1916.] Quatrains of Abu Sa'id bin Ab?l Khair. 191 



Bokhara all the time ! The result, of course, is another convert 

 to Sufiism. 1 



The story of this adventure was, by the express wish of 

 Abu Sa'id, not given to the world until after his death. 

 Though the sceptic sees in this fact a convenient method of 

 accounting for the posthumous origin of such tales, the believer 

 may infer therefrom that Abu Sa'id was anxious not to adver- 

 tise such powers as he possessed. We certainly have authority 

 for saying that he had no inclination to practise them idly. 

 To one who asked him for a miracle, by way of proof, he 

 quoted another Sufi who on a similar occasion had told' his 

 questioner that there were miracles everywhere around him, if 

 he only chose to look; and that perhaps the greatest miracleof 

 all was that he was allowed to be alive ! 



Clairvoyance however was the line in which Abu Sa'id 

 may be said to have specialized; and by his disconcerting 

 habit of reading men's secret thoughts he won a large number 

 of disciples. He also had his enemies. For that, his uncom- 

 promising hostility to orthodox Islam, and his tolerance of 

 Christians and other unbelievers were mainly responsible. 

 Sufiism, as an organized creed, was in his time in its infancy. 

 It had but a handful of preachers, and these were widely 

 regarded as dangerous heretics. In many of the places he 

 visited he was subjected to scorn and active hostility: in 

 Nishapur, once, he came near to losing his life. It is not to be 

 wondered at, therefore, if Abii Sa'id occasionally indulged in 

 the very human sin of praying God to confound his enemies. 4 



It may be questioned whether it is at all possible that a 

 life lived on the lofty plane of thought of the average Persian 

 mystic can escape violent inconsistencies ; whether the end is 

 not inevitably "self-delusion and imposture." 3 It must be 

 admitted at once that Abu Sa'id was by no means always the 

 " austere pietist." Many stories, in fact, tell of his extremely 

 sane humanity. After one period of rigid austerity he came 

 forth clad in fine raiment and attended by a slave girl who 

 ministered to his wants, to the immense disgust of an ascetic 

 whose criticism, however, Abu Sa'id sharply rebuked. To 

 pleasant food and convivial dinners he was no stranger. Nor 

 did he scorn human love ; though he had qualms of conscience 

 when he saw his family grow up round him ; and, we are told, 



1 This version of the " miracle" is taken from the Hdldt-u-Sukhundn. 

 V fuller, and more sober account, is given in the Asrdr ut tauhid accord- 

 ing to which Abu Sa'id was not in Bokhara when the merchant arrived at 

 that city. The latter did not in fact discover who his benefactor was until 



three j ears later when he saw him preaching in the Sufi monastery at Nisha- 

 pur. 



2 As, for example, in quatrains Nos. 84 and 88 of this collection. But 

 it would perhaps be hardly fair or safe to base an estimate of Abu Sa'id's 

 character on the quatrains which appear solely in the Hyderabad edition. 



8 See Whinfield's introduction to the Masnavi of Jalal-ud-din Rumi. 



