Masterpieces of Rhetoric Methood (nahj Al-balagha)

Existential Unity

What was at a distance in it was merged in a unity whose sides are perpetuity and eternity.

Literature is originality in thinking, sense, imagination and taste, and it conncts between its author and other creatures in an absolute exsitential unity; then it expresses itself with a life rising on principles of this unity, and with an aesthectic style, which is a living incarnation of the interaction between the author and the cosmos.

As science has been dividing, art has been uniting. When science was seeing things as they are creatures that should be separated and scattered, art was looking at things as they are creatures divided outwordly by integrated in their sources and reality which leads to the idea of cosmic comprehensiveness and complete association among the different existence aspects. Literature has but this comprehensiveness!

If philosophers have discerned existence unity during late periods, the literary man had discerned it since man has been, and since the seeds of art and sensations of literature had been at his bottoms. That is because the evidence of philosopher is his reason and syllogism both of which are limited considening the living human structure.

The evidence of an author is his feeling and inspiration, both of which is a quick flaming appearance of whole exitence. Then, the philosopher’s viewpoint at the cosmos as an interacting integrated unity is but a superficial view in comparison with the author’s one. The philosopher witnesses, watches analogizes then records.

His mean is the mind alone; the mind is a thing of the living human, rather say it is a side of him. The author interacts with the cosmos and life in a direct, continuous interaction as he senses and ask inspiration with his mind, feeling, imagination, temper and taste as a whole, namely with his whole existence. He is, therefor, prior and deeper. So the author is the philosopher’s master: his master and guide since he has existed and his master and guide forever!

If this is the matter, and it is as such, Ali bin Abi Talib is agreat one of this society in viewpoint and style: the society of eternal authors who look at the stars of the sky, the sands of desert, the water of seas, the garment of nature they discover suddenly that they are things of their selves, these selves which feel that there is in the cosmos one thorough existential power that has been since eternity in perpetuity and will remain forever.

Michael Na’eemah, who represents the artist’s power to feel deeply of pantheism in our contemporary Arabic literature, says: “Rather how could he been author who doesn’t sense his roots in perpetuity and eternity, and senses what has passed and what will come, this sense this feeling of sublime beauty which warps up all creatures, inspite of the differences in their aspects in one scarf, is what you can see in the masterpieces of literature genius, whatever the topics of these masterpieces varies whatever their conditions differ from each other.

So if you hear the voice of the great poet speaking on Christ’s mouth, saying: “Think of the lilies of the field, how they grow; but I tell you that even Sulaiman in his glory was not dressing as one of them!”, then you have heared one of the greatest voice, the cosmos, has heared realized the most interesting sight piercing the bottoms of the whole beauty and you will wonder: “How can dust, reocks and clouds of sky bring such a splendor and beauty, the beauty of field lilies while they are growing, if this panthism had not been, and if beauty had not been the axis of the one existence, and the joint of its parts from beginning to end? It is, at the same time, the theme of thinking and feeling to the artist, the small creator!

Likewise is the wonderfal saying of christ when some people came to him with a prostitute who had made herself opened to punishment according to their laws:

Anyone of you who has not committed asin should come and throw stones at this prostitute!”

When you hear the great poet saying of Sulaiman bin David’s tongue:

“A generation goes, another one comes, the earth exists for ever. The sun rises and sets, then it hastens to its position from which it goes out. The wind goes towards the south, and rotates to the north, rotates and circles in its journey then returns its circles! All rivers head for the sea, the sea is not full, then they belong to the position from which the rivers flow there so as to flow again:

And when you hear him saying:

“I am the flower of sharoon and the lily of vallyes, like a lily among thorns, so my sweetheart among girls like an apple in the trees of wood, so my love among the boys. I longed for, then I sat in his shadow, and his fruit is sweet in my mouth. Flowers have appeared in the earth, and time of harvest came, the voice of pigeon has been heard in our land.”

“O’ my dove which is in the pits of rock and secrets of castles, show me your countenance, make me hear your voice, as your voice is nice and your visage sweet, until the day breezes and shadows are defeated. O’ my love return and be like a deer or some stag on Bater Mount.

“Beautiful you are, O’ my sweat heart! Beautiful you are and your eyes are like two doves behind your veil, your hair is like a herd of goats, appearing from Jal’ad Mount.

Your lips are like a bunch of scarlet, your speech is sweet. Your checks are like one-half promgranate behind your veil. Your neck is like David’s tower buit for weapons a thousand shields were footened to it all the shields of tyrrants. Unitl the day breezes and shadows vanquished go ahead to Al-Mar Mount and Al-Labban Hill come with me from lebanon, O’bride. Look with me from Lebanon, from Amanah’s head from Harmoon’s head, from folds of lions, from mountains of tigers. Your lips drop honey, O’ bride, and beneath your tongue, a honey and yogurt the fragrance of your dress is like that of Lebanon.

“Fountain of Paradise, a well of living water and rivers from Lebanon, O’ north wind blow, O’ South come, and breeze upon my paradise so that its sweets are poured!”

If you heard that, and realized it rightly, you understood that Sulaiman dirnks his poetry from the same fountain from which Christ has been satisfied, even if the topic differs.

Also one of that is the saying of Victor Hugo, one the great genius artists after the French Revolution, it is a dialogue among the planets in which the peot makes us see the human as being lost, and that he together with the earth he live on, are to disappear, because they are diminishing inside the wideness of the one wonderful cosmos:

What is this worthless weak voice which whispers?

O’ earth, what is the aim of your circling in your narrow, finite horizon?

Are you but a grain of sand accompanied by a whit of ash?

As to me, I am in the blue huge sky, drawing a huge frame, so the spacial distance, being frightened and terrified, my beaty is deformed!

And my halo, which changes nights’ paleness into sanguineous redness like balls of gold rising and decreasing, interchanging in the holder’s hand, They go away, collect, and catch seven of the great huge moons!

And here is the sun answering:

Be silent, there in a corner of skies, O’ planets, you are my citizens!

Be quiet! I am the guardian and you are citizens.

You are like two cars running side by side to enter the door.

Within the smallest volcano I have, Mars and the earth they Enter without catching sides of the entrance!

Here are the stars of the small bear glittering like Seven livnig eyes, having suns instead of grains!

Here is the road of galaxy drawing a beautiful, Flourishing forest full of sky stars!

O’ lower planets, my position is extremely far from yours,

So that my fixed bright stars, which are similar to groups of spreading islands in water,

And my numerous suns, with respect to your incapable weak eyesight,

In a distant corner in the sky, similar to a sad desert in which sound disappears,

Are not but a slight of red ashes has spread at night!

Here are the stars of another galaxy depicting worlds that are not less than those worlds, spreading in the air; that surrounding which has no sand or stone in its sides, and its waves go, yet do not ever return to its seasides. Lastly here is the god speaking:

“I need not to do anything but to blow and so everything becomes dark.”([^1])

And here is what Ali bin Abi Talib says of the peacock’s description:

“The moust amazing among them in its creation is the peacock which Allah has created in the most precise symmetry, and piled up its hues in the best arrangement with wings whose ends are inter-leaved together and whose tail is long. When it moves to its female it spreads out folded toil and raises it up so as to overshadow its head. You would imagine its feathers to be sticks of silver and what he has grown on it like suns and their halos of pure gold and green emeralds.

If you liken it them to what land germinates, you would say that it is a bouguet collected of evey flowers of spring. If you likened them to clothes, they would be like embroidered garments or amazing variegated clothes of Yemen. If you liken it to ornaments you would say, like stones of different colours with encompassed with ornamented silver: the peacock walks with vanity and pride, browsing through its tail and wings laughs admiring the beauty of its dress and the hues of its scarf,.

But when it casts its glance at its legs it cries loudly with a vioce which indicated its call for help and displays its true grief, because its legs are thin like the legs of Indo-Persian cross – bred cocks. On the place of its comb it has a green ornamented crest the loophole of its neck is like a pitcher, its goblet and its stretch upto its belly is like the hair-dye of Yemen in colour or like a silk cloth put on a polished mirror.

Alonge the opening of its ears there is a line of bright white with the colom of daisy bright white with its whiteness it shines on the black background. There is hardly a hue from which it has not taken a bit and improved it further by regular polish, lustre, silken brightness and brilliance. It is therefor like scattered blossoms which have not been seasoned by the rains of spring or the sun of summer. It may sheds its plumage and puts off its dress. They all fall away one by one and grow again.

They fall away from the feather stems like the falling of leaves from twigs, and then they begin to join together and grow till they return to the state that existed before their falling away. The don’t change its previous colours, nor does any color occur in the other than its own place. If you carefully look at one of the hairs of its feathers it would look like a red rose, another time an emerald green and sometimes a golden yellow. How can sharpness of intellect reach the description of this, or how can the faculty of mind get to it or the utterances of describers manage to tell of it.

And here is a slight of his speaking on the creation of the sky and the earth:

He brought forth creatures by His omnipotence, Dispersed winds through His compassion, and Has made firm the shaking earth with rocks. When Almighty Then originated the horizons, expanse of firmament and strata of winds, He flowed into it Water whose waves were stormy and whose surges leapt one over the other.

He loaded it on dashing wind and breaking typhoons. Then Almighty created forth wind and made its movement sterile, Perpetuate its position, intensified its motion and spread it far and wide. Then He ordered the wind to raise up deep waters and to intensify the waves of the oceans. So the wind churned it like the churning of curd and pushed it fiercely into the firmament throwing its front position on the rear and its motionless to its heaving.

I appeal to you not to waste these excellent masterpieces which Imam’s genius reveals to the human being and portrait for him how the grand and fine creatures are equal, so are the sun and the moon, the water and stone, the big and the small one, the easy and the difficult thing, in the meaning of existence.

And how they all take part in the description of being, so they are integrated co-operating to produce the great chant the chant of the one existence which the big lofty tree can not be glorified at the expense of the small growing plant, and it is inadequate to glorify the broad sea and scorn the stream whose water is lost among herbs and stones.

Ali says:

“You actuate your mind until it Reachs its extremity it will not lead you anywhere, Except that the Originator of ant is the Originator of the date-palm and that not the strong and the delicate and he heavy and the light and the strong and the weak in his creation but the same, So is the sky, the air, the winds and the water. Therefore, look at the sun, the moon, vegetation, plants, water, stone, the alternation of this night and day, the pouring forth of these streams, the large number of the mountains, the height of these peaks … etc.”

Then listen to him saying:

“You do not get any boon except by forfeituring another and no one of you advances a day in age except by canelling another of his life. Nothing more is added to his eating unless it reduces what was there before. No effect appears for him unless a mark disappears. Nothing is renewed to one unless a new thing of what he has becomes old. No new crop comes up unless a crop has been reaped. Ancestors had gone whose branches we are”.

It is the one existence speaking about itself on Ali’s tong we:

In my memory this simile between an extract of Amroa Al-Qais (peotical works), and many extracts of Ibn Abi Talib’s literature; they all pour out into the meaning of thorough existential unity. Then it adds to it by a unique start to overcome the oppressor and aggressor, to support the weak of plants, the land, the animal, and low land until existence straightens up strong and brilliant.

The cosmic poet Amroa Al-Qais tells first in summary:

“I sat for that flash watching from which place rain comes, and how wonderful what I saw! Rain came from four sides, extremely heavily. I saw it from a distance; its right was, as I think, on Qatan Mount, its left of Al-sitar and yadbal mount. Water went streaming heavily here and there, hence its floods overturn trees in a violent manner, and it passes with splashes by Al-Qanan Mount. Thus obliging its ibexes to descend.

Afterwards the poet says:

O’ Tayma, deserted with its palms’ stems, no castle left but rock-buildings,

Thubair, during downpour like and old man covered with a garment,

The peak of Mujaimer at morning due to rain, flood like spindle’s circle,

The barren desert threw everything, so came Yemeni with coloured dresses,

Valley’s birds, morning, ane like ecstasy of bright nectar,

Beasts at evening as fit they were drowned on its remote borders like roots of onion.

You see that Amroa Al-Qais watches how rain makes all palm trees of Tayma fall, and sweeps its buildings so that nothing was left but that of great rocks. As for Thubair Mount, proud of its highness over low surrounding land, rain covered it except its head and hence it seemed like some people head wrapped in a striped garment.

Rain continues its circumambulate round the mountain, then it throws all its weights in deserts which stayed for a time barren, having no plant or water, but it grows herbs, coloured flowers similar to coloured sweet clothes that a yemeni merchant spreads before people’s eyes. Rain did well to these barren deserts; so they became brilliant meadows, where birds sing highly ecstatically. As for beasts which were allowing themselves to prey upon weak animals and birds, rain has humiliated them and drowned them, so they flooded on water like roots of land onion.

Thus rain seems in the great pre-islamic poet’s thought, which pursuse its juorney till the end, as if it represents power of controlling existence. He is strong, just, compassionate, support-ing the weak represented by low land and small birds, so it fills the valley with plants, flowers, and colour, and brings happiness to the hearts of birds, so they glee and sing.

It plays with the strong, represented by mountains, which it restrains from every side and weakens their concern. It destroys the violent attackers represented by wild animals, so it subdues and drown them, and makes them worthless.

Here is Ali, who feels of rain what Amroa Al-Qais had feel of it as representing the felt just compassionate power, as he says in the end of a long speech:

“When cloud threw down all the water it has loaded up Allah grew vegetation on the plain earth and herbage on dry mountains. As a result, the earth felt pleased with its decorated gardens and boast of her dress of soft vegetation and the ornaments of its blossoms. Allah made all this as means of sustenance for the people and feed for the cattle.”

And Ali sums up the distant idea in what Amroa’ Al-Qais witnessed at the doing of rain to the mountains and beasts with this word: “Whoever feels proude over time, time humiliates him.”

These masterpieces which passed in this chapter, stem from one source despite the difference in their topics, the voriety of their goals, and the disparity of their circumstances. They all have this originality in thought, sense imagination, and taste which connect between its author and the whole creatures within an absolute existential unity.

I think wherever you go in Ali bin Abi Talib’s literature you feel this originality which always prompts him to recognize the hidden connections latent behind aspects of life and death, behind the forms which differ at the one fixed truth wich does not differ. His forceful integrated disposition is but the disposition of the true literary man who wants to intensify existence in his mind and heart alike, on basics that have no room for new and old.

It is evident from Nahj Al-Balaghah that Ibn Abi Talib’s sociological and ethical theories, directly or indirectly, stem from this one comprehensive look to the existence. How close is death to life in the norm of existence. How close are the two sides of good and evil. How often do sadness and happiness come together in one heart at the same time, so do idleness and activity in one body.

Many a remote one be nearer than a near one” – in Ibn Abi Talib’s literature – and many a hope may lead to deprivation”, and a trade may lead to loss.” It is not surprising the possibility of Ibn Abi Talib’s saying on people: “Whoever digs a hole for his brother will fall in it, and whoever violates another’s veil, the defects of his house revealed, and whoever prides himself on people will be humillialed.

The one existantial circle decides on people, things, and creatures as a whole to be subjected to its balanced basis which Imam realized in his intuition, mind, and taste alike, in an amazing realiztion, what it conveys of clarity. Then due to its plentifulness in supplying its realizer with power on revelation, so he expresses this realization with words forming mathematical principals that deal with phenomena and penetrate them to the fixed deep existential origins behind them.

Hence Ibn Abi Talib equals with the peaks of existence on one level in viewing the one life, in the deep feeling of one existence, and then his literature is a successive cries starting from a genius heart hoping to penetrate things to see its bottoms, so as to be sure of this realization, and to understand that what differs each other is constant on a basis, and what differs being stemmed from an origin, and what was at a distance was connected in a unity whose sides are perpetuity and eternity.