Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE OLD MAN OF AJMER
on the saint’s specialization. Finally, the last and the most forbidden
barrier is the door, which happens to be deep inside the aiwān arch
of the peshtāq, and which serves as an object of ritual veneration.
Pilgrims prostrate themselves beside it in prayerful reverence, they
kiss its threshold and touch the lintel with a hand, here they also
present their offerings to the saint.
It is interesting that particular images of Muslim ghazal correspond
to the symbolism of door and threshold in the practice of the
veneration of saints, where the same terms – dar, āstān and ćaukhaţ
– find expression in the motif of the lover’s (‘āshiq) veneration of and
selfless service to the beloved (ma‘shūq). It is difficult to say when this
motif took shape, but it is to be found quite often in the diwān of the
great Persian poet of the fourteenth century Hafiz Shirazi. Here is
just one example:
Ba h˝ājib-i dar-i khalwatsarā-i khāșș bigū
Fulān zi gūshanashīnān-i khāk-i dargāh-i māst
Tell the door-keeper at the gate of the secluded chamber:
So-and-so is one of those, who sit in the dust of our
threshold.
(Hafiz Shirazi 1994: 35)
In this bait (couplet) there is a semantic series, correlating with the
behaviour of the pilgrim: like the saint or some other object of
veneration, the beloved dwells inside a special world, behind the
doors of the secluded forbidden chamber (khalwatsarā-ikhāșș), and
the lover comes under the category of those many who happen to be
outside, in particular, those who sit in the sacred dust of its threshold
(gūshanashīnān-i khāk-i dargāh). The word gūshanashīnān also
stands for ‘hermits’ and ‘those who have renounced the world’, i.e.
the same Sufis.
From these and many other similar examples it is obvious that here
we come across a fusion of the image of the ma‘shūq’s house with
saint’s dwelling – this is h˝arām, the forbidden inaccessible space,
where entry is prohibited for the ‘āshiq. Communion with and service
of the beloved is possible only at the threshold, on the border of two
worlds, at the entrance to the shrine, exactly where the lover yearns
to bow his head or lie in dust. It is interesting that even at the later
stages of its development Muslim romantic poetry retains in itself
the same traditional, even ritual notion about the veneration and
reverence of the shrine, which is to be found in considerably earlier
inscriptions on tombs. Here we give just a few examples from
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