and well known.
The Garden has been described as yearning for ʿAli, Salman, ʿAmmar, and Bilal. People have discussed this through deriving their names from highness, soundness, habitation, and moistening. This is not established. Longing is a matter of tasting. Had this report occurred to me when I saw the Garden, I would have asked it about its longing for these rather than others, for it knows best the cause bringing it to long for these four.
Likewise I have seen the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, many times and asked him about things, but it did not occur to me to ask him about the Garden’s longing for these. I was occupied by something more important to me. Longing is knowledge through tasting, known by everyone longing within himself.
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-One: Knowing the Station of Respect for Shaykhs
The shaykh’s sanctity is only God’s sanctity;
uphold it in courtesy to God, through God.
They are guides, and nearness supports them
in guidance, with support resting upon God.
They are the inheritors of all the messengers;
their discourse is only from God.
Notes
Translator’s note TN4790-1: The reported derivations are ʿuluww for ʿAli, salāmah for Salman, ʿumrān for ʿAmmar, and istiblāl for Bilal. Istiblāl can concern moistening or recovery. The author does not endorse the explanation. The poem’s final support phrase retains the supplied ʿalā Allāh without substituting another preposition.
