The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
not our silver.” The ney is made of a hollow cylinder of silver that has been
filled with mercury and sealed at the ends and around the edges of the finger
holes.
This instrument is the more famous of the pair; its Persian nickname translates
as “Sliding Facilitator of Madness.”“Sliding” refers to the lack of fixed
notes produced by this ney; as the mercury sloshes through the flute’s body in
response to the heat and pressure of the player’s fingers, it redistributes the
flute’s weight and so changes the pitch and timbre of the sounds it makes.
Ghazi Jaffar Sharaf describes Ferahid giving the ney to Ismail: “Ferahid
presented Ismail, fruit of the noblest tree of the Samanids, with a second
flute, composed of silver, with a moon and a learned inscription inscribed on
the mouthpiece. ‘One may produce more notes with this flute than with any
three others of variant sizes,’ he explained to his commander. ‘But it requires
a fixity of spirit mirrored in a fixity of the player’s fingers.’
“So saying, he covered all of the holes and blew into the mouthpiece,
and the sound indeed quavered and would not settle. Bowing, he presented
the instrument to Ismail, who looked upon it with the beneficence and
gentle good humor for which he is justly remembered. ‘Musician,’ he said,
‘will you grant me your only daughter if I can produce a single note of sustained
clarity?’ Without hesitation Ferahid agreed. ‘Musician,’ Ismail asked,
‘will you grant me your only daughter if I cannot produce a single note of
sustained clarity, and I ask her of you?’ Again the musician agreed without
hesitation. ‘Musician,’ Ismail asked again, ‘have you an only daughter?’ Ferahid
replied that God had granted him but one son. Ismail, Garland of
Bukhara, the head of all the world, placed the flute on the table nearest his
throne and smiled.”
Like its twin, the silver ney represents three metaphors:
1. Silver, being slightly less precious than gold, symbolizes the near
completion of the alchemical process; it represents the endeavor
rather than the triumph.
2. If the sun is the father, the moon is the mother, and as such incarnates
the cool, receptive, pure female principles of the process.
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