time

A kind old man in Baghdad
Gave his daughter to a cobbler.
The cruel little man so bit her
That blood flowed from the daughter’s lips.
Next morning the father saw her thus
And going to the bridegroom asked him:
‘O mean wretch, what teeth are these?
Chewest thou thus her lips? They are not leather.
I do not say these words in jest,
Leave joking off and enjoy her seriously.
If ill humour becomes fixed in a nature
It will not leave it till the time of death.’

A murid said to his pir: ‘What am I to do? I am troubled by the people, many of whom pay me visits. By their coming and going they encroach upon my precious time.’ He replied: ‘Lend something to every one of them who is poor and ask something from every one who is rich and they will come round thee no more.’

If a mendicant were the leader of the army of Islam,
The infidels would for fear of his importunity run as far as China.

A padshah asked a hermit: ‘How spendest thou thy precious time?’ He replied: ‘I am all night engaged in prayer, during the morning in supplications and the rest of the day in restricting my expenses.’ Then the king ordered a sufficient allowance to be allotted to him so as to relieve him of the cares of his family.

O thou who art encumbered with a family,
Think no more of ever enjoying freedom.
Cares for children, raiment and food
Restrain thee from the heavenly kingdom.

Having become tired of my friends in Damascus, I went into the desert of Jerusalem and associated with animals till the time when I became a prisoner of the Franks, who put me to work with infidels in digging the earth of a moat in Tarapolis, when one of the chiefs of Aleppo, with whom I had formerly been acquainted, recognized me and said: ‘What state is this?’ I recited:

‘I fled from men to mountain and desert
Wishing to attend upon no one but God.
Imagine what my state at present is

A man had a friend, who held the office of devan to the padshah, but whom he had not seen for a long time; and, a man having asked him for the reason, he replied: "I do not want to see him." A dependent however of the devan, who also happened to be present, queried: "What fault has he committed that thou art unwilling to meet him?" He replied: "There is no fault in the matter but a friend who is a devan may be seen when he is removed from office."

Whilst in greatness and in the turmoil of busines

One of the devotees of Mount Lebanon, whose piety was famed in the Arab country and his miracles well known, entered the cathedral mosque of Damascus and was performing his purificatory ablution on the edge

With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
As often before, the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
In the inspired improvisation of love!
But to put back of us as a canticle ended
The rapt enchantment of the flesh,
In which our souls swooned, down, down,
Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves --

It is narrated that an oppressor of the people, a soldier, hit the head of a pious man with a stone and that the dervish, having no means of taking vengeance, preserved the stone till the time arrived when the king became angry with that soldier, and imprisoned him in a well. Then the dervish made his appearance and dropped the stone upon his head.

I heard a king, who had changed night into day by pleasures, saying in his drunkenness:

"We have in the world no moment more delightful than this,
Because I care neither for good nor for bad nor for anyone."
A naked dervish, who was sleeping outside in the cold, then said:
'O thou like whom in happiness there is no one in the world,
I take it if thou carest not, we also do not care."

One of the kings of Khorasan had a vision in a dream of Sultan
Mahmud, one hundred years after his death. His whole person appeared
to have been dissolved and turned to dust, except his eyes, which were
revolving in their orbits and looking about. All the sages were unable
to give an interpretation, except a dervish who made his salutation
and said: 'He is still looking amazed how his kingdom belongs to
others.'

Many famous men have been buried under ground
Of whose existence on earth not a trace has remained