English
On the Composing of the Preface
Boundless thanks and endless praise to the Creator, exalted be His majesty and universal His bounty, who, out of the perfection of all things, fashioned in the ocean of existence a treasure-laden ship: the human being. Whatever He had placed in the qualities and forms of the varied world, worldly and eternal, He stored the essence of it all in this ship. And in this ocean, out of the special honor of 'We have indeed dignified the children of Adam,' He granted the journey of ascent to no ship but this one, and showed no path to the shore but this. Endless blessings and greetings upon the leader of the prophets, Muhammad the Chosen One, sailor of the ships of human souls and swimmer in the shoreless ocean of the Divine Presence. May God's blessings be upon him and his pure family and companions until the Day of Judgment.
Know that just as the great ships of the world cannot do without a small skiff to help them, so the ship of the human being, laden with divine grace and voyaging on the ocean of meanings, needs all the more a small companion boat, filled with the choicest pearls, especially those who carry the heavy loads of the divine world. They bear the burden of the trust of love, which was offered to the heavens, the earth, and the mountains, and which no creature dared carry, until the ship of the human heart took it up. In truth these humble ones, whose crossing is over the ocean of His might, most deserve the ship, for 'as for the ship, it belonged to poor men who toiled at sea.' These beggars proud in their kingship, the travelers of the way and divers in the ocean of truth, first cross from the ocean of nature to the bank of the way, then set the sail of seeking toward the breaths of divine grace. Reaching the ocean's edge, they cut loose the ship of aspiration from all worldly attachments and turn toward the encompassing ocean of truth. Since that endless ocean cannot be crossed by one's own power, and no far shore reached without a treasure-laden ship, one king lays a hand of accord on the saddle-strap of companionship with the humble, and another strings the night-glowing pearl of 'Adam and all beneath him are under my banner' into the necklace of 'O God, let me live humble, die humble, and be raised among the humble.'
What secret is this, that kings make themselves subordinate to the humble, while the humble boast of those kings? When the call came, 'the ship belonged to poor men who toiled at sea,' the kings made themselves followers of the humble, so no blemish of 'behind them was a king who seized every ship by force' would settle on their purity. And finding the way-stations of 'I am with those whose hearts are broken for My sake,' the pure gather around the flawed, and the humble tie themselves with a thousand tricks to the ship of 'the likeness of my household is like Noah's ark.'
What varied images appear from behind the veil of the unseen, what talismans they bind and unbind! Sometimes they let Solomon be counseled by an ant, sometimes save Muhammad by a spider's protection, sometimes make the ark Noah's refuge. If Noah was once afflicted by a single flood and took to the ark, then the humble lovers, whose whole life deals with the ocean of love and over whose heads break a thousand floods of anguish each breath, what wonder if they cling to a ship to cast themselves onto some shore?
My heart counted the love of you a flood like Noah's,
and so it made ready a ship.
Meaning: from this ocean, whose depth is love,
the soul can only be carried out by a ship.
Inevitably, the lifeline of these humble ones who toiled at sea can be nothing but the ship, so that when the waves of cares surge and the throngs of sorrows pile up, it may save them from the winds of fear and hope, contraction and expansion, intimacy and awe, and rescue them from the mire of dread and the drowning depths of bewilderment.
So each of this group, to condemn what is base, relieve calamities, and gather company, makes a collection and pours into it the oceans of knowledge, prose and verse, storing all kinds of precious things, and names it a 'safineh': a ship, and a poetic anthology. But within this ship are various seas, beside which the great oceans of Oman and the Red Sea are but a flowing brook.
Since rescue comes through a ship,
in the ocean of his grief my heart seeks a ship.
A ship on the ocean is no wonder;
an ocean contained within a ship, that is the wonder.
If you seek trade in oceans and ships,
here is a ship that holds oceans within it.
It is a ship such that, if you wanted a hundred thousand of them,
a thousand shores of the sea run forth from it with a single fold.
Though on the surface the ship's virtue is that its company carries one from the depths of contraction to the shore of expansion and back, in its deeper meaning it is truly an ocean, swelling with the signs of meanings and the jewels of human treasures, adorned with the pearls of divine sciences. When you look with the eye of insight, you see that in the city of the body a seeker of Noah's nature has fallen. Though he calls the community of animal and satanic qualities to servanthood, by day and night, in secret and openly, they rebel and will not obey. The Noah-soul, seeing in bodily qualities nothing but 'Will You place in it one who spreads corruption and sheds blood,' lifts the hand of need in prayer that the flood of affliction leave none alive, pleading, 'Lord, leave not a single unbeliever dwelling upon the earth,' for he sees that from bodily qualities arise only selfish, lustful offspring, each stirring a thousand troubles. Then God answers, opening from the furnace of the heart the gushing flood of love that drowns lustful offspring, and pours down the rain of compassion, and the inspirations of grace reach the Noah-soul: 'build the ark under Our eyes.' That is: O soul, build the ark of tranquility, empty the heart of attachments, and though the Canaan of the commanding self is born of soul and body, since he is 'of unrighteous conduct' and 'not of your family,' though you say out of fatherly mercy 'embark with us,' he says out of foolish rebellion, 'I will take refuge on a mountain,' not knowing that 'today there is no protector from the command of God.' O Noah, let go of this tenderness, fruit of animal qualities, and 'do not be among the ignorant,' for by the counsel of 'die before you die,' the good of the moment lies in severing your bond with your beloved child and reciting, 'and he was among the drowned.'
What a strange state: how could the secrets of God's grace, hidden in the forms of creation, ever grow familiar with a soul stained by lusts and drowned in heedlessness? Or how could the lights of divine bounty shine in any heart-lamp not polished of vanity and hypocrisy, without the oil of realization? Come, learn one secret from the secrets of God, and read one letter from the signs of the Divine.
In short, when the fire of longing rises in those burned by love who bear the trust, and the smoke of separation clouds the mind, they make rough drafts to open the breast and refresh the spirit, so that amid the snares of longing they may find comfort. They lay up on the cheek of the page the index of the treasuries of knowledge, and scatter a hundred thousand curls of fresh ambergris upon fine silk, so that when the mirror of the temperament fills with the rust of weariness, they may read, to clear that eclipse, the subtle words and states of those who came before, treasured in the ship from books, ledgers, and the breaths of the pure, and the mirror is polished clean by the purity of those sayings.
In brief, they make ships that are keepers of the wonders of secrets, guardians of marvels, gatherers of the sciences of the learned, the collection of the wisdom of the wise, the epic of lovers and the record of the longing, the mover of the chain of seeking and the incense of joy, a tender friend and intimate companion.
A ship stands on dry land,
with many flowing oceans inside it.
Its planks are made from the leaves of paper,
its nails from the points of pens.
A ship whose anchor is the knot of the covenant,
whose sail is the resolve of the free and noble.
Made from the fine tranquilities of souls,
and from the strange stores of reports and lore.
A ship brimming with the wonders of the sea,
seas whose nature scatters pearls.
So delicate it rests upon the surface of the water,
its water drawn from the ocean of the breasts of the righteous.
A ship loaded with strange arts and varied marvels, in which dwell a hundred thousand virgin thoughts, the mothers of eloquence and the fathers of skill; the parrots of the Tuba tree of souls and the nightingales of the cage of bodies bringing the harvest of state to the beak of speech; the pearls that the adorners of the eloquent deck out in the robes of eloquence. From its subtleties of composition, the morning wine and the wine of spring; from the freshness of its words, like ruby-red pomegranate seeds and jewels of Oman, both soul and ears are perfumed by its breaths. Its verses are like the beauty of heart-stealing beloveds, its prose like the state of lovers pointed at by all. In it the trivial and the weighty lie in wait together, the serious and jesting sit side by side, Arab and Persian mingled, Turk and Hindu entwined, Abyssinian and Qurayshi from one house, all become like a single-seeded pomegranate. The pen has danced upon its pages, the sailor of thought dived into its seas; understanding swims in it, imagination sails it; the face of hope is bright from its garden, the eye of longing lit by its light; a companion in travel, an intimate at home, and 'the best companion in time is a book.' If speech were handed over to the pen, it still could not encompass these chapters, even if the pen were spent like an arrow shot to its head.
No paper is left on earth, nor any pen,
no ink, nor any scrap of leaf remains.
So it is better that we recite: 'the best speech is that which is brief, to the point, and does not weary,' and quench the fire of longing with the water of reflection; for even if the oceans became ink, the trees pens, the earth paper, and all mankind, from the beginning of this world to the end of the next, became scribes, they could not write the account of His attributes.
Here ends the treatise on the composing of the preface.