¹ See especially Hanaway, W. L. Jr, “Paradise on Earth: The Terrestrial Garden in Persian Literature,” in MacDougall, E. B. and Ettinghausen, Richard, eds., The Islamic Garden (Washington, D.C., 1976), pp. 43–67;Google Scholarde Fouchécour, C.-H., La description de la nature dans la poésie lyrique persane du XIe siècle (Paris, 1969);Google ScholarSchimmel, A., “A Spring Day in Konyā According to Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī,” in Chelkowski, P. J., ed., The Scholar and the Saint (New York, 1975), pp. 255–73, and The Triumphal Sun (London, 1980), pp. 59–93;Google Scholar see also Bausani, A., “La rappresentazione della natura nel poeta persiano Hāfiz,” Oriente Moderno, 23(1943), 28–39;Google ScholarClinton, J. W., The Divan of Manūchihrī Dāmghānī: A Critical Study (Minneapolis, 1972), pp. 100–23;Google ScholarRitter, H., Über die Bildersprache Nizāmīs (Leipzig, 1927);CrossRefGoogle ScholarWilber, D. N., Persian Gardens and Garden Pavilions (Rutland, Vt., 1962), pp. 39–51.Google Scholar

² Touched on by Hanaway, pp. 58–61; Schimmel, A., “The Celestial Garden,” in The Islamic Garden, pp. 13–39, and Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975), passim.Google Scholar

³ Meisami, J., “Allegorical Techniques in the Ghazals of Hāfez,” Edebiyat, 4 (1979), 1–40; “Hāfez's Allegorical Gardens: The Problem of Interpretation,” paper delivered at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Seattle, Wash., November 1981;Google Scholar“The World's Pleasance: Hāfez's Allegorical Gardens,” Comparative Criticism, 5 (1983), 153–85.Google Scholar

⁴ Giamatti, A. Bartlett, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton, 1966), p. 11. On the relationship of both real and literary gardens to ideals of Paradise,Google Scholar see Comito, Terry, The Idea of the Garden in the Renaissance (New Brunswick, N.J., 1978), pp. 25–50;Google ScholarGiamatti, pp. 11–86; Hanaway, pp. 44–51;Google ScholarLehrman, J., Earthly Paradise: Garden and Courtyard in Islam (Berkeley, 1980), passim;Google ScholarPearsall, D. and Salter, E., Landscapes and Seasons in the Medieval World (London, 1973), pp. 56–75.Google Scholar

⁵ Comito, p. 105; cf. Chenu, M.-D., Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, edited and translated by Taylor, J. and Little, L. K. (Chicago, 1968), pp. 114–19;Google ScholarFletcher, Angus, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, 1964), pp. 130–35;Google ScholarMartz, L. L., The Paradise Within (New Haven, 1964), pp. 17 ff.Google Scholar

⁶ Nasr, S. H., Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 24, On the concept of ta'wīl (allegorical exegesis of the Koran) that arises from this view of creation,Google Scholar see Corbin, H., Avicenne et le récit visionnaire, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1954), I, 32–36;Google Scholar and especially Nwyia, Paul, Exégèse coranique et langue mystique (Beirut, 1970), pp. 314–16.Google Scholar

⁷ Pearsall, p. 183 (a propos of Ymaginatif's reminder to the dreamer in Piers Plowman).Google Scholar

⁸ Kullu shay'in fīhi maw'izatun/ta'izu 'l-insāna law 'aqalā. Abū al-'Atahiya. ash'āruh waakhbāruh, edited by Faysal, Shukri (Damascus, 1965), p. 609.Google Scholar

⁹ Barg-e derakhtān-e sabz dar nazar-e hūshyār/har varaqī daftar-e ma 'refat-e kerdegār. Quoted by Sūdī, , Sharh-e Sūdī bar Hāfez, translated by Sattārzādeh, 'Essmat, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (Tehran, 1978–1979), IV, p. 2439.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Dar chaman har varaqī daftar-e hālī digar-ast/hayf bāshad keh ze kār-e hameh ghāfel bāshī. Hāfez, , Dīvān, edited by Qazvīnī, M. and Ghanī, Q. (Tehran, 1941). Unless otherwise indicated, all citations are based on this edition (designated as QG); all translations of Hāfez are my own. In QG 268 Hāfez alludes to the concept of “signs” or natural symbols: Beneshīn bar lab-e jūy o gozar-e 'umr bebīn/k-īn eshārat ze jahān-e gozarān mārā bas, “Sit by the edge of the stream and watch life pass, / for this sign of the passing (transient) world is enough for us.” On the opposition of ishāra (the allusive use of language) and 'ibāra (plain speech) in relation to ta'wīl, see Nwyia, pp. 174–75, 313–16, and Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, p. 59.Google Scholar

¹¹ Cf. Chenu, pp. 99 ff.; de Bruyne, E., Etudes d'estheétique médiévale, 3 vols. (Bruges, 1946), III, 302 ff.;Google ScholarChydenius, J., “La théorie du symbolisme médiéval,” Poétique, 23 (1973), 322–41;Google ScholarKendall, C. B., Bede's Historia ecclesia: The Rhetoric of Faith,” in Murphy, J. R., ed., Medieval Eloquence (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 145–72.Google Scholar

¹² Chenu, pp. 103, 112.Google Scholar

¹³ Cf. Chenu, especially pp. 21–33, 81–85, 99 ff.; on the analogical mode of thought see also Vinaver, Eugene, The Rise of Romance (Oxford, 1971), pp. 99–112. The complexities of this topic are beyond the scope of the present paper, and I shall allude to them only briefly as relevant to the treatment of specific examples.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Giamatti, p. 11; cf. Lehrman, p. 31; Pearsall, p. 54.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cf. Lehrman, pp. 61–62; Wilber, pp. 19–25; R. Pinder-Wilson, “The Persian Garden: Bagh and Chahar Bagh,” in The Islamic Garden, pp. 71–85.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Pope, A. U., A Survey of Persian Art, Vol. III: Architecture (Tokyo, London and New York, 1964/1965), p. 1,428. For Iranian and other ancient Near Eastern descriptions of Paradise,Google Scholar see Patch, H. R., The Other World (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 8–16. In the Grand Bundahishn, one of the forms in which the departed soul's dēn (i.e., his “religion”) that he encounters after death appears to him is that of a verdant garden;CrossRefGoogle Scholarcf. Molé, M., “Daēnā, le Pont Ĉinvat et l'initiation dans le Mazdéisme,” Revue de l'histoire des religions, 67(1966), 176.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For images of Paradise in Manichaean texts, see Boyce, M., The Manichaean Hymn-Cycles in Parthian (London, 1954), pp. 15–23 and passim;Google Scholar cf. also (for survivals in Coptic Manichaeanism) Allberry, C. R. C., A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II (Stuttgart, 1938), passim, and especially pp. 224–25.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Pope, p. 1,429; cf. Lehrman, pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Dickie, James, “The Hispano-Arabic Garden: Its Philosophy and Function,” BSOAS, 31 (1968), 238; cf. Lehrman, passim;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMarçais, G., “Les jardins de l'Islam,” Mélanges d'histoire et d'archéologie de l'occident musulman, Vol. 1 (Alger, 1957), p. 234; Schimmel, “The Celestial Garden,” pp. 13–22.Google Scholar

²⁰ Cf. Nasr, p. 99: Pinder-Wilson, pp. 71–73. For descriptions of Islamic gardens, see the works cited by Lehrman and Wilber; the articles by Dickie (an expanded version, “The Islamic Garden in Spain,” appears in The Islamic Garden, pp. 89–105) and Marçais; Pope, pp. 1,429–43. On correspondences between the features of gardens and other landscapes (particularly the locus amoenus), see Giamatti, pp. 33 ff.Google Scholar

²¹ Cf. Lehrman, pp. 31–33, and especially Pearsall, pp. 78–80.Google Scholar This unease finds expression in Christian allegorizations of the Song of Songs (cf. Stewart, Stanley, The Enclosed Garden, Madison, 1966, especially pp. 3–30) as well as in the relatively frequent occurrence in Western literature of gardens representing evil, such as the “false Elysia” of the gardens of Dragontino, Falerina, and Morgana in Boiardo's Orlando InnamoratoGoogle Scholar (discussed by Murrin, Michael, The Allegorical Epic, Chicago, 1980. pp. 53–85;Google Scholarcf. particularly pp. 74–84, on the significance of their “Oriental” locale) and Acrasia's Bower of Bliss in Spenser's Faerie Queene. In Christian literature, earthly paradises most often suffer by comparison to the celestial; cf. Martz's discussion of Henry Vaughan's “Regeneration,” pp. 8 ff., and Stewart, passim.Google Scholar

²² Vadet, J.-M., L'espri: courtois en orient (Paris, 1968), p. 251.Google Scholar

²³ Cf. Monroe, J., Hispano-Arabic Poetry (Berkeley, 1974), p. 20; on Andalusian garden poetry, see Dickie, “The Hispano-Arabic Garden”; Marçais, p. 238;Google Scholar and Pérès, H., La poésie andalouse en arabe classique au Xle siècle, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1954), pp. 161–201.Google Scholar The treatment of nature by Arabic poets has been discussed by Grunebaum, G. E. von, “The Response to Nature in Arabic Poetry,” JNES, 4 (1945), 137–51, but his thesis statement (based on a comparison of Arabic poetry up to about A.D. 1000 with Western poetry since the Renaissance, a treatment that creates serious methodological difficulties) that “on the whole, nature means considerably less to the Arab than to the occidental artist, both as source and as object of his inspiration” (p. 137; my emphasis) is open to considerable question. Similar problems arise in Ritter's treatment both of Arabic imagery and of that of Nezāmī, where his analysis is largely conditioned by his use of Goethe's verse as a standard of comparison.Google Scholar

²⁴ See the study by de Fouchécour, especially p. 12. A partial exception seems to be the “mythopoetic” narratives of Manūchehrī; cf. Hanaway, pp. 58–59, and Clinton, pp. 112–23. The tendency towards “analogical” imagery is also visible in the use of descriptions of nature to suggest the poet's state or situation (e.g., Manūchehrī's journey across the icy desert evokes his desolation at the loss of his patron;Google Scholarcf. Dīvān, edited by Dabīr-Siyāqī, M., 2nd ed., Tehran, 1338/1959, pp. 53ff.). The evolution of this type of imagery requires extensive further study.Google Scholar

²⁵ Gorgānī, Fakhr al-Dīn, Vis and Ramin, translated by Morrison, G. (New York, 1972); see especially the use of the garden as a figure for the state (pp. 15, 353); the song of garden and tree in which is concealed the story of the two lovers (p. 203); and the “garden of love” in the heart, once fertile and blooming, later afflicted by the winter of separation (p. 286).Google Scholar

²⁶ Quoted by Arberry, A. J., Classical Persian Literature (London, 1958), pp. 107–9; he does not indicate the original source. On the importance of nature imagery for the Persian mystics, see Schimmel, “The Celestial Garden,” passim, and Mystical Dimensions, pp. 295–309.Google Scholar

²⁷ The metaphorical mode can be illustrated by a typical passage from Baqlī's, Rūzbehān'Abhar al 'Āsheqīn (edited by Corbin, Henry and Mo'īn, Mohammad, Tehran, 1337/1959, pp. 111–12): “When the spring of hope appears, the winter of fear flees. The sun of love reaches the station of Aries in the heart; the world of reason and wisdom becomes filled with the blossoms of hope's New Year; the nightingales whose tongues had been cut by the shears of fear sing of Unity on the branches of the rose-tree of love; the soul's airs become perfumed by the influence of hope.” Sanā'ī in the Hadīqat al-Haqīqa employs metaphorical description and parable primarily as tropes; cf., for example, the chapter entitled “On the Description of Spring and on Similitudes” (Andar Sefat-e Rabī' o Tashbīhāt Gūyad) or the parable of the dialogue with the World SoulGoogle Scholar(Nafs-e Koll), Hadīqat al-Haqīqa, edited by Razavī, M. T. Modarres (Tehran, 1329/1940) pp. 400–2, 345–50.Google Scholar

²⁸ In his analysis of Nezāmī's imagery Ritter, although mentioning instances of concrete visual imagery being used to symbolize internal or spiritual (seelische) states, stresses its visual, “decorative” and metaphorical qualities (cf. especially pp. 7–8, 29–44, 70–73, and passim). In my opinion Nezāmī's imagery, while iconographic and metaphorical, is less decorative than emblematic; in other words, it is based on the belief (in Vinaver's words) “that the universe formed an ordered structure of such a kind that the pattern of the whole was reproduced in the pattern of the parts, and that inferences from one category of phenomena to the other were therefore valid methods of approach for the understanding of either” (p. 100). Correspondences between imagery and mood are not based on romantic empathy but on analogy; similarly, the relationships between things are not products of fantasy but perceived as inhering in the objects themselves. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the cosmic symbolism of the Haft Paykar; but it is also the basis of the analogical symbolism of both Rūmī and Hāfez. Cf. also Chenu, pp. 5–48, 99ff.Google Scholar

²⁹ On the allegorical progress, see Fletcher, pp. 147–57.Google Scholar

³⁰ The Haft Paikar (The Seven Beauties), translated by Wilson, C. E., Vol. 1 (London, 1924), p. 125 (hereinafter referred to as Wilson); page references in the text are to this translation, which I have used throughout unless otherwise noted (despite its often pedantic language), amending where necessary;Google ScholarHaft Paykar, edited by Dastgerdī, Vahīd, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1955), p. 159 (hereinafter designated Haft Paykar): Eram ārām-e del nehādesh nām/khāndeh mīnūsh charkh-e mīnū fām. The garden's nomenclature seems to arise as much from the wordplay as from actual identification with the Garden of Eram; moreover, the name ārām-e del evokes the idea of the virtue of qenā'at that is a central value in the episode. On the importance of punning and wordplay in allegory,Google Scholar see Quilligan, M., The Language of Allegory (Ithaca, 1979), pp. 40–42 and passim.Google Scholar

³¹ Nezāmī's use of allegorical names (whether of places or persons) is a significant feature of his work; on the “magic of names” in allegory cf. Fletcher, p. 161, and Quilligan, pp. 163–66; see also Chenu, p. 107, on the symbolic importance of names.Google Scholar

³² Wilson (p. 143) translates a variant of the verse that appears in the editions of Dastgerdī (see Haft Paykar, p. 180, n. 6)Google Scholar and of Ritter, H. and Rypka, J. (Heft Peiker, ein romantisches Epos, Prague, Orient´lní Ústav, 1934, p. 32 1. 510). I have preferred the variant as consistent with the light/dark symbolism of the episode.Google Scholar

³³ Dastgerdī (Haft Paykar, p. 180, n. 6) observes that the king's downfall was caused by his “immature and inordinate desire” or concupiscence (ārzū-ye khām-e ziyādeh-talabī); and indeed, the alternation between tales that represent actions motivated by the concupiscent (I, III, V, VII) and those that speak of the irascible faculties (II, IV, VI) is an important structural principle of this portion of the work. For a discussion of these faculties,Google Scholar see Tūsī, Nasir al-Dīn, The Nasirean Ethics, translated by Wickens, G. M. (London, 1964), pp. 42–43; for similar patterns in Western literature, cf. Murrin, pp. 60–74;Google ScholarGallais, Pierre, Perceval et l'initiation (Paris, 1972), pp. 122–27. On contentment.Google Scholar see Nasirean Ethics, p. 83; it is one of the 12 virtues subsumed under continence ('effat), all of which have relevance with respect to this tale. One should be careful, however, of giving this or any of the other tales an overly simplistic interpretation. Ambivalence is a basic element of Nezāmī's allegory; as Fletcher observes, “The prohibitions that are discovered by the hero of the ethical fable are not so much rational laws of a conditional sort; they are absolute imperatives. The heart of moralizing actions becomes temptation” (p. 225; cf. pp. 224 ff.). The principle of the ambivalent nature of human experience, symbolized through the motif of appearance vs. reality, informs the entire Hair Paykar.Google Scholar

³⁴ Glossed by the poet as an emblem of the “sky,” i.e., the world; cf. Haft Paykar, p. 244, n. 1, where the editor comments that this is an “allusion to the moral (natījeh) of the fable,” and interprets the anatomical components of this emblematic dragon. The Manichaean conception of hell as a waterless desert inhabited by fiends is strongly evoked in this segment; cf., for example, Boyce, pp. 87–91.Google Scholar

³⁵ Cf. Haft Paykar, p. 253, where the second verse is more ambiguous than the translation (the “heart's blood” may refer to Māhān's sufferings in his journey to the garden); in the third, the flowers “confess” (e'terāf) to the gardener's ownership of all. A possible source for this episode is Sanā'ī's discourse with the World Soul, represented as a hermit, mentioned above (note 27); for an interesting Western parallel, see the description of the realm and palace of Nature in Bernard Sylvester's De Mundi Universirate, discussed by Giamatti, pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

³⁶ Dastgerdī (Haft Paykar, p. 262, n. 2) glosses this and the following line as a warning against attachment to this world. Māhān was originally led astray through drunkenness, symbolic of lack of control. It seems more plausible, however, to interpret the episode as an allegory warning against exclusive reliance on the evidence of the senses, without the controls provided by reason (personified by the gardener whose advice Māhān fails to heed) and right guidance (in the person of Khezr). The transformation of the beautiful lady into an 'lfrīt recalls the Zoroastrian conception of the daēnā (cf. note 16 above) that greets the soul of the deceased after death: if he has been righteous, his daēnā takes the form of a beautiful maiden, but if he has done evil, it is embodied in an ugly hag.Google ScholarCf. Molè, M., “Le jugement des morts dans l'Iran pré-Islamique,” Sources Orientales, IV: Le jugement des morts (Paris, 1961), pp. 143–75. The image of the world as an ugly crone with many bridegrooms is commonplace in Islamic literature and suggests an influence of this tradition.Google Scholar

³⁷ On right guidance (another of the virtues of continence), see Nasirean Ethics, p. 83. Ritter's comment on the poet's comparison of Māhān to a thirsting man finding water (“As soon as Māhān heard the words of Khizr, … a thirsty man, he saw the Font of Life,” p. 212)—”Surely plain water would have been enough” (p. 28), and the implication that this is a forced correspondence established to “fit the mood” of the scene—seems to miss the point of the episode; the motif of the Water of Life, moreover, recurs throughout the poem in various context (as in the conclusion of the final tale, and the description of Bahrām's royal garden in spring).Google Scholar

³⁸ Dastgerdī (Haft Paykar, p. 267, n. 1) interprets this symbolism as alluding to acquiring immunity to the world's afflictions by taking on its color (hamrangī-ye rūzegār). On the synecdochic relationship of microcosm to macrocosm symbolized by dress, cf. Fletcher, pp. 110–20.Google Scholar

³⁹ It is significant that this last princess is Iranian (early in the poem Nezāmī praises Iran as the “heart of the world” p. 21); the pearl is associated with divine love and knowledge acquired through spiritual self-purification, and with the Prophet (cf. Koran 21:107); a slight alteration in voweling in this already symbolic name (leaving its orthography unchanged) produces dorostī, “truth.” On figurative uses of the pearl in the Persian tradition, seeGoogle ScholarMokri, M., “Le symbole de la perle dans le folklore persan et chez les kurdes fidèles de vérité (Ahl-e haqq),” JA, 248 (1960), 463–81.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ I use the term “comedy” in its sense cia mode in which the action depicted is grounded in reality and concludes in a positive fashion (generally with a wedding), as opposed to the tragic mode in which the action is typically grounded in unreality and concludes negatively (generally with a death); either may be employed in romance. Cf. Fletcher, pp. 175–76;Google ScholarFrye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1971), pp. 33ff.;Google ScholarRypka, J., “Les sept princesses de Nezhami,” in L'āme de l'Iran, edited by Grousset, R. (Paris, 1951), pp. 124–25.Google Scholar

⁴¹ The principles of kingship presented in the Haft Paykar resemble remarkably those outlined in the contemporary prose mirror, the Bahr al-Favā'ed, described by Lambton, A. K. S., “Islamic Mirrors for Princes,” Quaderno dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 160 (1971), 426–36, in particular the distinction between kingship by law (pādeshāhī be-shart-e shar') and by desire (be-khāst-e tab' o movāfaqat-e nafs);Google Scholar cf. Lambton, 426; Bahr al-Favā'ed, edited by Dānesh-Pazhūh, M. T. (Tehran, 1966), p. 118.Google Scholar This distinction–also phrased as between “force” and “law” (cf. Nasirean Ethics. pp. 227–29)—is well known in mirror literature both East and West; it may also be described as material versus spiritual rule, the first symbolized in the Haft Paykar by Bahrām's man-made winter garden, the second by his pleasance in spring.

⁴² This does not represent—as Ritter has it (although vague on the point; cf. pp. 27, 50–51)—a “defeat” of astrological by religious thought; Nezāmī employs astral symbolism to represent natural law (as seen also, for example, in the cycle of the seasons within which the tales are framed), which is not in conflict with divine law but a proof of it. Bahrām's progress constitutes an evolution in which lower stages in the hierarchy of cosmic order lead upwards to higher. The highest of these, for Bahrām, is reached when, with his symbolic wedding of Justice, he combines in his person the offices of both king and priest—a development that sheds light on his final disappearance into the cave, with its marked associations with the imām ghā'ib and his precursor, the Zoroastrian SaoshyantGoogle Scholar (cf. Duchesne-Guillemin, J., La religion de l'Iran ancien, Paris, 1962, pp. 261–64, 343–54;Google ScholarCorbin, pp. 282–98). Ritter's comment on the “dreadful senselessness” of this occurrence (p. 68) thus seems misplaced. On the hierarchy of the natural order. cf. Nasirean Ethics, pp. 43 ff.; Chenu, pp. 23 ff., 115.Google Scholar

⁴³ In his prologue Nezāmī associates himself specifically with four famed advisors to princes: Aristotle, Bozorgmehr, Bārbad, and Nezām al-Molk (p. 22).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ritter discusses the analogical aspect of Nezāmī's imagery only in connection with what he calls “imagistic aphorisms” (pp. 70–73), but I find it to be the underlying principle of his imagery in general.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 267–72, 289–91, and Triumphal Sun, pp. 225–26;Google ScholarMeyerovitch, Eva, Mystique et poésie en Islam (Brussels, 1972), pp. 165 ff.;Google ScholarRūmī, , Discourses of Rūmī translated by Arberry, A. J. (London, 1961), p. 238 (all references to the Discourses are to Arberry's translation). Rūmī's views on “comparison” recall the medieval belief in the “dissimilar similitudes” of the cosmic hierarchy (a view originating in the work of pseudo-Dionysius) and the consequent tendency to anagogical symbolism, especially in mystical writings; cf. Chenu, pp. 123–24.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Rūmī quotes Koran 7:139: “And when his Lord revealed Him to the mountain He made it crumble into dust.”Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Kulliyāt-e Shams, edited by Forūzānfar, Badī' al-Zamān, 8 vols. (Tehran, 1957–1966); all citations are from this edition (designated as F). Translations not otherwise indicated are my own.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Cf. Discourses, p. 104 and also p. 33.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 318–20, and especially Triumphal Sun, which discusses Rūmī's imagery in detail.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Cf. Meyerovitch, pp. 192 ff.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Although there is evidence to suggest that personification was an important device in Avestan religious literature at least, its usage (perhaps due to linguistic changes, and chiefly to loss of gender) does not seem to have persisted in New Persian; for an example, see the discussion of the Art Yasht (Yasht 17, in which Art “Fortune” is personified as female) inGoogle ScholarBailey, H. W., Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books (Oxford, 1943), pp. 4 ff. The chief example of lengthy personification allegory in Persian is 'Attār's Manteq al-Tayr (which finds a source in Sanā'ī's qasīda depicting the birds praising God). In Western allegorical literature, personification (even in the context of the animal fable) generally involves agents intended to represent abstractions, or topical allusion; cf. Fletcher, app. 26–35.Google Scholar

⁵² Discourses, p. 144; cf. pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

⁵³ Mystical Poems of Rūmī, translated by Arberry, A. J. (Chicago, 1968), #141 (= F 1121).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Cf. Rehder, R. M., “The Style of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī,” in The Scholar and the Saint, p. 276. Schimmel seems to insist on a “realistic” quality in Rūmī's nature imagery when she states, for example, that “Only those who have spent some days in May in the Konya plain can fully understand the truthfulness of Rūmī's imagery” (Triumphal Sun, p. 83; cf. “A Spring Day,” p. 255). In fact, the personified flora of Rūmī's gardens are as near abstractions as can be; the “truthfulness” of this imagery arises from its correspondence not to physical reality, but to spiritual veritude.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 231; cf. Discourses, pp. 20–21, and F 122: Dīdam rokh-e khūb-e golshanī-rā/ān cheshm o cherāgh-e rowshanī-rā, “I saw the beautiful face of a rose-garden, / that ‘darling' of brilliant light”; also F 56.

⁵⁶ Cf. Quilligan, pp. 25–26, 40–41; Fletcher, p. 171, alludes to the “microcosmic character” of much allegorical imagery, where each word must contain within itself the entire concept.

⁵⁷ Cf. Mystical Poems, p. 169, n. 6:16, and Koran 5:114–15. For the Sufis the “greater holy war” (al-jihād al-akbar) was that against the nafs ammāra, the base aspect of the soul; cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, p. 112.

⁵⁸ Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 89; Rūmī employs primarily the type of “emblematic” personification described by Fletcher, pp. 25–26, and 30–34.

⁵⁹ Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 217–22, and notes; cf. F 2849.

⁶⁰ Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 86; cf. F 589.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Cf. Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 75–82, for imagery of water.

⁶² Cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 27, 298–99, Triumphal Sun, pp. 90–94.

⁶³ Cf. Schimmel, “A Spring Day,” pp. 256–59.

⁶⁴ Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, pp. 260–61.

⁶⁵ Cf. Schimmel, Triumphal Sun, p. 88, and F 968.

⁶⁶ Mystical Poems, #69.

⁶⁷ Chenu, p. 85. Rūmī's symbolic imagery is anagogical in that objects (created beings in general) are seen as valuable for their capacity to provide knowledge of the unseen Reality behind them; the “upwards reference of things” in the cosmic hierarchy leads ultimately to knowledge of their Creator (cf. Chenu, pp. 113–28). For many general parallels with Rūmī's view of creation as the mirror of its creator (and a probable source), see, for example, al-'Arabī, Ibn, The Bezels of Wisdom, translated by Austin, R. W. J. (New York, 1980), passim; he observes, for example (p. 73): “The truth is that Reality is manifest in every created being and in every concept, while He is [at the same time] hidden from all understanding, except for one who holds that the Cosmos is His form and His identity.”Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Rehder, p. 282; cf. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, pp. 288, 315–16.

⁶⁹ Bolbol ze shākh-e sarv be-golbāng-e pahlavī/mikhānd dush dars-e maqāmāl-e ma'navī. In my reading I prefer the order of lines in the edition of Pezhmān, H. (Tehran, 1939, #468) to that of QG.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Cf. Sūdī, IV, 2595–96.

⁷¹ The poetic use of the terms ma'nā, ma 'navī suggests something similar to the signficatio or sen referred to by medieval European poets as the “deeper meaning” underlying the surface of the poem or its story, which the poet attempts to reveal in treating his (essentially traditional) material. Cf. Vinaver, pp. 15ff.

⁷² Cf. Lescot, R., “Essai d'une chronologie de l'oeuvre de Hafiz,” BEO (Damas), 10 (1944), 59–61;Google ScholarRypka, J., History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht, 1968), pp. 266–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷³ The poem can be schematically represented as an example of ring composition (a type of structure found with soe frequency in Hāfez) analyzable in the following terms (based on the reading of Pezhmān; cf. note 69 above): A (line 1), Lesson (sung by nightingale); B (lines 2–3), Love (general and implicit: love poems in courtly garden); C (line 4), Exemplum and warning; C' (line 5) Sententia in support of line 4 (both linked with court); B' (lines 6–7), Love (specific and explicit: poet/lover “destroyed” by beloved); A' (line 8), Lesson (stated by gardener); X (line 9), Cap (“distancing” of poet from poem).

⁷⁴ Cf. de Fouchécour, p. 176; Wilber, pp. 24–25.

⁷⁵ Cf., for example, Ghazzālī's Book of Counsel for Kings (Nasīhat al-Mulūk), translated by Bagley, F. R. C. (London, 1964), pp. 53–54, 74.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Fletcher, p. 71; cf. his discussion (p. 85 ff.) of “teleologically controlled tropes,” in which “the whole may determine the sense of the parts, and the parts be governed by the intention of the whole,” exemplified by synecdoche, which “would always call to the reader's mind some larger organization of symbols to which system it bore an integral relationship.” Cf. also Tuve, R., Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery (Chicago, 1972), pp. 105–9.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Sobhdam morgh-e chaman be-gol-e now-khāsteh goft/nāz kam kon keh dar-īn bāgh basī chon to shekoft. Cf. Sūdī, II, 510–12.

⁷⁸ Ghazzālī, p. 74.

⁷⁹ Cf. QG 379, 380. For Rūmī the gardener is God, who knows the hidden nature of the seed as of the human soul; cf. F. 3048, and Discourses, p. 112. Koran 27:60–61 refers to God as He who sends rain down to earth and makes gardens and trees grow-a view that informs Rūmī's garden imagery but is less obvious in that of Hāfez (although the dehqān of QG 486, creator of the garden and progenitor of a “son” to whom he imparts advice, might conceivably be taken as implying God, I think Hāfez here is using the authority of ancient tradition to reinforce the Islamic authority already suggested by the reference to Moses and the Burning Bush, towhīd, etc.).

⁸⁰ Cf. Sūdī, III, 1968; see also de Fouchécour, pp. 58–60, who points out that in the early qasīda the cypress, though a metaphor for the beloved, was not employed to designate the prince.

⁸¹ Hāfet and Nezāmī both (like many of their contemporaries) find sublimation of man's baser impulses and his consequent fulfillment to rest not on asceticism but on the principle of attraction upward through the hierarchy of cosmic correspondences, according to which each level of creation finds its ultimate perfection; cf. Chenu, pp. 24–25; Nasirean Ethics, pp. 51ff.

⁸² In his study on Manūchehrī, Clinton remarks on the similarity of the figure of the poet as lover to that of the poet as eulogizer, but adds that this resemblance “is one to which no poet of Manūchihrr's day ever alluded. To have done so might have been considered an extraordinary impertinence and a punishable presumption” (p. 122). But as he himself continues (p. 123), “an overt delineation of the relationship was unnecessary”: it was clearly perceived, not merely because of its existence in reality, but even more as a result of the analogical habit of thought that was beginning, in ManUchehri's time, to find increasing literary expression.

⁸³ Manzalaoui, M., ‘The pseudo-Aristotelian Kitāb Sirr al-Asrār: Facts and Problems,” Oriens, 23–24 (1974), 160.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Chenu, p. 6.

⁸⁵ Quoted by MacCaffrey, I. G., Spenser's Allegory (Princeton, 1976), p. 33.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Chenu, p. 33.