M6:4147 — مر مرا دختر اگر ثابت کنی / یافتی از تیغ تیزم آمنی

Translation: If for me you can prove a daughter's being, You shall from my sharp blade find safety.

Meaning: The King of China, in response to a suitor for his (non-existent) daughter, declares that if the suitor can actually prove the King has a daughter, he will be spared from the king's swift and deadly execution.

This couplet appears within the narrative of a prince who seeks to marry the daughter of the King of China, despite his brothers' warnings. The King of China in this tale is depicted as an eternal, childless being, a characteristic that Rumi invokes through the phrase lam yalid (He begets not, nor is He begotten). This immediately imbues the king with divine attributes, elevating him beyond ordinary human status.

The King's threat in this beyt is a testament to the sternness and severity that were, at the time, common even in literature. The King challenges the prince: 'You have made such a claim (that I have a daughter); now either prove that I have a spouse or ʿiyāl (in its broader sense of family or dependents), or I will surely cut off your head with my sharp blade and take your life.' This direct and absolute threat of death, not only in this story but in many of our classical texts, including Hafez's poetry, is quite striking. Hafez, for instance, writes: 'O heart, do not entangle yourself in her hair, for there / You will see heads cut off without fault or crime.' This suggests that in that culture, human life was easily taken, and capital punishment for an unsubstantiated claim was a fully accepted and unhesitating measure.

Another noteworthy point is the choice of epithets like 'bloodthirsty lion' or 'marauding Turk' for the Beloved in mystical literature. How could such seemingly violent and merciless attributes be ascribed to the most tender and desirable being in the lover's eyes? In my view, it is a remarkable phenomenon that our poets, instead of borrowing gentle descriptions from nature and the cosmos, resorted to the most bloodthirsty and predatory beings to portray the Beloved's visage. This indicates a certain normalization, and even glorification, of violence in the culture of that era, to the extent that such attributes were even used in descriptions of God. In our story, the King of China also appears with this fearsome and bloodthirsty authority; an authority that answers any claim regarding the existence of a child for him, which contradicts his lam yalid nature, with a sharp blade.

Key takeaways

• The King of China's ultimatum: prove the existence of a daughter, or face his sharp blade and certain death.
• Rumi's use of the Quranic phrase lam yalid (He begets not) for the King, implicitly links him to divine, childless attributes.
• Soroush highlights the normalization of violence in classical Persian literature, where threats of execution were commonplace.
• The use of brutal epithets like 'marauding Turk' or 'bloodthirsty lion' for the Beloved in mystical poetry presents a cultural paradox.
• In this narrative, challenging the King's intrinsic, childless nature is considered a deadly peril for the suitor.