“It so happened in the dark, that the grammarian slipped into the well, and fell to the bottom. There he set up a wail of entreaty: ‘O my most courteous fellow-traveller, lend thy help to extricate me from this most darksome pit.’
“The jurist at once expressed his most pleasurable willingness to lend him that help, with only one trifling condition—that he should confess himself in error, and consent to suppress the hiatus in the word ‘bi’r.’ The grammarian’s answer was ‘Never.’ So in the well he remained.”
“Now,” said Jelāl, “to apply this to yourselves. Unless you will consent to cast out from your hearts the ‘hiatus’ of indecision and of self-love, you can never hope to escape from the noisome pit of self-worship,—the well of man’s nature and of fleshly lusts. The dungeon of ‘Joseph’s well’ in the human breast is this very ‘self-worship;’ and from it you will not escape, nor will you ever attain to those heavenly regions—‘the spacious land of God’” (Qur’ān iv. 99, xxix. 56, xxxix. 13).
On hearing these pregnant words, the whole assembly of undergraduates uncovered their heads, and with fervent zeal professed themselves his spiritual disciples.
20.
There was a great and good governor (apparently) of Qonya, of the name of Mu’īnu-’d-Dīn, whose title was the Perwāna (moth or fly-wheel, viz., of the far-distant Mogul Emperor, resident at the court of the king). He was a great friend to the dervishes, to the learned, and to Jelāl, whose loving disciple he was.
One day, a company of the dervishes and learned men united in extolling the Perwāna to the skies, in Jelāl’s presence. He assented to all they advanced in that respect, and added: “The Perwāna merits a hundredfold all your eulogiums. But there is another side to the question, which may be exemplified by the following anecdote:—
“A company of pilgrims were once proceeding towards Mekka, when the camel of one of the party fell down in the desert, totally exhausted. The camel could not be got to rise again. Its load was, therefore, transferred to another beast, the fallen brute was abandoned to its fate, and the caravan resumed its journey.
“Ere long the fallen camel was surrounded by a circle of ravenous wild beasts,—wolves, jackals, &c. But none of these ventured to attack him. The members of the caravan became aware of this singularity, and one of them went back to investigate the matter. He found that an amulet had been left suspended on the animal’s neck; and this he removed. When he had retreated to a short distance, the hungry brutes fell upon the poor camel, and soon tore him piecemeal.”
“Now,” said Jelāl, “this world is in an exactly similar category with that poor camel. The learned of the world are the company of pilgrims, and our (Jelāl’s) existence among them is the amulet suspended round the neck of the camel—the world. So long as we remain so suspended, the world will go on, the caravan will proceed. But so soon as the divine mandate shall be spoken: ‘O thou submissive spirit, come thou back to thy Lord, content and approved’ (Qur’ān lxxxix. 27-8), and we be removed from the neck of the world-camel, people will see how it shall fare with the world,—how its inhabitants shall be driven,—what shall become of its sultans, its doctors, its scribes.”