icient. Just as we form certain sense-perceptions and recognise
their conditions with certainty, and base further scientific
investigations upon them, so in the spiritual realm we form certain
perceptions and build upon them; but he who does not adopt this method,
understands nothing of philosophy."

Continuing, he assumes a peculiar theory of light, which betrays a
really Persian origin. One special light he designates by the old
Persian word "Isfahbad." The Godhead Itself he calls the "light of
lights." In other places he borrows from Neo-Platonism. He assumes a
region in the heavenly spheres where the ideal prototypes of existing
things are found. The saints and devout ascetics, according to him, have
the power to call those ideal prototypes into real existence, and these
can produce at their wish, food, figures or melodies, etc.

Suhrawardy's optimistic way of conceiving the world is peculiar for a
Moslem. While Islam regards the world as a vale of tears, and earthly
life as a time of temptation, he finds the evil in this world much less
than the good. The following sentences of his work are noteworthy:
"Know that souls in whom the heavenly illuminations are lasting, reduce
the material world to obedience. Their supplication is heard in the
Upper World, and fate has already decreed that the supplication of such
a person for such an object should be heard. The light which streams
from the highest world is the Elixir of power and knowledge and the
world obeys it. In the purified souls is reproduced a reflex of God's
light, and a creative ray is focussed in them. The 'evil eye' is only a
light-power, which influences objects and injures them." Soon after
Suhrawardy had been put to death, nearly the whole of his books were
committed to the flames by order to the Caliph Nasir.

[54] From Von Kremer.

CHAPTER XIV

JALALUDDIN RUMI

Jalaluddin Rumi has been called by Professor Ethe (in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_) "the greatest pantheistic writer of all ages." However that
may be, he is certainly the greatest mystical poet of Persia, though not
so well known in Europe as Saadi, Hafiz and Omar Khayyam. Saadi,
Jalaluddin's contemporary, seems to have been conscious of this, for
when asked by the Prince of Shiraz to send him the finest poem which had
been published in Persia, he sent an ode from Jalaluddin's "Diwan."

Jalaluddin ("the glory of religion") was born at Balkh, in Central Asia
(1207 AD), where