Book & Author
Allama I. I. Kazi: Shah Abdul Latif — An Introduction to His Art
By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
Chicago, IL
“One Castle, a hundred thousand doors,
Windows, without number,
Wherever I look, there the beloved confronts me.”
— Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai
Professor Dr Annemarie Schimmel, one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed Islamic scholars, translated this stanza from Shah Jo Risalo, the poetic collection of the great Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. Using Shah Abdul Latif’s format and style she later wrote in one of her books in 1965: “Pakistan. Ein Schloss mit tausend toren (Pakistan. A Castle with thousand doors).”
Dr Schimmel lived in Germany, but her intellectual world was centered in Pakistan, her second home. Indeed, Pakistan for her was a Castle with thousand doors which led to the illuminating poetry of Sufi masters like Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Sachal Sarmast, Rahman Baba, Khushal Khan Khattak, Data Ganj Bakhsh, Baba Farid, Allama Iqbal and other mystical poets. During her visits to Pakistan, she would regularly visit the tomb of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai in Bhit Shah.
Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689/1690 – 21 December 1752), the Sufi saint, is considered the greatest poet of the Sindhi language. As his collection of poetry Shah Jo Risalo gets translated into English and other languages, the global audience gets an opportunity to admire the beauty of his poetry. Shah sahib was born in 1689/690 in Hala Haweli, near Hala/Hyderabad, Sindh. His ancestors had traveled from Herat to Sindh in late 14th century, and their lineage is traced back to the fourth caliph Ali (RA). Shah sahib was a learned man. He used to carry with him three books: Qur’an, Musnavi of Mevlana Rumi and poetry collection of his great grandfather Shah Karim. Today, people affectionately and respectfully, remember Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai with many names: Shah saiN, Shah sahib, , Latif saiN, Sohno Shah Latif, Bhittai, and many others.
Shah sahib believed in the Sufi philosophy of Wandat-ul-Wujud (Unity of Being - God and the Creation are two aspects of one Reality). Shah sahib expressed his poetic messages in oral form, and they were not written down during his lifetime. His poetry was sung and memorized by his followers during the musical sessions (Rag). After Shah sahib’s passing away, his followers compiled his poetry collection in a book form called Shah Jo Risalo, which contains thirty chapters, called Surs. The Risalo (message) of Shah Abdul Latif begins with the praise of Almighty Allah and holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The other themes cover local folk tales and stories of love, sacrifice and courage. Shah sahib connects the traditional folk tales with the divine love.
The Risalo, was translated into German by Dr Ernst Trumpp, a scholar and missionary, in 1866. Elsa Kazi aka Gertrude Loesch [1884-1967, wife (1910-1967) of Allamah I.I. Kazi, affectionately known as Mother Elsa], was the first to translate it into English. In 1940, Dr H T Sorley (1892-1963), an Indian Civil Service (ICS)officer, translated it into English and published it in his book Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit: His Poetry, Life and Times. During the past forty years, the Risalo has been translated into a number of national and international languages.
Commenting on the mesmerizing beauty of Shah sahib’s poetry, prominent lawyer Allah Bukhsh Karim Bukhsh Brohi aka A. K. Brohi had observed: “…Whenever anyone sings a simple kafi [sufi musical narration] from Shah Sahib's poetry he provides for me a sort of aesthetic delight which I do not experience even by listening to the Ninth' Symphony of Beethoven…The Main characteristic of Latif’s poetry to my way of thought is, that it is remarkable record of a God-intoxicated man's longing to rise beyond his level of life in order to meet his maker. Latif is essentially a poet of love and longing. He has sung as nobody that I know of, has sung either before or after him to his longing to respond to [the] call of universal life. He is never weary of emphasizing the need of obeying this call. Nobody has portrayed so effectively as he has the experience of a man of devotion who is in search of God…As the readers of Shah's Risalo know, his poetry is full of quotations in Arabic from the Holy Qur’an, and these have been in-woven and in-wrought as parts of the poetical Sindhi text itself…”
In Shah Abdul Latif: An Introduction to His Art (published by Sindhi Adabi Board, Hyderabad, Pakistan, July,1961) Allama I. I. Kazi sahib had analyzed the message of Shah sahib, and Elsa Kazi had translated selections from Shah Jo Risalo. Imdad Ali Imam Ali Kazi (April 18, 1886 – April 13, 1968), aka Imdad Ali Kazi (I.I. Kazi), a contemporary of Allama Iqbal and Quaid-i-Azam Muhammed Ali Jinnah, was an eminent scholar, philosopher, jurist, and educator. Kazi sahib was the founding father of the University of Sindh, and served as its Vice Chancellor (VC) during the period 1951-58. During his tenure as VC, Kazi sahib invited a number of prominent academicians and intellectuals from leading universities to serve at University of Sindh (UoS), making UoS a very conducive seat of higher learning during the 1950s and 1960s. Kazi sahib and his wife Elsa were prolific writers, they have published a plethora of work in the areas of religion, art, literature, Sufism, education, and history.
Kazi sahib had analyzed the poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai viz a viz chapters dedicated to General criteria, Choice of subject, Viewpoint, Unity in Art, Dimension of Art, Technique, Inspiration, Form and Unity in Latif’s creations, followed by the English translations, by Elsa Kazi, of the selected verses from the Risalo.
In the chapter titled “General Criteria,” Kazi sahib observes: “Our times boast of internationalism, and no wonder either. It was introduced religiously, officially, fourteen hundred years ago. But at heart we all remain at the utmost nationalists. The irony is that [the] Qur’an's religion itself has been transformed into a kind of nationalism. The necessary consequence is that ‘mine and thine’ are still in full flourish. Everyone boasts of his own poets. That would not be bad if he did not run down others to exalt his own. But the true aesthetic insight is still lacking, and beauty is not admired because it is beautiful, but because the object belongs to 'me'… To say it in so many words: Latif put Sindhi to the use that no man had done before him, and no man has dared to claim to have done in two centuries after him…”
In the chapter titled “Choice of subject,” Kazi sahib states: “As far as choice of subject is concerned, our great poet of Sindh is in line with the Qur’an, as have been all the great poets before or after him. He picks up, like Shakespeare, every extant story and legend of his country and gives us the most significant point in it in his poetic form. As to the objects, he picks up anything that falls in his way — be it a dried thorn-bush, a swan, a cloud, or a yogi walking in the mountains. He does not dream of inventing a plot or searching [for] any particular objects that are supposed to be beautiful, to poetize. The formal side of the object does not concern him. It is only 'significance' that inspires him and he expresses it.”
In the chapter titled “Viewpoint,” Kazi sahib writes: “… Here the role is reverted: the subject turns to be the object and the artist himself becomes the subject, experiencing the object that inspires him…Also it comes to this, that the breadth and the depth of view bestow the capacity to integrate, and the more this increases the larger becomes the whole to be experienced at a glance.”
In the chapter titled “Some Verses From ‘Risalo'” Kazi sahib observes: “For the benefit of the reader, having no acquaintance with the language of the poet, and being debarred from having access to the original, we give here a few verses from the Risalo, picked at random without any connection with the episodes they belong to, relying all the time on the fact that the reader is one of those who is able to see from a straw which way the wind blows…We do agree that for an ordinary man 'Form' alone counts, it is necessary for him to hear a tale from beginning to end, or else he understands nothing. It was, therefore, that Rumi undertook to express his ideas and meaning in story-form. Every smallest idea was illustrated and explained, in an embodied form of a story - with `flesh and blood'. In [the] case of our poet, it is exactly the opposite. He likes to pour a Whole river in a small pitcher and believes with the Persian poet that to a wise man hints are more than books, while to a dullard even books will mean nothing. It is in this hope, that we are providing here stray verses from the Risalo, rendered into English by Elsa Kazi. She has tried to retain the metrical form of the poet.”
Asa: Hope
In "Infinitude" I toss,
O 'Guide! no bound perceive mine eyes,
Tortuous beauty of the Loved
has no limit, has no size:
Here intensive Longing lies,
there the loved ones do not care.
Asa: Hope
No one who loaded is with 'Self'
the other side will see:
For God is One and Oneness loves,
so 'spurn duality:
And all thy anxious tears, ‘to be,'
shed at altar of unity.
Asa: Hope
Those very tiny eyes of mine
great favors did to me:
For when to look at donkeys,
I did raise them casually,
They even then refused to see,
ought but Beloved's face.
Asa: Hope
Beloved! hold the 'I' near 'Thee',
All self-concern I've cast from me,
Protector mine! With 'duality'
I wasted far too many days.
Asa: Hope
Every man knows where he is,
know not where I stand:
Guides and books there many are,
and they are close at hand:
But I seek the distant land
where 'yes' and 'no' are not
Asa: Hope
`Yes,' and `no', still within reach
of human 'Idea' are:
But beyond all vision far
is the Beauty that I seek.
Asa: Hope
Whose body is a rosary,
the mind a bead, a harp the heart,
Love's strings are playing there the theme
of 'Unity' in every part:
The nerves do chant: "there's none like thee
the One and only One thou art —"
E'en sleeping, Beauty they impart,
their very sleep their worship is.
Khambhat: Haven
A moonlit night, an open plain,
and so far yet to go:
My camel ! look not back, for you
`t is shame to waver so:
Be steady, resolute, and show-
my loved ones you can reach.
Khambhat: Haven
I must go where my love resides,
to the Beloved speed:
There I will give thee sandal wood
And thou shalt no more feed
On salt-bush coarse, unfit for thee,
or any worthless weed....
O hasten! there is urgent need
to reach while night doth last.
Khambhat: Haven
Arise, and take a forward step
be not an idler base —
The highway to my Love is straight
and has no winding ways:
Self-pity drop —a gallop raise,
to bring us swift and soon.
Samondis : Sea-farers
The glass-beads are in fashion now
real pearls no more appeal:
My tunic's full of truth, yet feel
ashamed to offer it !
Ramkali: Yogis
The glorious yogis in this world,
some `Fire' bring, some `Light'—
They who burn themselves to 'ignite',
I cannot live without them!
Karayal: Swan
Why are you sitting mourning here?
my darling swan! Arise:
Go, enter now the waters clear,
and seek with watchful eyes....
Search not on banks, the banks despise,
despise the vulgar lanes.
Karayal: Swan
The swans divine are those who pick
the pearls from waters pure:
They never soil their beaks with mud
some fishes to secure:
World knows them not, they are obscure
in crowds of cormorants.
Karayal: Swan
The lovely peacocks all are dead,
and not one swan I see:
Alas, the crafty snipes instead
have here their homeland made.
Yaman Kalyan: Peace
The Echo and the Call are same,
if you sound's secret knew—
They both were "one", but "two" became,
only when 'hearing’ came.
Sohni
Master the lesson thoroughly
that 'Law' doth teach Sohni....
Then contemplate and meditate,
So 'Truth' comes near to thee:
But Reality's vision will be
reward of lovers true!
Sohni
A drowning man by grasses
at the banks will hold
Oh see the chivalry
the slender straws unfold!
To hold him they'll make bold,
or else with him will sink.
Sasui
With longing I lay down, my eyes
Did wake and found no sleep—
But when at last I slept, he came
and then I could not rise:
Sisters! I erred, for in what wise
is longing kin to sleep?
Marui
Almighty God! let it not be
That I in bondage die
Enchained my body night and day
doth weep in misery—
Oh let me first my homeland see
and then my days let end.
Sarang: Monsoon
Rain preparations are again,
in progress everywhere:
Again the lightnings have begun
to leap with arduous flare:
Some towards Istanbul do dive,
some to the West repair:
Some over China glisten, some
of Samarqand take care:
Some wander to Byzantium, Kabul
Some to Kandhar fare:
Some lie on Delhi, Deccan, some
reach Girnar, thund'ring there:
And greens on Bikanir pour those
that jump from Jesalmare:
Some Bhuj have soaked, others descend
on Dhat, with gentle air,
Some crossing Umerkote have made
the fields fertile and fair,
O God, may ever you on Sind
bestow abundance rare;
Beloved! all the world let share
Thy Grace, and fruitful be!
Sarang: Monsoon
Though 'inside' all is overcast,
'outside' from every cloud is free—
Lightnings mature within, in whom
Love doth reside eternally . . .
Their eyes shall never rainless be
in whom thought of Beloved reigns.
Samondi: Sea-farers
With falsehood I did pass my days,
divine commands I broke:
The vessel overflows with sin,
and with my doings base…
O Knower of the secret ways,
Thou know'st already all.
Kamod: Love sick
Upon the waters transparent,
along the banks float lotus flowers,
And all the lake rich fragrance showers,
as sweet as musk, when spring-winds blow.
Shah Abdul Latif — An Introduction to His Art is a fascinating read. Indeed, Allama I.I. Kazi sahib and Elsa Kazi sahiba have done a wonderful job in introducing the beauty of SaiN Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry to the global audience. All people yearning for love and wisdom can benefit from this book; they can visit the Castle with a hundred thousand doors; windows, without number; and wherever they look, will find the beloved meeting them!
(Dr Ahmed S. Khan (dr.a.s.khan@ieee.org) is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar - 2017-2022).
