بخش 74 - رقعهٔ دیگر نوشتن آن غلام پیش شاه چون جواب آن رقعهٔ اوّل نیافت

That evil-thinking one wrote another letter, full of vituperation and clamour and loud complaint.

He said, “I wrote a letter to the king; oh, I wonder if it arrived there and found its way (to him).”

The fair-cheeked (king) read that second one also, and as before he gave him no reply and kept silence.

The king was withholding all favour from him: he (the slave) repeated the letter five times.

“After all,” said the chamberlain, “he is your (Majesty’s) slave: if you write a reply to him, tis fitting.

What diminution of your sovereignty will occur if you cast looks (of favour) on your slave and servant?”

He (the king) said, “This is easy; but he is fool: a foolish man is foul and rejected of God.

Though I pardon his sin and fault, his disease will infect me also.

From (contact with) an itchy person a whole hundred become itchy, especially (in the case of) this loathsome reprobate itch.

May the itch, lack of intelligence, not befall (even) the infidel His (the fool’s) ill-starredness keeps the cloud rainless.

On account of his ill-starredness the cloud sheds no moisture: by his owlishness the city is made a desert.

Because of the itch of those foolish ones the Flood of Noah devastated a whole world (of people) in disgrace.

The Prophet said, ‘Whosoever is foolish, he is our enemy and a ghoul who waylays (the traveller).

Whoso is intelligent, he is (dear to us as) our soul :his breeze and wind is our sweet basil.’

(If) intelligence revile me, I am well-pleased, because it possesses something that has emanated from my emanative activity.

Its revilement is not without use, its hospitality is not without a table;

(But) if the fool put sweetmeat on my lip, I am in a fever from (tasting) his sweetmeat.”

If you are goodly and enlightened, know this for sure, (that) kissing the arse of an ass hath no (delicious) savour.

He (the unsavoury fool) uselessly makes your moustache fetid; your dress is blackened by his kettle without (there being) a table (of food).

Intelligence is the table, not bread and roast-meat: the light of intelligence, O son, is the nutriment for the soul.

Man hath no food but the light: the soul does not obtain nourishment from aught but

that.

Little by little cut (yourself) off from these (material) foods— for these are the nutriment of an ass, nQt that of a free (noble) man— So that you may become capable of (absorbing) the original nutriment and may eat habitually the dainty morsels of the light.

‘Tis (from) the reflexion of that light that this bread has become bread; ‘tis (from) the overflowing of that (rational) soul that this (animal) soul has become soul.

When you eat once of the light you will pour earth over the (material) bread and oven.

Intelligence consists of two intelligences; the former is the acquired one which you learn, like a boy at school,

From book and teacher and reflexion and (committing to) memory, and from concepts, and from excellent and virgin (hitherto unstudied) sciences.

(By this means) your intelligence becomes superior to (that of) others; but through preserving (retaining in your mind) that (knowledge) you are heavily burdened.

You, (occupied) in wandering and going about (in search of knowledge), are a preserving (recording) tablet; the preserved tablet is he that has passed beyond this.

The other intelligence is the gift of God: its fountain is in the midst of the soul.

When the water of (God-given) knowledge gushes from the breast, it does not become fetid or old or yellow (impure);

And if its way of issue (to outside) be stopped, what harm? for it gushes continually from the house (of the heart).

The acquired intelligence is like the conduits which run into a house from the streets:

(If) its (the house’s) water-way is blocked, it is without any supply (of water) Seek the fountain from within yourself!