In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful.
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Six: Knowing the Station of Spiritual Chivalry and Its Secrets
Know—may God strengthen you:
Spiritual chivalry’s possessor never ceases to be
preferred with the Lord of people and with people.
The chivalrous one is adorned by preference for others;
wherever he is, he is carried upon the head.
Desires, for all their power, do not shake him,
for he stands firm like a lofty, rooted mountain.
No grief rules him, no fear distracts him
from noble deeds in war and hardship.
Look at his breaking the idols alone,
without a helper: that is the gentle, harsh one.
Spiritual chivalry is a divine description in meaning, but no divine name derived from its wording names Him, glory be to Him. Revealed law and rational proof establish His absolute independence of the world. In revealed law this is His saying,
Notes
Translator’s note TN4247-1: Futuwwah is spiritual chivalry, with fatā for its possessor. The text distinguishes a meaning present in God from permission to derive a divine name from that meaning. “Carried upon the head” retains the poem’s image of being honored.
