Ghazal 152, Verse 4

Nazm:

jaadaad is short for jaa))edaad , that is, estate [jaagiir]. By wine is meant mystic knowledge, and by the rakish ones, the knowers of mystic knowledge. And by the world being wretched and desolate is meant that there is no prudence or judgment in the arrogance of the person who is heedless of the glory/appearance of Reality. (163)

== Nazm page 163

Bekhud Mohani:

Those people who don't have an eye for Truth, those people who aren't lost in the intoxication of mystic knowledge, consider that the world is desolate-- what is there in it, after all? The truth is that in the eyes of the rakish ones-- that is, the drinkers of the wine of mystic knowledge-- every grain of the world is a wine-house. That is, whatever they look at, they see the divine Glory/Appearance, and they remain intoxicated. (294)

Faruqi:

Many commentators have declared 'the six directions' to mean 'the world'. There's nothing wrong with this, but if it is taken in its dictionary meaning, then too there is a great deal of affinity. That is, in whichever of the six directions you might direct your gaze, the estate [jaagiir] of the rakish ones can be seen. Accordingly, if we take 'the six directions' metaphorically, then it is pictorial; and if we suppose an image, then it is mystical. In the light of the pictorial interpretation, the world is nothing-- it's only an estate for wine-drinking. That is, the very purpose of the creation of the world was that it should serve as a wine-drinking place for rakish ones. In the light of the mystical interpretation, the wine-drinkers consider the whole of creation to be their estate, or creation has been given to them by way of an estate....

Thus the heirs of the world are those who are wine-drinkers. In the eyes of those who don't drink wine, the world is desolate. Wine-drinking and rakishness can also be considered a metaphor for the wine of mystic knowledge, but then the mischievousness in the theme becomes somewhat less.

In the verse, wordplays are numerous. 'Six directions' and 'estate'; 'heedless one' and ;xaraab (meaning wrecked by drunkenness) and 'wine-drinking' and 'rakish ones'. Between 'heedless one' and gumaa;N is a connection of .zil((a , since because of heedlessness there's no knowledge of the truth.... Between 'six directions' and 'world' the wordplay is obvious.

== (1989: 282-83) [2006: 306-07]

FWP:

SETS == A,B; GENERATORS; IZAFAT; SYMMETRY
WINE: {49,1}

The 'six directions' are the usual four, plus 'up' and 'down'. In the first line the commentators go for 'A=B' (the estate is [in] the six directions) (1a), but 'B=A' is equally possible (the [set of] six directions is the estate) (1b). This latter reading makes for an even more 'mischievous' meaning, because then the wine-drinkers don't even have to be given or granted any actual land at all: their estate might be simply 'the six directions' themselves. What does it mean to have 'the six directions' as an estate? Maybe it's totally worthless (the rakish wine-drinkers know they have no worldly property, but in their intoxication they laugh about it and don't give a damn). Or maybe it's the best thing of all, and they are lords of creation (everything in the universe, after all, is somewhere within the domain of the six directions).

Either way, how piquantly it works with the second line. If the wine-drinkers have nothing, then their carefree intoxication becomes a form of faaqah-mastii (on this see {90,3}) that does them credit; while the narrow, 'heedless' materialist is the one who's never satisfied with the world, no matter how much of it he owns. And if the wine-drinkers have everything, then obviously God approves of them, and gives them the glories of the universe, while the 'heedless one' receives nothing and is doomed to find the world a wretched place.

In addition, the wonderful i.zaafat of jaadaad-e baadah-noshii opens up further possibilities. The phrase can mean or 'the estate that is used for wine-drinking'; or 'the estate that pertains to wine-drinking' (in some unspecified way); or, most powerfully 'the estate that is wine-drinking'. Long before we've rung all the changes on all these possibilities, it's clear that this verse is never going to be pinned down.

It's a rare thing to be able to add something to Faruqi's inventory of wordplay examples, but in a verse like this, which is about wine-drinking places and wretched or ruined places, ;xaraab can hardly avoid dragging in its wake ;xaraabaat , which means literally 'a ruin' or 'a desolate place', and by extension also 'a tavern' (Platts p.488). For an example in which ;xaraabaat is used to mean 'wine-house', see {131,1}.

For other such evocations of the 'six directions', see {41,4}.