丿賵 亘蹖鬲蹖 賴丕蹖 亘丕亘丕 胤丕賴乇 賴賲丿丕賳蹖 = The Lament of Baba Tahir, Baba Tahir
Baba Tahir was an 11th-century Persian poet. His poetry is written in Hamedani dialect of Persian language.
A verse translation of the surviving quatrains of Baba Tahir (1000 - 1055?), who was one of the earliest poet-dervishes of Persia.
Baba Tahir's poems are recited to the present day all over Iran accompanied by the setar, the three stringed viol or lute. This style of poetry is known as Pahlaviat and it is very ancient.
The quatrains of Baba Tahir have a more amorous and mystical connotation rather than philosophical.
Many of Baba Tahir's poems are of the do-bayt墨 style, a form of Persian quatrains, which some scholars regard as having affinities with Middle Persian verses.
I am that ocean now in foam and tide; I am that sun, but now in rays abide. I move and burn, and then reverse my course; I shine and glow and then grow low and hide.
I am that sea now gathered in a tear. I am that universe now centered here. I am that book of destiny which seems To form a lonely dot of hope and fear.
I am a rose that grows on hills of love I am a soul that learns the drills of love. I am a heart in agony and joy. From fire and chills and woes and thrills of love.
What if a sword should rob me of my sight, What if a wind? should send my soul to flight, What if a nail were driven through my hands, I still would feel thy presence and thy light.
If I am trapped in flesh and lust - I'm thine And though I doubt your ways, or trust - I'm thine. Whether to Christ I cling or Mazda's Wing* Behind these veils of dreams and dust - I'm thine.
Whether I cling, whether I part- you know. Whether I break or keep my heart - you know. Whether I crown my head or drown my eyes, You know my goal from end to start - you know.
I find my ill in you, my cure in you. I part from you and then endure in you. If knives would cut my tissues each from each, My naked soul is e'er secure in you.
丿賵亘蹖鬲蹖 賴丕蹖 亘丕亘丕 胤丕賴乇 = Do-bayt墨haye Baba Tahir = The Rubaiyat of Baba Tahir Oryan of Hamadan, Baba Tahir
Baba Tahir or Baba Taher Oryan Hamadani (Born: 990 AD, Hamedan, Died: 1065 AD, Hamedan) was an 11th-century Iranian poet. His poetry is written in the Hamadani dialect of the Persian language.
According to L. P. Elwell-Sutton he probably wrote in the local dialect, adding: Most traditional sources call it loosely Luri, while the name commonly applied from an early date to verses of this kind, Fahlaviyat, presumably implies that they were thought to be in a language related to the Middle Iranian dialect Pahlavi.
RUBA'IYAT OF BABA TAHIR Translations, Introduction & Notes by Paul Smith Baba Tahir, or Oryan ('The Naked') of Hamadan... approx. 990-1065, was a great God-intoxicated, or God-mad soul (mast) and possibly a Qutub (Perfect Master) who composed about 120 known ruba'i in a simpler metre than the usual 'hazaj' metre.
His simple, mystical poems that he would sing while wandering naked throughout the land had a profound influence on Sufis and dervishes and other ruba'i composers, especially Abu Sa'id, Ibn Sina and Omar Khayyam.
I have the affectionate buyer, from whom the affectionate market is warm 丿賱蹖 丿蹖乇賲 禺乇蹖丿丕乇 賲丨亘鬲貙 讴夭賵 诏乇賲爻鬲 亘丕夭丕乇 賲丨亘鬲
I sewed a robe on my heart, out of pity and the thread of affection 賱亘丕爻蹖 丿賵禺鬲賲 亘乇 賯丕賲鬲 丿賱貙 夭 倬賵丿 賲丨賳鬲 賵 鬲丕乇 賲丨亘鬲
For someone who went around with nothing on his body save a thin lioncloth, it is entirely understandable that he found grief like an extra garment he needed to cast off. Baba Tahir "Oryan" - The Naked - is an earliest personification of the love-afflicted wandering dervish that would be regularised in the following generations of mystics throughout the Islamicate world. The source of his afflictions is shrouded in mystery, since very little is known of his life except that he lived in the first half of the 11th century, spurned ordinary life, survived on alms and wild fruits, and went around towns and cities chanting his quatrains to great acclaim.
By him who knoweth grief, may grief be told.
Unlike Hindu ascetics who took pride in their complete rejection of the material world and who were revered among ordinary folks for extreme austerity, Baba Tahir was not pleased with his lifestyle, called himself 'a nomad,' 'a fanatic tramp,' and an 'idle scamp' who wanders aimless by day and night, with 'a stone as his pillow' and 'the moon his lamp,' and so paints his self-profile of a wandering dervish in an unfavourable light.
What flame-singed moth鈥檚 as blundering as I? On such a madman who would waste a sigh? Even the ants and serpents have their nests, But I have not a ruin where to lie.
The few quatrains in which he denounces himself as a wastrel and laments on his condition led some historians to believe that he might have been an ordinary working class man who had fallen on hard times. The relative absence of stock Sufi imagery in his poems strengthens the view but the religio-philosophical undertones, and more than that, the force and edge of his voice, which stands quite in contrast to that of a man resigned to bewailing his fate, betrays sharp intellect and a high degree of erudition.
O thou who dost possess no less, no more, Of heavenly knowledge than of tavern-lore, And that is鈥攏othing! Oh, canst thou expect Aught from a world thou never wouldst explore?
If Japanese poets excelled in subtle understatement, their Persianate counterparts, in general, took pride in creating forceful verses with dynamic action and outlandish imagery. It would be a couple of centuries before Persian poetics matured into the highly stylised forms and double and triple-barreled imagery it's known for, but we still get something like this in Baba Tahir's poems:
Out hunting, when a falcon, once I went; Sudden an arrow through my wing was sent. Be warned, O heedless wanderer! by me, Against the height the strongest bows are bent.
The stretched bow about to shoot an arrow through the falcon is no longer just a scene of hunting. It has transformed into an image of a lowly thing bent to its limits to pay obeisance to a high being, even when secretly it tries to harm it. Fantastic!
The object of most quatrains is the proverbial Beloved, whether it is divine (haqeeqi) or earthly (majazi), and most of the quatrains express a yearning for unification with the beloved tempered by the impossibility of such an eventuality.
Thy pictured beauty, Love, ne鈥檈r leaves my heart, Thy downy cheek becomes of me a part, Tightly I鈥檒l close mine eyes, O Love, that so My life, before thine Image, shall depart.
But although he's determined, the simile employed in the following quatrain suggests he's trying in vain.
I鈥檓 a green log fresh cut from off the tree, O heart of stone, thou burnest not for me,鈥� Though who, indeed, expects a stone to burn? But I must smoulder till I kindle thee.
These translations or renderings in Victorian English, published in fin de si猫cle Britain, were the first ever to be attempted. It is a proof of the popularity of Edward FitzGerald's mid-19th C rendition of Omar Khayyam's rubaiyat that many a quatrain poet was translated in a similar style in the decades that followed. I like the translators' approach: they tried to remain true to the literal meaning while clothing it in an idiom acceptable for that age, and one which endeavours to reproduce the originals in a matching scheme of rhyme and metre than simply offer prose versions.
December '16
The burial place of Baba Tahir Oryan in Hamadan, Iran.