Abstract
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 thanMawlānā 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.
In Part I, we noticed how the opening with a declaration of the seeker’s departure from the ephemeral realm (dīr-i fānī) toward the station of permanence (baqāʾ), the poem immediately presented the wayfarer upon the active path of realization—marked by certainty (yaqīn). In this part of the translation and the explanations show how 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.
This installment begins with the second couplet and completes the ghazal.
