mystic. He traced his relationship from the second caliph of Islam, Hazrat ‘Umar Farooq. His grandfather was named as Qazi Qalandar. His father, named, Qazi Sa’in Data belonged to the Qadiriyya order of the Sufis. His mother, named Bibi Fatima, was the daughter of Qazi Qadan. She was a very accomplished woman of her time. He had four brothers, namely Qazi Bolan, Qazi Mohammed…

Qawwali

The qawwals in the subcontinent of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh often sing the following poem, which is attributed to Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi, but is not found in his Divan: To karimi man kamina barda am Laiken az lotf-e shoma parvarda am Zendagi amad baray bandagi Zendagi bi bandagi sharmendagi Yad-e u sarmaya-e iman bovad Har gada az yad-e u soltan bovad Sayyed o sarvar mohammad nur-e jan Mehtar o behtar shafi-ye mojreman Chun mohammad pak shod az nar o dud Har koja ru kard wajh Allah bud Shahbaz la makani jan-e u Rahmatal lil ‘alamin dar shan-e u Mehtarin o behtarin-e ambiya’ Joz Mohammad nist dar arz o sama’ An Mohammad Hamid o Mahmud shod Shakl-e ‘abid surat-e ma’bud shod…

The Sun

Mawlana Rumi points to his ‘sun’ when saying: Shams al-haqq Tabrizi ay mashreq-e-to jaanhaa Az taabesh-to baayad in shams haraarat raa O, sun of the truth from Tabriz: souls come from your orient. Our sun gets its warmth from your illumination! Queen Alexandra has chosen the following motto for the sundial at Sandringham Let others tell of storms and showers, I’ll only count your sunny hours Some people may object to this motto, because they say that it is also important to pay attention to darkness and the shadow side of your personality. There are others who however claim that light drives away darkness. There is a sundial, which has as its motto: Begone, time flies, walk in Light. A…

The Planiverse

“The year is 1981, and in the computer lab of a large university a group of graduate students and their professor are hard at work on the departmental mainframe, graphically modelling an imaginary two-dimensional world. The project is going well, extraordinarily well, when one student suddenly notices that the world they are building on-screen is… inhabited!” So begins A.K. Dewdney’s tale of discovery and communication with the two-dimensional civilization of Arde. Since its original publication in 1984 The Planiverse has developed a kind of cult readership, following in the footsteps of Edward Abbot’s nineteenth-century classic Flatland. As a kind of mental puzzle or brain-teaser, it challenges and delights, inviting readers to imagine just how a two-dimensional world might actually work….