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Tiel Aisha Ansari's poem "Dervish Lion" is in four parts, the narrator speaking to the wind, a mountain, the tide, and a lion. (Possibly corresponding to four elements, if the lion can be interpreted as fire?) The wind, mountain, and tide reply in largely expected ways: the wind is "nothing but the hot breath of the sun", the mountain is "nothing but the stillness of the earth", and the tide is "nothing but the cold dance of the moon". The lion, on the other hand, is much more aggressive, leaping at the narrator and roaring:

"I AM NOTHING, NOTHING
nothing but the hunger of your heart for Allah!"

What is this lion, or what does it represent? It's called a dervish, but so are the more placid wind, mountain, and tide. It has "ozone crackling in his mane", which strikes me as odd imagery, and maybe relates to the fire connection that I conjectured above. Why is the lion "the hunger of your heart for Allah"? (Ansari is described as a "Sufi warrior poet", and she presumably knows what she's talking about when it comes to Islam and Sufiism and dervishes. There might be some deeper connection or significance here.)

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Since I originally answered this question I've come back for two further bites at the cherry, trying to tie the lion down to Sufism in a very precise way, although continued reading of and about the author began to make me think that this was a futile and possibily misguided effort. So I wrote to Tiel Aisha Ansari to ask if she was interested in stopping by to answer the question herself.

I received a very gracious and helpful response from her, the most pertinent part of which is reproduced below:

I have to say, you are overthinking the lion (though I realize this is due to how the original question was framed; perhaps it was not the right question). Consider the structure of the poem. The speaker addresses four entities about an attribute that seems powerful. In each case, the entity replies "I am nothing," my power comes from elsewhere, from something much larger. It's this relationship that's important, not the nature of the entities themselves.

The lion behaves differently than the first three entities for two reasons. First, the lion is driven by the heart-Allah connection, which is of a different nature and far more powerful than the sun, moon, or earth. Second, the lion offers the speaker self-knowledge ("the hunger of your heart") which is always impactful and potentially dangerous. Revelation is not to be handled lightly.

I think I am going to leave my over-wrought, over-thought lion-ponderings in place, partly because it's an object lesson in how we can over-think things especially in response to questions, sometimes we let the question shape the answer more than we realise. I'm currently listening to a lecture series called 'Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills by Professor Steven Novella M.D.' which warns of the risks of looking for evidence to prove rather than test or disprove a hypothesis. That's probably what I was doing here, particularly to start with. I was looking for information that supported lions having a particular symbolism of some sort within Sufism which needed a Sufi-specific explanation rather than looking at the fact that inanimate things were paired with inanimate things and living things with the spiritual and literal heart of the speaker.

Previous answer follows.


A lion paces the sand with ozone crackling in his mane
and streaks of blood on his hollow flanks.
Lion, dervish lion
what makes you so hungry?
He springs and knocks me to the ground!

The ozone crackling, the expectation of a fire link and the sudden leap make it likely that the lion is lightning.

The wikipedia article on lighting describes the build up to a lightning strike:

Warning signs of an impending strike nearby can include a crackling sound, sensations of static electricity in the hair or skin, the pungent smell of ozone, or the appearance of a blue haze around persons or objects.

I can't account for the streaks of blood, unless that is a reference to the intense lighting conditions that a thunder a lightning storm is sometimes accompanied by.

Edit: I also found this entry at britannica.com on spiritual states of mind in Sufism:

Ḥāl, (Arabic: “condition”, ) plural Aḥwāl, in Ṣūfī Muslim mystical terminology, a spiritual state of mind that comes to the Ṣūfī from time to time during his journey toward God. The aḥwāl are graces of God that cannot be acquired or retained through an individual’s own efforts. When the soul is purified of its attachments to the material world, it can only wait patiently for those spiritual gifts of God, which, when they come, fill the Ṣūfī with the desire to continue his journey with new energy and higher expectations.

The aḥwāl are distinguished by most Ṣūfīs from the maqāms (spiritual stages) in two main aspects. First, the aḥwāl are usually transitory; like flashes of lightning they come into the heart and disappear.

The wikipedia entry on Haal uses similar terminology:

A ḥāl is by nature transient and one should not attempt to prolong it. It results from psychological or spiritual influences which affect the man during his progress towards God. Related concepts are ecstasy (wajd), annihilation (istilam), happiness (bast), despondency (qabd), awakening (sahû), intoxication (sukr), etc. They arise like flashes on the horizon, blinding flashes of lightning which disappear immediately.

The fact that both sources liken the experience of hal to lightning, may suggest that this is an established concept in sufism.

As to why a hal may be represented as a lion: According to the thicketandthorp.com blog, in an entry titled 'Lions, Pomegranates, and Sufi Saints', in ʻAbd Allāh ibn Asʻad al-Yāfiʻī’s collection of hagiographic tales, Khalāsa al-Mafākhir Fī Manāqib al-Shaykh ʻAbd al-Qādir, we find this story, in which I have bolded a relevant passage:

According to Shaykh al-Ṣāliḥ Abū al-Farj ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd Mu’ālī ibn Halāl al-‘Abādānī: I heard from my father a story he related from his father who said: I heard Shaykh al-‘Azab, God be pleased with him, say: ‘No one visits us (yazūrunā: a quasi-technical term for visiting a Sufi shaykh, or the tomb of a saint) unless we want him to.’ So he [the relator’s grandfather] said: So I intended to visit him one time, and an impulse arose in me of this sort so that I said to myself: ‘Ha! I will visit him if he wants it or not.’ Then when I came to the door of the living-place [of the shaykh], I saw a mighty lion—he frightened me with his gaze! Then he bared his teeth at me, so I turned on my heels and fled! And my impatience had increased—or he [the relator] said, my fear—and I was used to hunting and killing lions, so when I was a ways away I stopped, and watched the lion: people were entering and leaving and he did not oppose them—they didn’t even see him, it seemed to me. The next day I came back, and he was in his same place, acting the same way, and when he saw me he stood up before me, so I fled from him. This was my condition in relation to the lion for a month: I was incapable of entering or even getting close to the door. So I went to one of the shaykhs of the Baṭā’iḥ5 and complained to him about my condition, so he said: ‘Look within yourself for which sin has brought this about.’ So I mentioned to him my impulsive thought, and he said: ‘It has come from it—and the lion which you saw is the state (ḥāl) of Shaykh Ibrāhīm.’ He [the relator’s grandfather] said: So I sought God’s forgiveness, and intended repentance from my opposition. So I went to the living-quarters, and the lion stood and entered in, going to the shaykh and those mingling around him, and was hidden from me. And when I came before the shaykh, he said to me: ‘Welcome, O penitent one!’

So, supposing that 'hunger for Allah' qualifies as a 'hal', there is precedent for it to be manifest as a lion.


Edit: Returning to this question some months later having listened to an interview with the author where she read this poem. She didn't expand on interpretation of the poem, but did speak briefly about being a convert to Sufism, and having lived in Tanzania.

This provoked me to read a little more about her and to have another look for some concrete answer to 'why a lion?', supposing that there might be something to be found about drawing out her African childhood with references to African wildlife or somesuch. To this end I spent some time poking around her blog 'Knocking from Inside' including her 'manifesto', in part IV of which she discusses what poetry is and means for her. 'Why poetry?' To which her essential answer is 'The purpose of poetry is to serve God', she goes on to explain that this doesn't just include those poems which overtly praise God.

She also observes that

asking what a poem is "about" can be as problematic as asking "What does it mean?" In particular, a poem may praise God without explicitly being "about" Him. As a Sufi, I believe that the divine essence is inherent in everything.

This leads on to her relationship to her own verse

This Verse Does Not Belong To Me

For me, the experience of writing poetry is often more like remembering something than “making up” something. Poetry comes through, not from, the poet: we are transmitters rather than creators. ... The ideal for a poet is to become simply a conduit. The self dissolves, God’s thoughts pass through and fall on the page, unfiltered, uncensored, and pure.

She captures this philosophy in the poem 'Drinking from the Source'

This verse does not belong to me
My hands are still, my tongue is dumb.
Not composition, memory.

I tried to fashion poetry,
My self-claimed efforts, poorly done
This verse does not belong to me.

"I have no gift. It's just not me."
"I've tried to write, but it won't come."
Not composition, memory.

The wind blows through the sighing tree,
The surf makes silent rocks a drum.
These voices don't belong to me.

They say it's creativity.
It's not from here. Where is it from?
Not "making up", but memory.

Remembrance is the missing key.
This poetry from elsewhere comes.
These verses don't belong to me
They're written down from memory.

So it is possible that her answer to 'why a lion?' might be, because that's what it was, what it has to be'.

Returning to the wikipedia page on Haal referenced in the first half of this answer, Encyclopædia Iranica is quoted:

someone who is viewing a piece of art or reading a particular passage must be in the same ḥāl as the creator was at the time of work’s creation. Failing to do this will only result in a lack of understanding between the creator and his audience.

Which might mean the answer to 'why a lion?' can be crudely summarised as 'if you have to ask, you wouldn't understand'.

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  • Ooh, good find. That would explain the four-elements thing that I thought I spotted before, since lightning ~ fire. But I'm still interested in why lightning would be a lion (none of the other natural features are symbolised by animals in this poem) and why it's "the hunger of your heart for Allah". So +1 but no accept, for now :-)
    – Rand al'Thor
    Jun 14, 2021 at 15:46
  • Huh, always so demanding. Hang on, I've got something you might like.
    – Spagirl
    Jun 14, 2021 at 15:52
  • "if you have to ask, you wouldn't understand" - well that makes this site look a bit pointless :-P Nice research, maybe in the end I will accept this answer after all.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Aug 31, 2021 at 7:06
  • @Randal'Thor I wouldn’t say that about any question that wasn’t about a piece from a martial artist Sufi warrior…. There is an email address on her blog so I thought about asking her. I might do that yet.
    – Spagirl
    Aug 31, 2021 at 9:13
  • @Randal'Thor Well for better or worse, I've dropped an email to the author to ask if she is open to stopping by to help us out.
    – Spagirl
    Sep 1, 2021 at 14:35

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