Overview

In this excerpt from Jami's Baharestan, the Sufi Abu Hashim declares that uprooting a mountain from its base with the tip of a needle is easier than casting the rust of pride (kibr) out of the heart.

Key Themes

• The persistence of pride: Pride is presented as the most stubborn of the heart's diseases, nearly impossible to eradicate through effort alone; the impossible physical feat is offered as the easier of the two tasks.
• The hiddenness of pride: The accompanying verse warns against boasting of being free of pride, since its trace is more hidden than the footprint of an ant on a black stone in the dark night. To imagine oneself already humble is itself a subtle form of pride.
• Inner versus outer difficulty: The metaphor inverts ordinary expectation, contrasting the outward, physical impossibility of moving a mountain with the still greater inward labor of purifying the self.