In this opening passage of the sixth garden (rowze) of Baharestan, Jami grounds the ethics of jest in prophetic and Alavi authority. He cites a saying of the Prophet contrasting the believer — jovial and sweet of speech (mazah-kun, shirin-sokhan) — with the hypocrite, who is sour-faced with a knot upon his brow (torshru). He then adduces the dictum of Ali that jesting with a person is blameless even to the degree that it draws the believer out of ill-temper and a sour disposition.

The teaching: cheerful joviality and pleasant speech are treated as marks of sound faith and refined character (adab), while habitual sourness of face is aligned with hypocrisy. Mazah is thus religiously sanctioned as a social virtue, provided it lightens temperament rather than degenerating into excess. This courteous, praiseworthy jest is distinct from the heedless frivolous laughter (khandeh-ye harzeh) condemned elsewhere in Sufi didactic verse, and from the deliberate pedagogical ribaldry (hazl) used ...