Original content

English translation

Know that poverty (darwishi) holds a great rank on the path of God Almighty, and the poor have great import; as God the Exalted said: 'For the poor who are restrained in the way of God, unable to move about in the land; the ignorant one supposes them rich because of their restraint (Q 2:273).' And He also said: 'God sets forth a parable: a slave owned, having no power over anything (Q 16:75).' And He also said: 'Their sides forsake their beds, calling upon their Lord in fear and hope (Q 32:16).'

And the Messenger (peace be upon him) chose poverty and said: 'O God, let me live poor, and let me die poor, and gather me in the throng of the poor.' And he also said: On the Day of Resurrection God the Exalted will say: 'Bring near to Me My beloveds.' The angels will say: 'Who are Your beloveds?' He will say: 'The poor among the Muslims.'

And such verses and traditions are many, to the extent that, being well-known, no proof is needed to establish it, given the soundness of the evidence.

And in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) there were the poor of the Emigrants (Muhajirin), those who sat in the fulfillment of worship and the companionship of the Prophet (peace be upon him) in his mosque, having wholly turned away from occupations and abandoned contention, relying upon God the Exalted for their sustenance and placing their trust in Him, so that the Messenger (peace be upon him) was commanded to keep their company and to uphold their right; as He said—mighty is He who speaks—: 'And do not drive away those who call upon their Lord morning and evening, seeking His face (Q 6:52),' and He also said: 'And let not your eyes turn away from them, desiring the adornment of the life of this world; and do not obey him whose heart We have made heedless of Our remembrance (Q 18:28),' so that whenever the Messenger (peace be upon him) saw one of them, he would say: 'May my mother and father be sacrificed for those on whose account God the Exalted reproached me.'

So God the Exalted granted poverty a great rank and degree, and singled out the poor by it, so that they abandoned outward and inward means and returned wholly to the Causer of causes; until their poverty became their pride, so that they lamented at its departure and rejoiced at its coming, and embraced it, and held all but its sisters as contemptible.

But poverty has a formal aspect (rasm) and a reality (haqiqat). Its form is compulsory destitution, and its reality is voluntary embracing. He who saw the form was content with the name, and when he did not attain his object, fled from the reality. And he who found the reality turned his face away from existent things, and through total annihilation, in the vision of the All, hastened to total subsistence. 'Whoever knows nothing but its form hears nothing but its name.' So the poor one (faqir) is he who possesses nothing, and in nothing has any defect. He does not become rich by the presence of means, nor by their absence is he in need of a means. The presence and absence of means are equal in the sight of his poverty, and if he is more joyful in nonexistence, that too is permissible; for the sheikhs have said: 'However more empty-handed the dervish is, the more open is his state upon him.' For possessed existence is inauspicious for the dervish; to the extent that he binds nothing, except that he is bound to the same measure. So the life of the friends of the Real is through hidden graces and splendid secrets with the Real, not through the instruments of the treacherous world and the abode of the wicked. So provision is merely provision by way of contentment (rida).

It is related that a dervish encountered a king. The king said: 'Ask a need.' He said: 'I do not ask a need from the slave of my slaves.' He said: 'How can this be?' He said: 'I have two slaves who are both your masters: one is greed (hirs) and the other is desire (amal).' And the Messenger said (peace be upon him): 'Poverty is glory for its people.'

So a thing which is glory for the worthy is abasement for the unworthy; and its glory is that the poor one is preserved in his limbs from slips and preserved in his state from defect. Neither does disobedience and error befall his body, nor does defect and blight take form upon his state; because his outward is immersed in manifest blessings and his inward is a fountain of hidden blessings, so that his body is spiritual and his heart divine (rabbani). No claim of creatures remains upon him and no relation to Adam; so that, from the claim of creatures and the relation of Adam, he is poor, and by the kingdom of this world he does not become rich in this world, and by the kingdom of that world he does not become rich in that world. And the two worlds do not weigh, upon the pan of the scale of his poverty, as much as a gnat's wing, and a single breath of his does not fit in both worlds.