One of the most popular of Amir Khusrau’s ghazal’s this poem features lines of alternating Persian and Hindavi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGp6kSGc3Ck Translation: Do not ignore my sorry state She rolls her eyes and makes excuses For I cannot bear this separation Why won’t she take me in her arms? Long like curls are the nights of…
It is love, so surrender
Ibn al-Fāriḍ Translation: It is love, so surrender your body—passion is not easy One stricken by it would not choose it, had he reason So live without it, for love’s ease is hard it’s beginning is sickness, and its end is death But for me, dying in love longingly for the one I love, is…
Tonight I learned that you would come
Another poem of Amir Khusrow: Translation: Tonight I heard that you, oh beloved, would come – Be my head sacrificed to the road along which you will come riding! All the gazelles of the desert have put their heads on their hands In the hope that one day you will come to hunt them…. The…
The River of Love
One of the most popular and beautiful verses of the wonderful Amir Khusrau… Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar, Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar. Oh Khusrau, the river of love Runs in strange ways. One who enters it drowns, And one who drowns, gets across. it is popularly performed alongside…
Where was I Last Night?
Translation: I don’t know what place it was, where I was last night, The dance of death whirled all around me, where I was last night A nymph-like beauty with tulip cheeks and a cypress body was wreaking havoc in the hearts, where I was last night God himself was the master of ceremonies, in that placeless…
I have found my love
Another gem from Amīr Khusrow, about his Shaykh Niẓamuddīn Awliyā’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWq-qgMDz14 Translation: What a glow I see everywhere , Oh mother, what a glow;I’ve found the beloved, yes I found him,In my courtyard;I have found my pīr Nizamuddin Aulia.I roamed around the whole world,looking for the perfect beloved;And finally this face has enchanted my heart.The whole…
Love’s Martyr: Qutb ad-Din Bakhtiar Kaki
The great Indian Sufi shaykh, disciple of Mu’in ad-Din Chisti and master to Baba Farid, is said to have heard the following verses during a qawwali performance: كشتگان خنجر تسليم را هر زمان از غيب جان ديگر است For the victims of the dagger of surrender There is new life at…
Aziz Mian-It doesn’t get much better than this…
Mein Kya Janu Raam “Oh God how can I figure out Your unfathomable ways?” Probably my favorite qawwal. The imagery, the rhythm, the sincere intensity, the pure poetry of the performance is almost overwhelming Every wise man has given up what strange disguises man has adopted in this curious world of Yours God how can…