Overview

In this excerpt from Jami's Baharestan, the Naqshbandi master Khwaja Ali Ramitani answers the question 'What is faith?' with a single formula: کندن و پیوستن — 'severing and joining.'

Key Idea

Faith (iman) is reframed not as mere creedal assent or verbal profession, but as an inner, two-fold act:

• Severing (کندن): detaching the heart from creation (khalq) and worldly attachments.
• Joining (پیوستن): binding that same heart to God alone.

Significance

The accompanying verse makes the meaning explicit: 'you sever your heart from creation and join it to God.' This crystallizes a broader Sufi understanding in which the essence of belief is a movement of the heart away from the many and toward the One, aligning it with related mystical treatments of self-severance and divine union.