Sufi Poetry

Khwaja Ahmed Yasavi Poetry

My Maker I’ll seek in this universe by night and day;
From our four directions of space I have torn away.
Let me go from four to seven; one by one to nine I’ll count.
In Saturn’s sphere, from two on up to ten I’ve made my way;
Three hundred and sixty rivers I crossed, the mountains four hundred and forty four.

 

I drank the wine of Unity and fell inside the glass.
But when I fell inside, I found the emptiness was full,
for there I saw a hundred thousand wise men circling round.
I walked among them, asked about the object of my quest;
to my amazement, they all said, “It lies within yourself!”
Such pain and anguish did I feel when, deep within the sea,
I saw the pearl a-bleeding lie, within its oyster shell.
Poor Khwaja Ahmed’s soul is the pearl and its blood alike.
His place is everywhere, within that Nowhere beyond place.

 

~ Khwaja Ahmed Yasavi
_____

As well as being the Shaykh of Khwaja Abdul Khaliq al-Gijdivoniy, Khwaja Yusef al-Hamadani, the ninth Master of the Naqshbandi Golden Chain and the first of the Masters of Central Asia, was the Shaykh of Khwaja Ahmed Yasavi.
Khwaja Ahmed Yasavi was the founder of the Yasavi Order and is a link to Hajji Bektashi, who founded the Bektashi Order. Khwaja Ahmed Yasavi exerted a powerful influence in the development of the Sufi orders and Islam from Istanbul to China.