Opening Prayer and the Author's Preface

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Praise and Thanksgiving

O God, make my words such a flower
as may be welcome to every heart.

The ever-blooming rose garden of praise and thanksgiving befits the True Gardener, from the garden of whose grace this wondrous orchard of the world has received fresh lustre and beauty beyond measure. In the bloom of the flowers and in the adornment of lovely brides it is the radiance of His light that shines. What power has a dry-brained pen, what strength, to write His praise and thanks, or to write as they deserve to be written?

He made the scent of the rose plain in every petal;
He is the cause of the nightingale's lament.
The bud whose mouth is closed in the garden
takes His name within its lips.
It was His command that bound together
the book of the beloved's cheek.
When the reflection of Laila's face came into the rose,
He made the hair of Qais into hyacinth.
If the cloud of the Forgiver's mercy rains,
it washes away our sins in a moment;
the field of our hope is refreshed,
the field of our hope turns green.
But if His heart should turn to wrath,
there is no refuge but the shadow of Ahmad.

In Praise of the Prophet Muhammad Mustafa, God Bless Him and Grant Him Peace

Thousands upon thousands of blessings and salutations be upon him of lofty lineage and exalted descent, who was the cause of the founding of earth and heaven and the reason for the creation of all that is. The print of the hoof of his steed Buraq sits squarely on the brow of sun and moon. Through his compendium of all things possible the world is a book, and in that book existence is but one chapter. When he found the page of the dust pleasing, he did not stay in the house of the heavens. That rising-place of light and closing-line of manifestation took on the quatrain of the four elements.

There is no end to this stage;
now speak the praise of the King of Men.

In Praise of Hazrat Ali Murtaza, Peace Be upon Him

When in the morning the sun, with its pen of rays, wrote the verse of light on the leaf of the world and made the page of creation bright, I wished to dive into the sea of words and bring up lustrous pearls such as the jewellers of speech would accept. Wherever I looked with thought and care, I saw heaps upon heaps of them. I wondered on whom I should scatter them, and while I was in this doubt and perplexity, suddenly this good news reached my ear: "O you who are drowned in the sea of thought! These shining jewels are fit for no one else; scatter them at the feet of Hazrat Ali, peace be upon him," that is, open your tongue in his praise. He is that emperor from the reflection of whose face the moon's countenance gained its clearness and the sun's mirror received its full polish. If he were to gallop his horse across the field of the seventh heaven, the army of the stars would fall into disorder. O Emperor! This is my one petition at your court: in the tumult of the Day of Judgement, keep me, with a white face, in the ranks of your slaves. What more should I ask, since for a servant to ask much at his master's court is the height of presumption?

Why the Book Was Written

Be it known to the readers that Shaikh Izzatullah Bengali composed this book in Persian. He has written his reason for it thus: "In my student days this humble man had a great liking for the art of fine composition, and I used to write out drafts on paper and put them by. One day my kind friend Nazar Muhammad, about whom for nine years the bird of this distracted man's heart had fluttered bewildered like a moth round that candle of beauty, and circled like a mote round the sun of that heaven of loveliness, came strolling in, graceful as a *chakor* (partridge).

The gazelles' eyes would pay tribute to his eyes;
his face would demand revenue even from the moon.
Those eyes were ever practising their coquetry;
with a glance they would do the work of the world.
If ever a wave of intoxication came over them,
they turned the page of the heart upside down.
The line of down upon his face was such
as a blue border ruled round the Qur'an.
If my pen were made from a vein of ruby,
I might write something of the redness of his lips.

"And such was the friendship between us that now he would come and lay his hand on my shoulder and now come and sit in my lap. At last, filling the cup of his lips with the wine of speech, he warmed the market of love's distraction with soft words of every kind, and this distracted man too kept talking with that angel-natured one. Then he made a pillow of my knee and said, 'I am sleepy; until I fall asleep, sit and tell me a story.'

"At first I wished to lie down with him too, but the thought came to me that the dear simpleton might think I had not done as he asked. Then I began to tell, before that treasure of joy and delight, the story every tale of which was full of love.

"After that, the wish of that precious friend brought this poor man to dress this charming story in the garb of Persian prose and adorn it with the ornaments of verse and prose, to make it worthy of the eyes of readers who love what is difficult.

"In the meantime, on the first of Zil-Hijja in the year one thousand one hundred and twenty-four of the Hijra, the whirlwind of death tore up by the roots that young shoot of the garden of my heart and eyes. At this soul-destroying event the bird of this afflicted man's senses flew away. I wished to tear the leaves of the draft of this tale into shreds too, but some friends, whose wishes I also had some regard for, came and reasoned with me and said:

It is very easy to break a ruby of Badakhshan,
but very hard to join it together again."

"Of necessity I put half of it into Persian and left half as it was." [TN: the Persian author's preface ends here.] The reason for the compiling of this book is this: the needy Nihal Chand Lahori, this feeble one whose birthplace is Shahjahanabad, was drawn by fate and fortune to Calcutta, the noblest of cities, which at this time is the capital of Hindustan; and this humble man had long been in the service of Captain David Robertson Sahib Bahadur. Through his helping hand I gained access to the hem of my benefactor, the Hatim of the age, the helper of the helpless, the source of bounty and gifts, the fountain of grace and generosity, the sea of favour and kindness, the ocean of beneficence and valour, Mr John Gilchrist Sahib Bahadur, may his shadow be prolonged.

If great and small should, in his praise,
write a thousand pages for ever, it would be fitting.
He is the tree in the garden of eloquence in the world;
from the flower of his speech hearts are blooming.
He is the pearl of the sea of bounty and the mine of gifts;
he has no equal or peer in the world.
The candle of his hope is lit by the radiance of reason,
like the shining sun day and night in the assembly of the world.
God of His grace has fitted the robe of fine qualities
to his well-proportioned and honoured stature.
Whoever wishes may profit by his service;
every rich man and poor man bears witness to it with his heart.
Where has this humble man such ability
as to be able to describe his bounty and his spirit?
But he asks of God day and night
that as long as the sun's light shines in the sky
He keep him safe in grandeur and wealth,
and make his enemy mean and contemptible in the world.

In short, through the favours of the Sahib Bahadur this feeble man began to live well, and there grew a hope for the future that, if I hold this hem of fortune in my hand, then, God willing, one day my boat will reach the shore.

Then one day my benefactor commanded: "Compile the story of Taj-ul-Muluk and Bakavali from Persian into the idiom of Hindi Rekhta, so that it may bring you honour and remembrance and give us pleasure." So this feeble man, according to that bounteous command and to the best of his ability, compiled it in Hindi in the time of the Plato-minded, exalted, majestic, heaven-like Marquis Wellesley, the Nawab Governor-General Bahadur, may his fortune endure, and named it *Mazhab-e-Ishq* ("The Religion of Love"). But in many places I have left out the verse of the book entirely, and in some places, where I thought fit, I have translated it by way of selection, sometimes in verse and sometimes in prose. Besides this, in some places I have also changed the construction of the sentences, and here and there I have left things out.

Now I hope of the gentlemen who appreciate fine speech and the subtle critics with the breath of dawn, that wherever they see ups and downs in the field of my writing they will level them with the pen of correction and oblige this nobody by their kindness.