Diwan-e Shams: Ghazal Number 2430
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī /Ahmad Javaid
 
Annotated Translation with an Introduction
and Notes by Muzaffar Iqbal​

A depiction of Shams of Tabriz as portrayed in a 1500s painting by an unknown Artist, found in a page Majālis-e ʿUshshāq of Kamāl ud-Dīn Gâzurgâhî, which is a Persian biographical dictionary of over 70 poets, Sufis, and members of the Turkic ruling elite. Currently at Bibliothèque nationale de France, Accession number. Sup. Pers. 1150 fol.101v

Introduction

The Persian ghazal has long served as a luminous vessel for articulating the metaphysical experiences of Sufis, but no one has employed it with greater mastery and lyrical density than Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273). Among the vast corpus of his Dīwān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī, ghazal number 2430 stands out as a paradigmatic instance of what may be termed a “metaphysical itinerary”—a structured poetic unfolding of the soul’s journey from finitude to infinity, from the veils of form to the presence of Essence.

Opening with a declaration of the seeker’s departure from the ephemeral realm (der-i fānī) toward the station of permanence (baqāʾ), the poem immediately situates the wayfarer not within the landscape of mere longing or abstraction, but upon the active path of realization—marked by certainty (yaqīn), not conjecture. Across its thirteen couplets, the poem charts a layered ascent that traverses the physical, psychic, cosmic, and noetic planes. In doing so, it synthesizes and presents central themes of Islamic cosmology, using Qurʾānic allusions, and the ontology of insān-e kāmil—the Perfected Human.

Each couplet advances the transformation of the self. The soul is first shown to transcend bodily limitations and lower faculties--nafs, ʿaql, and rūḥ-i ḥaywānī—until it is affirmed as jān-i jāni, the “soul of the soul,” a metaphysical rank connoting both proximity to the Divine and inner plenitude. The traveler is then portrayed as ascending through the celestial spheres (aflāk), adorned with the signs of divine beauty (jamāl), while moving toward bī-nishānī—the realm of unmarkedness and unknowability, echoing Qurʾānic worldview of soul’s ascent.

The ghazal then turns to the interior states of the seeker: absorption in divine sawdā (rapturous preoccupation), loss of ego (bī-khudī), and intoxication with the ṣaḥbā of divine proximity. Rūmī anchors these states in an epistemology of divine instruction, invokes the madrasah of the Divine Names, through which the seeker is initiated not merely into theological knowledge but into the very truths that underlie creation.

A striking shift occurs as Rūmī places this singular soul in relation to the entire cosmos. In a night where all the world’s caravans rise toward the heavens, the solitary seeker is himself described as “a hundred caravans.” The metaphysical implication is clear: the human being who realizes his divine capacity not only surpasses creation but enfolds it within his own interior reality.

The ghazal culminates with paradoxes that deepen the mystery: the sun of the unseen concealed in a particle, majesty hidden in servitude, and the traveler constructing new dimensions beyond time and space. In its final address, Rūmī urges the wayfarer to cast off all external forms and unveil the self’s luminous reality, a fusion of the hidden and manifest, servant and sovereign, echoing the Qurʾānic anthropology of vicegerency.

This poem thus presents not merely a mystical vision but a complete ontological anthropology—an articulation of what it means to be human in relation to God. Through a masterful interplay of metaphysical exposition and poetic form, Rūmī performs the very transformation he describes. In what follows, we present the full Persian text, poetic rendering, and an English translation of the commentary on this remarkable ghazal by Ahmad Javaid. Javaid’s deep insights situate the ghazal within its classical and doctrinal contexts, and offers a close reading of its metaphysical architecture. Notes on his commentary have been added by the translator.

The commentary was delivered in a series of lectures in Lahore, Pakistan, under the general title of  “A study of select ghazals of Rūmī”. His commentary on ghazal number 2430 spans lecture numbers 10-15. This installment covers the first couplet.

The first couplet of ghazal 2430 of Dīwān-e Shams offers a rigorous philosophical and metaphysical exposition of Rūmī’s poetics. The couplet, “O you who ride the steed of abidingness, from this perishing tavern you depart / Clear-eyed and wise upon the path—you go where you already know the chart,” becomes a portal into the ontology of the perfected human being (insān-e kāmil) as envisioned within the classical Sufi tradition. Through a nuanced reading, Ahmad Javaid unlocks this verse as a concentrated articulation of the self in motion—cosmically, spiritually, and ontologically.

The commentary opens by situating the traveler not as a speculative thinker or philosophical adventurer, but as one who has already attained the necessary interior clarity and orientation for the path. The journey, as Rūmī conceives it, is not from ignorance to knowledge, nor from doubt to belief, but rather from the known to the known--maʿlūm ilā maʿlūm—a movement grounded in direct cognition (ʿilm) and certitude (yaqīn). The metaphor of riding the steed of baqāʾ (abidingness) evokes the non-temporal register of this ascent, aligning the traveler with the realm of permanence rather than transience.

Javaid interprets asp-e baqāʾ not as a poetic flourish but as a metaphysical marker, recalling the burāq of the Prophet Muḥammad’s miʿrāj. The addressee of the verse—though temporally situated—is shown to be operating with resources that originate beyond time and space. His motion, paradoxically, does not arise within temporality but rather gives rise to time and space through his spiritually charged directionality. The deyr-e fānī (perishing tavern) is interpreted as the ontological structure of multiplicity: the temporal world construed as a collapsed sanctuary of illusion. Rūmī’s scorn of this domain is not merely poetic; it is metaphysical, marking the world as a “temple of shirk,” where multiplicity is mistakenly taken as real, and the seeker of unity is called to depart from its veiling apparatus.

A central hermeneutical focus lies in the dual attributes dānā (knowing) and bīnā (seeing). These are not merely epistemic faculties but signify an integration of cognition and spiritual vision. The traveler does not merely perceive the path; he generates its recognition within consciousness. He knows the goal not as an abstraction but as an inner certainty; he sees the road not as a projection but as an ontological disclosure. These faculties culminate in a state wherein subject and object, knower and known, become fused: the traveler becomes the path, the movement, and the destination.

Javaid extends this interpretation by invoking the Sufi metaphysics of fanāʾ and baqāʾ: the self annihilated in the Real (al-Ḥaqq) and reconstituted as its vessel. The commentary draws further attention to Rūmī’s poetics of impersonality and universalism. The “I” in the poem, when it appears, does not represent the historical Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, but the archetype of the human soul—the ḥaqīqat-i insānī. This marks a departure from conventional poetic ego and gestures toward Rūmī’s radical effacement of self in favor of divine expression. Javaid emphasizes that Rūmī’s speech is never less than his insight—unlike ordinary poets who remain beneath the weight of their own words. Rūmī speaks from the summit of both ʿirfān (gnosis) and ʿishq (love), rendering his poetry irreducible to analytical commentary.

Finally, the commentary posits that the first couplet, and by extension the entire ghazal, culminates in naʿt—a devotional praise of the Prophet Muḥammad, upon him blessings and peace. Though unnamed, the figure addressed is shown to embody the complete realization of the human ideal: one who rides the burāq of baqāʾ, departs from the world of perishability, and moves toward the Real with knowledge that transcends even selfhood. In this reading, the ghazal is not merely mystical autobiography or philosophical meditation—it is a veiled ode to the Prophet, whose spiritual journey (the miʿrāj) is the highest model of ontological ascent.
Thus, the first couplet of ghazal 2430, in Ahmad Javaid’s masterly exposition, becomes a complete metaphysical diagram: it encapsulates the ontology of multiplicity and unity, the epistemology of vision and knowledge, the paradoxes of motion beyond time, and the inexpressible intimacy of divine encounter. It marks the beginning of a spiritual itinerary that is simultaneously poetic, philosophical, and theological—culminating in the recognition that Rūmī’s verse is itself a form of miʿrāj, a rhythmic ascent toward the unnameable Real.
 
Keywords: Rūmī; Dīwān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī, Ghazal 2430; mystical journey; Persian poetry; soul, intellect, and imagination in Islamic thought; reason and rationality in Islam; poetics of Persian language; Persian-Urdu poetry; Iqbal and Rūmī; Islamic philosophy; Ahmad Javaid; Sufi metaphysics; insān-e kāmil; spiritual journey; fanāʾ; baqāʾ; burāq symbolism; Islamic philosophy; ontology of the self; epistemology of vision; dānā; bīnā; al-Ḥaqq; unity of being; miʿrāj; naʿt; deyr-e fānī; sayr ilā’Llāh; shuʿūr; Islamic cosmology; ontological anthropology; Persian–Sufi poetics; mystical epistemology; theophanic humanism.

Journal of Islamic Sciences, Vol. 17 (Summer-Winter 2024)​

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Ahmad Javaid
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Ahmed Javaid is a Pakistani Islamic theologian, philosopher, and poet. He is the former director of the Iqbal Academy Pakistan.