Nasir-i Khusraw Poetry
Nasir Khusraw is acknowledged as one of the foremost poets of the Persian language. Born in the Balkh district of Central Asia in 394/1004, Nasir was inspired from an early age by a tremendous thirst for knowledge. His intellectual abilities brought him much fame, a promising career in government service, and a life of ease and pleasure. But he was always dissatisfied by a lack of meaning and purpose in his life until one day, at the age of 42, he was dramatically transformed by a visionary dream. He converted to Ismailism, renounced his worldly life and embarked on his famous seven-year journey to Egypt. Nasir arrived in Cairo in 439/1047, where he stayed for three years and became acquainted with Ismaili dignitaries such as Al Muayyad Fi Din Al Shirazi.
He was appointed to a high rank in the Fatimid da’wa organization, and was later regarded as the hujja of greater Khurasan. When he returned to Transoxania, Nasir established his residence at Balkh, from where he began to propogate the Ismaili faith in the surrounding provinces. But Nasir’s success provoked the local people to burn down his house and compel him to seek refuge in Yumgan, a remote mountainous region of Badakhshan, today situated on both sides of the Oxus river in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Nasir spent the remainder of his life there, writing his philosophical works and composing poetry until his death after 465/1072. He is venerated to this day in Central Asia as a great saint, poet and philosopher. The following poems are from his Diwan, ed. N. Taqawi (Tehran, 1925-28), also edited by M. Minuwi and M. Muhaqqiq (Tehran, 1974).
The Eye of the Intellect
By Nasir-i Khusraw Do you not see that God Pluck the bud of wisdom This world is not the abode Of what use is the branch In the sight of God, Had it any value in His This world is only a place In fact, this world is O do not reject these
By Nasir-i Khusraw 0 you who have been Consider that your The momentum of time
By Nasir-i Khusraw The master turned Since he made me When I looked He showed me I saw the two He pointed to one I saw eight gates, He said to me: When I asked him The master said:
By Nasir-i Khusraw The exoteric of revelation Since pearls and jewels are Why does the Maintainer He kept them for the Prophet You will get nothing but mud When you are searching for On the Night of Power, Whether you kindle the lamp
By Nasir-i Khusraw The soul of the universe When the auspicious Jupiter As long as the clouds and the nightingale laments may the authority of |
Journey to the Light
By Nasir-i Khusraw My heart is filled with the slander of the people; During autumn my heart was dissipated with wine; in the Complacently I sat in the midst of the watermill turning, I thought that the world had become my meadow, until like If it injured me in any way, I returned to it yet again like The world kept me firmly under its control; thus sometimes And when my soul was worn out with the afflictions of time, I was prepared to seek justice from the devil of the time, I had to perform a hundred acts of servitude to him before I gained nothing at all except toil and suffering from When my heart became disappointed with kings and princes, I told myself that they would show me the path of religion They said: “Be happy, you have been delivered from your burden” I told myself that since these were men of knowledge, I would Therefore I wasted some years of my life with them in a lot But their wealth and piety was only corruption and hypocrisy, It was as if by going from the king to the jurist, I had Time had countless ruses and pretexts to entrap me; I became When it betrayed me and no escape was left to me, at last I found help against the devil’s persecution and cunning Shall I tell you what happened to me when I fled the devil? When the light of the Imam shone upon my soul, even though The Supreme Name is with the Imam of the time; through him,
By Nasir-i Khusraw Kindle the candle of intellect in your heart In the path of the hereafter, one should not walk 0 son, your mind is the garden of intellect, Let your heart become soft because a shirt of Comprehend well the wise poetry of the hujja,
By Nasir-i Khusraw Above the seven spheres are two precious pearls whose light In the placenta of non-existence, from the sperm of existence, Not contained by the senses, they are not sensible; neither Reared in pre-eternity by the holy wet-nurse, they are not From this side of creation and that side of the universe, They are not in the world and yet they are in it; they are not It is said that they are both the worlds; therefore they are This one is the Holy Spirit and that one the Spirit of Gabriel; In the nest of the lower world they appear with open wings, They are friends with the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet, In the treasure-houses of pre-eternity and post-eternity, they are They are both the world and mankind, paradise and hell; they They come from light to darkness, from heaven to earth, from Existent and non-existent, hidden and manifest, they are In the next world which is their forge and furnace, they are They are the chiefs of the nine spheres and the seven planets; Around their home, there are ten witnesses, of whom five stay The shopkeepers of heaven come before them in order to They are not substance, for substance takes accident from them; They read to you the book of secrets without letters; they They appear because they are hidden; they are without head or Their attribute is that they are not contained in the world, They have made this world a place for you to inhabit, but for They come to you from a place which is not a place; there they In rank, they are higher than the angelic world; like God’s Even though both the worlds are in the possession of this and
By Nasir-i Khusraw O eloquent one! Why do you remain silent? If you are a rider on the mount of wisdom, You have seen and experienced the world; You have become famous in the Science of Geometry, And when you are counting, the created world is There are many people in the East and the West Now that you are happy to be among the best, Since from the heart of the master Mu’ayyad, |
Source: Shimmering Light – IIS Publication Translated by Faquir M. Hunzai, a research associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies and a former university lecturer in Arabic and Persian at a Pakistani university. He earned his Ph.D. from the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University.
Ismaili Poetry Page 1
Ismaili Poetry Page 2
About Nasir Khusraw Ismaili Dai
Al Muayyad Ismaili Dai
Poetry in the honor of Imam-e-Zamaan The Present Living Imam
Verses from the Holy Quran pointing to Imams