FOOTNOTES:
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana and Redhouse, James W. (James William), Sir
Source notes
81 It is a common belief in the East that squint-eyed people see double.
82 Needles, or pins, are hidden in bread that is given to a dog or other beast in order to destroy it.
83 The rope worn by monks, like the Brahmin’s sacred thread, is supposed by Muslims to be worn by all Christians.
84 Muhammed.
85 In time of immediate danger during war the “Service of Fear” is enjoined instead of the usual form of worship.
86 In visions.
87 The original word, conversant, like our “Adept” and “Illuminato,” is applied by the mystics to themselves. It is a trace of the old Gnosticism.
88 Being given in Persian, I cannot quote chapter and verse for the original Arabic.
89 Like lunatics, they are supposed to be heedless of all things around them.
90Sleep is Death’s brother is an ancient Arabian proverb.
91 The Seven Sleepers; mentioned in Qur’ān xviii. 8-25.
92 Muhammed’s “Cave-Mate” was Abū-Bekr, who was his sole companion on quitting Mekka at the Emigration or “Flight.” They concealed themselves in a cave; and Muhammed remarked: “God is the third in our little party.” Hence the title of “Cave-Mate,” applied to Abū-Bekr.
93 A species of nightmare in the form of a lascivious dream.
94 Qur’ān xxv. 47.
95 Qur’ān vi. 76.
96 See “Anecdotes,” Chap. iv.
97 See his name as an honorific title in a note to the author’s preface; and in the “Anecdotes,” Chap. vi.
98 Qur’ān ii. 119.
99 “The Lion of God,” so called from his courage and strength. Shīr-Ali, Hayder-Ali, are among the forms of the title.
100 One of the sayings attributed to him and become proverbial.
101 In Persian, empty promises and boastings are also called “wind.” Hence, the poet suggests ablution to cleanse from such;—mental ablution.
102 “Syntheism” is the correct rendering of the “shirk” of Islām. “Polytheism” is very incorrect. Dualists (Magians) and Trinitarians (Christians) are Syntheists, but they are not polytheists in a correct sense.
103 An allusion to the idea that a pearl is a raindrop caught and nourished by an oyster.
104 “The Illiterate Prophet,” or, rather, “the Gentile Prophet,” reputed barbarous and illiterate by the Jews and Christians, is one of Muhammed’s highest titles.
105 The original here uses the simile of a certain “cunning bird,” known also as the “Truth-calling bird,” that hangs by a claw and calls all night: haqq! haqq! (Truth! Truth!).
106 Such is an eastern myth. Poets call the planet Venus the “Harpist of the Spheres.”
107 In Qur’ān ii. 32, God commands the angels to fall down in adoration to Adam, when first created. Iblīs, Satan, alone refused, through pride and envy.
108 In Qur’ān iv. 124, Abraham is called the Chosen Friend of God; and in xxi. 69, the story is mentioned of his being saved from the fire into which he was cast by Nimrod.
109The Fountain of Life, or Water of Life, is imagined to take its rise in a land of darkness beyond the limits of the inhabited earth.
110 In the original I have not found it possible to feel sure where the break should be made from the remonstrance to the poet’s reflections. Much of what precedes seems addressed to God; but Eastern hyperbole is wide.
111 Qur’ān viii. 17. Muhammed cast sand at the foe in two battles, Badr and Hunayn.
112 This account of the Vazīr’s various forged books is an allusion to the various Gospels and Epistles, canonical and spurious, that sprang up in the early Christian Church.
113 The Roman conquest of Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria completely effaced from the Eastern mind all recollection of previous actors on those scenes. Even “Alexander the Great” is to them “Alexander the Roman,” like our Jelālu-’d-Dīn, “Er-Rūmī.“
114 An allusion to the contests of the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, &c., &c.
115 The mystics of Islām call God and the spirit the sense, of which material existences are the outward expression; as we say: ”The letter and the spirit.“ The constant play of the original on these words is lost in the version.
116 An allusion to Qur’ān xviii. 12; not a verbal quotation.
117 A grammatical variant of Qur’ān xxi. 107. Muhammed is meant.
118 An allusion to Qur’ān xlix. 3; not a quotation.
119 In Qur’ān lxi. 6, is the assertion that Jesus, in the Gospel, foretold the advent of Muhammed by the name of Ahmed. This is generally explained as a translation of περικλιτός, misread for παράκλητος in John xiv. 26. The two words have very much the same meaning: much-praised, most laudable, laudatissimus. Muhammed is mentioned by many names, forty, fifty, sixty; some say a thousand.
120 Muhammed gained the name of Trusty, El-Emīn (Al-Amīn), long before he declared himself commissioned to call his countrymen to acknowledge the unity of God, the resurrection, judgment, and future life.