Knowledge and Love

From Muḥammad Iqbāl’s Jāvīdnāma, Munājāt (ll. 36-46)

   [Persian, 20th century]

Knowledge resides in the mind; love makes its nest in the vigilant heart. If knowledge does not benefit from love, it is but a theatre of ideas; that spectacle is but magic, like that of Sāmirī;* knowledge without the spirit of holiness is but a sorcerer’s craft. Without the divine light, the sage does not find his way, and dies crushed under the weight of his own imaginations. Without the light of God, life is nothing but suffering, reason is senseless, and religion is but tyranny.

   To this world of mountains and plains, of seas and deserts, we ask for vision, and it answers: tradition. Grant respite to this erring heart, give back the moon the fullness of its glow. Though from my soil discourses ever flower, the language of nostalgia is without end!

   Under this celestial canopy, I feel a stranger; from beyond the sky, say to me again: ‘Verily, I am close to you.’ So that, as do the sun and the moon when they set, may vanish the four directions of space, this north, this midday, that I may break the spell of yesterday and tomorrow, that I may rise beyond the sun, the moon, and the stars.

[my translation]

*Sāmirī is mentioned in the Qur’ān as the man who turned against Moses (Mūsā) and misled people to worship the golden calf: “[The Lord] said, ‘Yet verily, We have tried your people in your absence, and the Sāmirī has led them astray’” (20:85).

Persian text: http://ganjoor.net/iqbal/javidname/sh2/