Ansari

Ansari Poem: Once in the middle of Spring in the ancient citadel of Herat in the old province of Khurasan was born a Khwaja Abdullah who became great. His father trained under an ascetic in Balkh. He was a handballist and attacked the rationalist. He died in Gazargah in 1089 near Herat and has been remembered ever since. If you learn his teaching you will become arif instead of being adrift. He taught the Arabic dictum: man ‘arafa nafsahu fa-qad ‘arafa rabbahu (“who knows himself, knows his Lord,” echoing the ancient Dephic Gnothi s’auton (“know thyself) He taught that “a Sufi is that which is not!” according to Jami in Narahat. His Munajat is like an intimate conversation with someone. The Pir of Herat’s words since have “snowballed” to the present and is hard to find - you would have to go to Tehran. A Poem by David Smith A Biographical poem on Ansari Khwaja Abdullah Ansari Intimate Conversations with God Munajat