Review

Reviewed Work(s): Nasir-i Khusraw, Forty Poems from the Divan by Peter Lamborn
Wilson, Gholam Reza Aavani and Nasir-i Khusraw
Review by: Hermann Landolt
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1982), pp.
214-216
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/601183
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 214 Journal of the American Oriental Society 102.1 (1982)

already appeared in the Bollingen series-continues to be
sustained. This in itself is certainly a fortunate sign. Yet even
if, as rumor has it, Corbin's monumental En Islam iranien
(4 vols, Paris: Gallimard, 1971-1972) is to come out soon in
an English translation, it will never be possible to appreciate
fully the depth and scope of the French philosopher's "quest
of the Orient" without direct access to the language in which
it was conceived. In fact, Corbin's bibliography covers some
200 titles of books and articles written over a period of more
than four decades. As he himself put it speaking of a recent
collection of his essays, "they succeed each other in time, yet
they are all contemporary of research which was pursued
following the order of the laws of one and the same perspec-
tive" (Philosophie iranienne et Philosophie compar e, Teh-
ran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1977, p. 9).
Now the "Man of Light" has been, one might say, pre-
cisely the focus of that perspective. The present work in
particular is concerned with recurrent expressions of the
theme of the "heavenly Partner" and the polar symbolism of
"northern Light" in the spiritual universe of Iran, including
Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Hermetism and Sufism. Like
Spiritual Bodiy andl Celestial Earth: From Mazdlean Irtan to
Shi'iie Iran (Princeton, 1977), it ought not to be mistaken
for an attempt to trace the history of ideas. Indeed, history
as such has no meaning for Corbin unless its coherence is
perceived "harmonically" or "vertically" rather than in terms
of "horizontal causality." By the same token, Corbin rejects
not only historicism, but also a phenomenology without
logos, let alone a psychology that would not distinguish
between the subconscious and the supraconscious, or the
forces of Darkness and those of Light. It is basically for this
theological reason that the "heavenly Partner," in particular
Kubra's sha rk/ al-ghajh. cannot be reduced to a neutral and Mohaghegh (Tehran, Danishgah, 1353 A.H.S.,i 1974),
"Doppelganger" (p. 95, an obvious reference to Fritz Meier's could have been an occasion to celebrate that anniversary.
interpretation, cf. Die Favd'ih al-gamdl wa-fa'wa-dih al-kalal However, such was manifestly not the intention of Peter
des Nagm ad-dfn al-Kuhra-, Wiesbaden, 1957). Similarly, the Lamborn Wilson, who believes that the work under review
"northern Light" or Shabistari's "midnight sun," the "black 'is virtually the first book of Ndsir-i Khusraw's poetry to
light" at the apex of the mystic's ascent, must not be
confused with the darkness at the lower end of the scale,
even if some might see here an example of (oinli(ldenia
oppositorum. Perhaps it is Corbin's emphasis on the primary
religious phenomenon of orientation, i.e., orientation along
the "vertical," "polar" dimension, that makes it impossible
for him to accept any form of Zervanite "heresy" cf. (p. 48).
In fact, the only acceptable form of complementarity is that
of "Light upon light" (Qur gin 24:35), not Light and shadow.
Thus, the meaning and end of true mystical experience is an
essentially personal relationship of unus-ambo, not the loss
of individuality in a diffuse collective sum-total.
The English translation seems to have been done some-
what hurriedly. We noticed several inaccuracies that rather
seriously affect the meaning, such as "of the I and the self'
(p. 17) for "de rmoi et de toi." To mix up the second and the
third persons is to confuse the individual heavenly twin of
the Manichean Elect with the great Manvahmed, .spirilus
sanctus of Catharism with spiritus princtipalis, or Sohra-
vardl's "Perfect Nature' with Gabriel-a confusion that
occurs again on p. 34 of the translation, possibly due to the
omission of a line or two. As this difference is crucial to the
whole structure of Corbin's thought, there is really no
excuse for such "simplifications." Other, perhaps less dis-
turbing omissions and misunderstandings are found here
and there, and misspellings of foreign words are a common
feature. On the whole, however, the translation has un-
doubtedly its merits. It may be useful, provided one has a
copy of the French original within reach.
HERMANN LANDOLT
MCGILLI UNIVERSITY
Nasir-i Khusraw, Forty Poems from the Divan. Translated
with introduction and notes by PETER LAMH3ORN WILSON
and GI]OLAM REZA AAVANI. Pp. x + 144. (The Imperial
Iranian Academy of Philosophy Series on Ismaili
Thought, 1). Tehran: IMPERIAL IRANIAN ACADEMY OF
Piiiiosopiiy. 1977. ?5.00.
Coming just about one hundred years after Hermann
Eth6's masterful pioneer studies on Ndsir-i Khusraw and his
poetry, the present translation of forty poems from the
Di-Ian, which covers more than 1600 verses or about one
seventh of the whole book in the recent edition by Minovi
appear in a European (sic) language" (p. 21). "In keeping
with the theory that each age needs its own translations,"
Wilson goes on to say, "most of the poems here are in 'free
verse'." As he rightly points out, "one advantage of this
relative 'freedom' is that meaning need never be sacrificed
for scansion or rhyme" (ibid.). Too bad, then, if it is being
sacrificed for a certain slang appeal! Eth6's metric transla-
tions of the whole Rawshand-T-ndnah (in Z.D.M.G. 33,
1879, 645-665 and 34, 1880, 424-464 and 617-642) and of
several poems from the DTvdn (in Z.D.M.G. 36, 1882, 478-
508 and Gottinger Nachrichten, 1882, 124-152), including
the important qasidah i'tiradfT1ah (appendix to his still useful
Ntisir Bin Khusraus Lehen, Denken unit Dichten, Leiden,
1884) were admittedly not very good German poetry; but
they do give an admirably precise idea of this fascinating

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 Reviews of Books 215

free thinker, moralist and lover of eternal Wisdom in the
form of Isma'llism-a precision which is sadly lacking in
the present work. Of course, our knowledge of Nasir-i
Khusraw's life and works has substantially increased during
the last one hundred years, as can be seen easily from a
glance at Rypka's History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht,
1968, 185 ff.), although we are still far from having reached
a scholarly consensus on major problems of Ndsir's biog-
raphy. There are some allusions to this in Gholam-Reza
Aavani's well-balanced introduction, which is quite useful,
except for the almost unbelievable confusion on p. 11,
between the metric Rawshand'i-na-nah and the prose work
bearing the same title but known also as Shish Fasl-i SaY vidl are not on permanent reduced sale" (p. 76, for nah har
Nd.sir (ed. and transl. by W. Ivanow, Bombay and Cairo,
1949), and except for the superficial account of Ismdcilism
on pp. 14-16.
Both Aavani and Wilson insist on the importance of the
Word, meaning at the same time Logos, Revelation and
Speech or poetic eloquence, as being Ndsir's "principle, his
main concern, his key" (pp. 12, 20). There is probably some
basic truth in this assertion. Indeed, Nasir likes to compare
the poet's "good word" with that of the Prophet, and as a
thinker, his main concern is, especially in his Jdmic al-
hiAmatain, L LAre Rlunissant Les Deux Sagesses (ed. Cor-
bin and Mo'in, Bibliotheque Iranienne Vol. 3, Tehran Paris
1332 A.H.S. 1953), to demonstrate the non-contradiction of
rational and revealed Wisdom and the failure of a pure
rationalism such as Rhazes'. But that does not prevent him
from praising the intellect, the critical inquisitive mind
(which is his own), and from pouring his sarcasms upon
those who would blindly follow the ignorant. To be sure, he
is no Faust, no rebel against the primacy of the Word; but
the Word whose nobility he praises is the jewel of the
rational soul, and not idle talk. Unfortunately, the latter
point seems to have been missed by the two translators, who
manage to twist relevant passages in such a way as to make
eloquence appear more important than it really is. Thus,
when Ndsir promises, speaking about his poetry, that he will Angelic Presence," but which is one of the rare occasions for
"insert into the body of the word, like Intellect itself, a good our Isma'ilI thinker to allude directly to God, the point is
and precious meaning as its soul" (an/ar tan-g sukhan hi-
niihadl-T khiratl 1'ima'ni-;i kh-h u ndtlirah-rd jdn kunam),
this becomes "Poetry, or speech, is like a body for which
(following the example of Wisdom) one must weave from
precious conceits an inner soul" (p. 25). Similarly, where
Nasir wishes to "refresh those words grown hoary" with
meaning (hi-ma dnT), our translators simply omit the "mean-
ing" (p. 74), and when he compares word to warp and
meaning to weft, they prefer it the other way round (p. 75);
reading of i.dfih. The line reads in reality as follows: Ficlat
when he invites the reader to "eat the bread of the shar-lTat
nah hi-qasdl, dmir-T khamr / qawlat nah hi-la/i, ndhi-T sharr,
softened in the milk of my explanation" (haYdn-awhich
could be a reference to his Wa/h-i DIn), this "explanation" is
rendered as "eloquence" (p. 112). Incidentally, Ndsir does
not tell us to "Buy true glory and eternal life, luminous and
beautiful as the light of Divine Law" (p. 49); he only invites
us to "Buy glory and eternal life with the sharTcat, for these
two are valuables (hahd'i), and the sharT cat is the price to
be paid (bhaM)."
The present reviewer has no means of knowing why the
polostick (cawga-n) has to be brought to America as an "old
umbrella" (p. 50-a hockeystick would have done better!)
or indeed as a "moss-grown ruin" (p. 116). We shall not
quarrel about such stylistic flowers as "some gorgeous slut"
(p. 44, for khuii Yik- idilhar) or "Old man" (p. 94, for nasihi,
i.e., Sunnite), or the super-market atmosphere in "and these
sd cat), or the odd admixture of colloquial and scholastic
language in "the hard thing is its hermeneutic sense" (p. 51).
Such milieu confrontation may be an artful device or some-
thing else, depending on your taste. But we do mind if Nasir
is made to say "Why blame man for spouting noise, but not
/ condemn the pickaxe for its 'thwack! thwack!"?" (p. 102),
which sounds like an excuse for "spouting noise," when in
fact he is saying exactly the opposite, namely: "Why is the
crane (kulang, of course not the pickaxe) not blameworthy
for uttering meaningless noise, while we are?" Similarly, on
p. 26, the translation "My personal demon will not repent
his viciousness" amounts to an outright distortion of Ndsir's
point, which is to say that "Even though the (great) Demon
did not repent his deed . . . , I can convert my personal
demon ("my private imp") to Islam"-the "personal demon"
being, as becomes clear from a parallel passage in Jdmic
al-hikmnatavn (p. 144), the appetitive (shahiwdnK) and iras-
cible (ghadah-) soul. However, the soul as such is certainly
not "ugly," as our translators would have us believe on
p. 35: it only cannot be embellished by (material) silk bro-
cades, because it is spiritual, hidden, "that sublime noble
substance" (Tn gawhar-i vali-vi sharKt not "noble sublimi-
ties" p. 34!).
Finally, in the poem entitled by the translators "The
not at all that His "proof not even intellect can grasp"
(p. 37). Nasir says, to the contrary: "You, whose essence is
beyond conception, (but) Whom Intellect has positively ac-
cepted," which is a reference to the ithhat-i mahd dealt with
by Nasir in Jdmi' al-hikmatavn p. 254, 3. A few lines later
on, still speaking of God, the translation has "The moralist
can't order you about nor any censor tell you what to say"
- a rather grotesque statement, which is due to a mistaken
which means "It is not with a (specific) purpose that Your
Deed is ordering (enacting) Good; It is not with a (formal)
word that your Speech is prohibiting Evil."

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 216 Journal of the American Oriental Society 102.1 (1982)
The above must suffice to demonstrate that much of the
book under review is, unfortunately, pretentious nonsense.
It has to be done all over again.
HERMANN LANDOLT
MCGILL UNIVERSITY
An Earl/ Javanese Code of Muslim Ethics. Edited and trans-
lated by G. W. J. Drewes. Pp. viii + 104. (Koninklijk
Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde: Bibliotheca
Indonesica, 18). The Hague: MARTINIUS NIJMIOFF. 1978.
Paper, GId. 45.
G. W. J. Drewes has greatly enriched the scholarly world
with his numerous studies of materials relating to the devel-
opment of Islam in the Indonesian archipelago. In his most
recent work, An Earl/ Javanese Code of Muslim Ethics, he
has provided a Romanized transliteration and an English
translation of what may be the earliest known Islamic treatise
in Javanese. The work, an unsigned, undated manuscript pre-
served in the Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea in Ferrara,
contains two independent texts, the first an account ---par-
alleled elsewhere --of a meeting of the early Javanese walis.
The second text, which Drewes considers the more important
of the two, is a code of conduct for new Muslims.
The provenance and dating of both the Ferrara manuscript
and its contents is a matter of conjecture. Drewes is of the
opinion that the manuscript most likely originates from the
region of the north coast of east Java and was written in the
seventeenth century at the latest. However, it is probable that
the contents go back much earlier, and the Ethical Code may
contain passages which stem from the fifteenth centurv, a
period antecedant to that of the great walis--the preachers
who are said to have established Islam on Java and contrib-
uted to the overthrow of Majapahit.
The Ethical Code is a remarkable work and gives, for the
first time, a contemporary account of the tensions, problems.
and controversies which attended the first period of Islam-
ization on Java. The followers of the indigenized Hindu
religion did not lay down their arms without a struggle, and
the new Muslim convert faced what seems to have been a
widespread ridicule directed towards the Qur'an and the
person of Muhammad, towards Muslim beliefs such as the
afterlife and angels, and towards Muslim practices and prohi-
bitions. The hismillahl was used as a drinking cry by adherents
to the native religion.
The author of the code attempted to guide the new convert
who found himself in the midst of a bewildering clash of
values and beliefs. He cited passages from a number of Arabic
works, including Al-Ghazali's Jhld' and works by Ibrahim ,some amendments on points of detail' added before publica-
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ibn Adham and Al-ZandawaisitT. From the works cited,
inferences can be drawn concerning the Islamic "library" in
circulation in sixteenth century Java. The author's easy
familiarity with Arabic and heavily Arabized Javanese may
indicate that he was not Javanese, but himself an Arab.
A collection of 25 rules of conduct ascribed to Sek Ibrahim
leads Drewes to speculate, following Hoesein Djajadiningrat,
that the person referred to is Malik Ibrahim (d. 1419),
considered one of the earliest apostles of Java. If this should
prove to be the case, the code would contain materials dating
at least to the first part of the fifteenth century, thus anteceding
the next earliest manuscript by over 150 years.
However, from the evidence offered by Drewes, I feel that
there is still insufficient reason to date the Ethical Code so
early. The identification of Sek Ibrahim with the semi-mythical
Malik Ibrahim (Drewes mentions the popular association of
the man with the Muslim woman buried in Leran in 1082)
borders on fanciful speculation. The work certainly does date
from a period of transition from a predominantly Indic-
indigenous environment to an Islamic one, but this process, as
Drewes himself has shown elsewhere, was extremely hetero-
geneous, occurring in different areas at different times and at
different rates. Rather than showing a linear development, the
process exhibited a series of successive starts and setbacks.
The archaic language found in the manuscript- Drewes'
second reason for dating it early- has not yet been determined
to be pre-sixteenth century. It could be the result of individual
or regional peculiarities, or the inexact usage of a non-native
(Arab?) writer of Javanese.
The point is that there is too little evidence to demonstrate
that this code of ethics must be considered the earliest Muslim
writing in Javanese to date. This does not detract from the
intrinsic interest of the work, however, which presents a vivid
account of the hitherto unrecorded transition period of the
Islamization of Java. In making available this popular manual
of moral duties for Muslims, Professor Drewes has performed
a fine service to those who want to learn how Islam was
presented to its earliest adherents on Java.
THLoMAs MICHEL
INSETrTirT FILSAFAT TEOLOGI, YOGYAKARTA
4 Stud; of the Spoken Arabic of Baskinta. By FARIDA
ABu-HAIDAR. Pp. xv + 190, 1 map. (The Royal Asiatic
Society, James G. Forlong Fund, XXVIII) Leiden and
London: E. J. BRILL. 1979. Paper, GId. 56.
This is basically the author's dissertation submitted to the
University of London for the degree of Ph.D. in 1971, with