(74) Whereas the Book of God resembles the Masnavi in this, The infidels abused it, in the same manner, Saying, 'It contains old tales and stories; Little boys can understand it; It only contains commands and prohibitions, Accounts of Yusuf and his curled locks, Accounts of Jacob, of Zulaikha and her love, Accounts of Adam, of the wheat, and of the serpent Iblis, Accounts of Hud, of Noah, of Abraham, and the, fire." Know the words of the Koran are simple,

(43) Only (Reader) I admonish you sincerely; if you will be not in the Way of the Prodigal, or lost Son, returning to his Father again, that you leave my Book, and read it not, it will do you Harm. For the great Prince will not forbear to deceive you; because he stands naked in this Book before the Children of God, and is exceedingly ashamed, as a Man that is put to open Shame before all People for his Misdeeds; therefore be warned. And if you love and favour the tender delicate Flesh still, do not read my Book; but if you will not take Warning, and a Mischief befall you, I will be guiltless, blame no Body but yourself; for I write down what I know at present, for a Memorial to myself; yet God knows well what he will do [with it,] which in some Measure is hid from me.

(1) COURTEOUS Reader, here I would have you faithfully admonished to let go your opinion and conceit, and not yield to the spell of the Heathenish wisdom, nor be offended at the simplicity of the author: for this work comes not from his reason, but from the impulse of the spirit.

(2) Many unordained and unseemly practices follow on this error, whoso might perceive all. Nevertheless some there be that be so curious that they can refrain them in great part when they come before men. But might these men be seen in place where they be homely, then I trow they should not be hid. And nevertheless yet I trow that whoso would straitly gainsay their opinion, that they should soon see them burst out in some point; and yet them think that all that ever they do, it is for the love of God and for to maintain the truth. Now truly I hope that unless God shew His merciful miracle to make them soon leave off, they shall love God so long on this manner, that they shall go staring mad to the devil. I say not that the devil hath so perfect a servant in this life, that is deceived and infect with all these fantasies that I set here: and nevertheless yet it may be that one, yea, and many one, be infect with them all. But I say that he hath no perfect hypocrite nor heretic in earth that he is not guilty in some that I have said, or peradventure shall say if God vouchsafeth.

Next follows an anecdote of Bilkis, Queen of Sheba, whose reason was enlightened by the counsels of the Hoopoo sent to her by King Solomon. Outward sense is as opposed to true reason as Abu Jahl was to Muhammad; and when the outward senses are replaced by the true inner reason, man sees that the body is only foam, and the heart the limitless ocean. Afterwards comes an anecdote of a philosopher who was struck blind for cavilling at the verse, "What think ye? If at early morn your waters shall have sunk away, who will then give you clear running water?" This is succeeded by the story of Moses and the shepherd. Moses once heard a shepherd praying as follows: "O God, show me where thou art, that I may become. Thy servant. I will clean Thy shoes and comb Thy hair, and sew Thy clothes, and fetch Thee milk." When Moses heard him praying in this senseless manner, he rebuked him, saying, "O foolish one, though your father was a Mosalman, you have become an infidel. God is a Spirit, and needs not such gross ministrations as, in your ignorance, you suppose." The shepherd was abashed at his rebuke, and tore his clothes and fled away into the desert. Then a voice from heaven was heard, saying, "O Moses, wherefore have you driven away my servant? Your office is to reconcile my people with me, not to drive them away from me. I have given to each race different usages and forms of praising and adoring me. I have no need of their praises, being exalted above all such needs. I regard not the words that are spoken, but the heart that offers them. I do not require fine words, but a burning heart. Men's ways of showing devotion to me are various, but so long as the devotions are genuine, they are accepted."

(35) Hearken, thou antichristian Scorner; it is not enough for thee to stand and say, I have the true Ground of the Knowledge [that leads] to the Kingdom of Heaven. I have found the true Religion, and condemnest every one that has not thy Knowledge, or does not consent to thy Opinion; thou sayest, Such a one is nothing else but confound the Sheep with thy Fierceness, and causest them to offend, and to calumniate those whom neither thou nor they know, as the Ephesians did by Paul. Dost thou suppose that thou hast hunted away the Wolf by this means? Or hast thou not rather generated a Heap of young scornful Wolves, which howl and yell, and every one would devour, and yet know not where the evil Beast is, nor especially that most evil Beast of all, which generated them? O blind Babel, the Kingdom of Christ does not consist herein, but the abominable Antichrist of Confusion in Babel.

(2) Also the learned have scuffled about it with many strange scurrilous writings, falling one upon another in calumnious and disgraceful terms, whereby the holy name of God has been reproached, his members wounded, his temple destroyed, and the holy heaven profaned with their calumniating and malicious enmity.

The doctrine of the Mu'tazilites, mentioned, that all men's intellects are alike and equal at birth, is again controverted, and the poet dwells on the essential differences which characterize the intellects akin to Universal Reason or the Logos, and those swayed by partial or carnal reason; the former, like the children of Israel, seeking exaltation through self-abasement; and the others, like Pharaoh, running after worldly rank and power, to their own destruction. In order to make probation of men, as already explained, God fills the world with deceptions, making apparent blessings destructive to us, and apparent evils salutary. On the other hand, if men try to deceive God, they fail signally. Hypocritical weeping and wailing like that of Joseph's brethren is at once detected by God. Thus a certain Arab had a dog to which he was much attached; but one day the dog died of hunger. He at once began to weep and wail, and disturbed the whole neighborhood by his ostentatious grief One of the neighbors came and inquired into the matter, and on hearing that the dog had died of hunger, he asked the Arab why he had not fed him from the wallet of food which he had in his hand. The Arab said that he had collected this food to support himself, and made it a principle not to part with any of it to any one who could not pay for it; but that, as his tears cost him nothing, he was pouring them forth in token of the sorrow he felt for his dog's death. The neighbor, on hearing this, rebuked him for his hypocrisy, and went his way. Then follows a commentary on the text, "Almost would the infidels strike thee down with their very looks when they hear the reading of the Koran."

(61) Is made to revolve by the strokes of the King's hand. O man of double vision, hearken with attention, Many are the holy words that find no entrance Into blind hearts, but they enter hearts full of light. But the deceits of Satan enter crooked hearts, Though you repeat pious expressions again and again, If you are a fool, they affect you not at all; Nay, not though you set them down in writing, And though you proclaim them vauntingly; Wisdom averts its face from you, O man of sin,

(64) A certain goose pops his head out of his coop, And displays himself as a critic of the Masnavi, Saying, "This poem, the Masnavi, is childish; 'Tis but a story of the prophets, and so on. 'Tis not an account of the arguments and deep mysteries, Whereto holy men direct their attention; Concerning asceticism, and so on to self-annihilation, Step by step, up to communion with God; An explanation and definition of each several state, Whereto the men of heart ascend in their flight."

The Prophet had a scribe who used to write down the texts that fell from his lips. At last this scribe became so conceited that he imagined all this heavenly wisdom proceeded from his own wit, and not from the Prophet. Puffed up with self-importance, he fancied himself inspired, and his heart was hardened against his master, and he became a renegade, like the fallen angels Harut and Marut. He took his own foolish surmises to be the truth, whereas they were all wide of the mark, as those of the deaf man who went to condole with a sick neighbour and answered all his remarks at cross purposes.

The Prince of Bokhara had a Vakil who, through fear of punishment for an offence he had committed, ran away and remained concealed in Kuhistan and the desert for the space of ten years. At the end of that time, being unable to endure absence from his lord and his home any longer, he determined to return to Bokhara and throw himself at his lord's feet, and endure whatever punishment his lord might be pleased to inflict upon him. His friends did all they could to dissuade him, assuring him that the Prince's wrath was still hot against him, and that if he appeared at Bokhara he would be put to death, or at least imprisoned for the rest of his life. He replied, "O advisers, be silent, for the force of the love which is drawing me to Bokhara is stronger than the force of prudent counsels. When love pulls one way all the wisdom of Abu Hanifa and Ash-Shafi'i is impotent to withstand it. If it shall please my lord to slay me, I will yield up my life without reluctance, for this life of estrangement from him which I am now leading is the same as death, and release from it will be eternal happiness. I will return to Bokhara and throw myself at my lord's feet, and say to him, 'Deal with me as thou wilt, for I can no longer bear absence from thee, and life or death at thy hands is all the same to me!'" Accordingly, he journeyed back to Bokhara, counting the very toils and discomforts of the road sweet and delightful, because they were steps in his homeward course. When he reached Bokhara his friends and relations all warned him not to show himself, as the Prince was still mindful of his offence and bent on punishing him; but he replied to them as to his other advisers, that he was utterly regardless of his life, and was resolved to commit himself to his lord's good pleasure. He then went to the court and threw himself at his lord's feet and swooned away. The Prince, seeing the strong affection borne to him by his repentant servant, conceived a similar affection towards him, and descended from his throne and graciously raised him from the ground, and pardoned his offence. Thus it is that eternal life is gained by utter abandonment of one's own life. When God appears to His ardent lover the lover is absorbed in Him, and not so much as a hair of the lover remains. True lovers are as shadows, and when the sun shines in glory the shadows vanish away. He is a true lover of God to whom God says, "I am thine, and thou art mine!" In the course of this story, which is narrated at great length, are introduced anecdotes of a lover and his mistress, of the Virgin Mary being visited by the "Blessed Spirit" or Angel Gabriel, of the fatal mosque, of Galen's devotion to carnal learning, of Satan's treachery to the men of Mecca at the battle of Bedr, and of Solomon and the gnat. There also occur comments on various texts, and a curious comparison of the trials and wholesome afflictions of the righteous to the boiling of potherbs in a saucepan by the cook. The reply of the lover when asked by his mistress which city of all those he had seen was most pleasing in his sight.

A jackal fell into a dye-pit, and his skin was dyed of various colors. Proud of his splendid appearance, he returned to his companions, and desired them to address him as a peacock. But they proceeded to test his pretensions, saying, "Dost thou scream like a peacock, or strut about gardens as peacocks are wont to do?" And he was forced to admit that he did not, whereupon they rejected his pretensions. Another story, also on the subject of false pretenders, follows. A proud man who lacked food procured a skin full of fat, greased his beard and lips with it, and called on his friends to observe how luxuriously he had dined. But his belly was vexed at this, because it was hungry, and he was destroying his chance of being invited to dinner by his friends. So the belly cried to God, and a cat came and carried off the skin of fat, and so the man's false pretences were exposed. The poet takes occasion to point out that Pharaoh's pretensions to divinity exactly resembled the pretensions of this jackal, and adds that all such false pretenders may be detected by the mark noted in the Koran, "Ye shall know them by the strangeness of their speech." This recalls the story of Harut and Marut, two angels who were very severe on the frailties of mankind, and whom God sent down upon the earth to be tempted, with the result that they both succumbed to the charms of the daughters of men.

THE fourth book begins with an address to Husamu-'d-Din, and this is followed by the story of the lover and his mistress, already commenced in the third book. A certain lover had been separated from his mistress for the space of seven years, during which he never relaxed his efforts to find her. At last his constancy and perseverance were rewarded, in accordance with the promises "The seeker shall find," and "Whoso shall have wrought an atom's weight of good shall behold it." One night, as he was wandering through the city, he was pursued by the patrol, and, in order to escape them, took refuge in a garden, where he found his long-sought mistress. This occasioned him to reflect how often men "hate the things that are good for them," and led him to bless the rough patrol who had procured him the bliss of meeting with his mistress. Apropos of this, an anecdote is told of a preacher who was in the habit of blessing robbers and oppressors, because their evil example had turned him to righteousness. The moment the lover found himself alone with his mistress, he attempted to embrace her, but his mistress repulsed him, saying, that though no men 'were present, yet the wind was blowing and that showed that God, the mover of the wind, was also present. The lover replied, "It may be I am lacking in good manners, but I am not lacking in constancy and fidelity towards you." His mistress replied, "One must judge of the hidden by the manifest; I see for myself that your outward behavior is bad, and thence I cannot but infer that your boast of hidden virtues is not warranted by actual facts. You are ashamed to misconduct yourself in the sight of men, but have no scruple to do so in the presence of the All-seeing God, and hence I doubt the existence of the virtuous sentiments which you claim to possess, but which can only be known to yourself." To illustrate this, she told the story of a Sufi and his faithless wife. This wife was one day entertaining a paramour, when she was surprised by the sudden return of her husband. On the spur of the moment she threw a woman's dress over her paramour and presented him to her husband as a rich lady who had come to propose a marriage between her son and the Sufi's daughter, saying she did not care for wealth, but only regarded modesty and rectitude of conduct. To this the Sufi replied, that as from her coming unattended it was plain that the lady had not the wealth she pretended to have, it was more than probable that her pretensions to extraordinary modesty and humility were also fictitious. The lover then proceeded to excuse himself by the plea that he had wished to test his mistress, and ascertain for himself whether she was a modest woman or not. He said he of course knew beforehand that she would prove to be a modest woman, but still he wished to have ocular demonstration of the fact. His mistress reproved him for trying to deceive her with false pretences, assuring him that, after he had been detected in a fault, his only proper course was to confess it, as Adam had done. Moreover, she added that an attempt to put her to the test would have been an extremely unworthy proceeding, only to be paralleled by Abu Jahl's attempt to prove the truth of the Prophet's claims by calling on him to perform a miracle.

(32) Behold, out of what are the Turks grown? Out of thy perverse Sense; when they saw that thou regardest nothing but thy Pride, and didst only contend and dispute about the Temple of Christ, that it must stand only upon Man's Foundation and Inventions, then Mahomet came forth, and found an Invention that was agreeable to Nature. Because those other followed after Covetousness, and fell off from the Temple of Christ, as also from the Light of Nature, into a Confusion of Pride, and all their Aim was, how the Antichristian Throne might be adorned, therefore he also made Laws and Doctrines [raised] from Reason.

(68) Come hither, ye contentious Shepherds of Babel, open your Eyes, and consider what his Testaments of the Baptism and his Last Supper are: I shall show you well enough, if you be but worthy; however, we write for the Children of the Lily; therefore let every one see where he harbours; it is in Earnest. We slight not the Understanding of the Ancients. It may be, it was purely generated in the Beginning, but we find how Antichrist has set up himself upon it, and made Gods of the Creature.

(11) Instil many vain fancies into men's minds. But, on the contrary, 'tis his perverseness and want of faith The philosopher denies the existence of the Devil; At the same time he is the Devil's laughing-stock. If thou hast not seen the Devil, look at thyself, Without demon's aid how came that blue turban on thy brow? Whosoever has a doubt or disquietude in his heart Now and then he displays firm belief, Beware, O believers! That lurks in you too; All the seventy and two heresies lurk in you;

(45) Therefore, if you do not understand this Writing, then do 'not as Lucifer did in taking the Spirit of Pride presently, and fall a mocking, and deriding, and ascribe it to the Devil; but seek the humble lowly Heart of God, and that will bring a small Grain of Mustard- seed (from the Tree of Paradise) into your Soul; and if you abide in Patience, then a great Tree will grow out of that [Seed,] as you may well think, that the like has come to pass with this Author. For he is to be esteemed a very simple Person, in Comparison of the great learned Men: But Christ saith; My Power is strong in the Weak: Yea Father, it hath so pleased thee, to hide these Things from the Wise and Prudent, and thou hast revealed them to Babes and Sucklings; and that the Wisdom of this World is Foolishness in thy Sight. And although now the Children of the World are wiser in their Generation than the Children of Light; yet their Wisdom is but a corruptible Substance, [Essence or Thing,] and this Wisdom continues eternally.

(1) There is a great crowd of this description: some of them, enslaved to pleasures and willing to disbelieve, laugh at the truth which is worthy of all reverence, making sport of its barbarousness. Some others, exalting themselves, endeavour to discover calumnious objections to our words, furnishing captious questions, hunters out of paltry sayings, practisers of miserable artifices, wranglers, dealers in knotty points, as that Abderite says: "For mortals' tongues are glib, and on them are many speeches; And a wide range for words of all sorts in this place and that." And - "Of whatever sort the word you have spoken, of the same sort you must hear."

(13) When we consider with ourselves the many Sects and Controversies in Religion, and from whence they come and take their Original, it is clear as the Sun, and it manifests itself indeed, and in Truth; for there are great Wars and Insurrections stirred up for the Cause of [Religion or] Faith; and there arise great Hatred and Envy about it, and they persecute one another for Opinions Sake; because another is not of his Opinion, he sticks not to say, he is of the Devil; and this is yet the greatest Misery of all, that this is done by the Learned in the high Schools [or Universities] of this World.