A literary history of Persia

438 THE StfFf MYSTICISMstudy, especially amongst the Mevlevi (or so-called " Dancing ")Dervishes, who take their name from him, their great"Master"' (Mevla, the Turkish pronunciation of Mawld\ isno doubt due in great measure to the fact that, apart fromhis transcendental rhapsodies, he is "orthodox." And here itmay be added that all dervishes or faqirs (both words meaning" poor," i,e.y religious mendicants who have embraced a life ofvoluntary poverty for God's sake) are professedly more or lessSufis, though many of them are, of course, ignorant fellows,who, notwithstanding their glib talk of "ecstasies," "stations,"and " Annihilation in God," have very little comprehension ofthe real scope and purport of the Suff doctrine.Of this doctrine it is necessary in conclusion to give a briefsketch, premising that in the form in which it is here presentedit is to some extent the product of a later age, and is to befound most fully elaborated in the works of poets like 'Iraqi'and Jamf. in Arabic the poems of 'Umar ibnu'l-Farid andthe voluminous writings of the great mystic of the WestShaykh Muhyiyyu'd-Dfn ibnu'l-'Arabi have not yet receivedthe attention they merit from students of Sufiism who chooseto regardit as essentially and exclusively Persian in its origin,and who consequently confine their attention to its Persianmanifestations.The Sufi system starts from the conception that not onlyTrue Being, but Beauty and Goodness, belong exclusivelytoGod, though they are manifested in a thousandThe Sufi system. . _.. ., TTrGod aione mirrors in the Phenomenal World." God was,really exists. r. .says one or their favourite aphorisms, " and there"was naught beside Him ; to which are sometimes added thewords, " and it is now even as it was then" God, in short, isPure Being, and what is "other than God" (ma siwtfu'llah}only exists in so far as His Being is infused into orit,mirroredin it. He is also Pure Good (Khayr-i-mahd) and AbsoluteBeauty : whence He is often called by the mysticsin theirpseudo-erotic poems, "the Real Beloved," "the Eternal