The Tale of the Four Dervishes

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[edit] Background

A collection of allegorical stories by Amir Khusro in the late 13th century. It is said that Amir Khusro's master and Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya had fallen sick. To cheer him up, Amir Khusro started telling him a series of stories in Alif Laila (Arabian Nights) style. By the end of the stories, Nizamuddin Auliya had recovered, and prayed that anyone who listened to these stories would also be cured.

[edit] Style

The book is in some ways similar to the Thousand and one nights in its method of dovetailing unfinished stories within each other. The central character is a king, Azad Bakht who falls into depression after thinking about his own mortality, and so sets out from his palace seeking wise men. He comes upon four dervishes in a cemetery, and listens in to their fantastical stories.

[edit] Translations

These stories were originally written in Persian by Amir Khusro as "Qissa Chahar Darvesh" (The Tale of the Four Dervishes). It was initially translated by an unknown author into Urdu but the language was a highly literate one and was not understood by general public to enjoy. In 1801, College of Fort William in Calcutta started a project translating Indian literature. Mr. John Borthwick Gilchrist, a famous scholar of literature, asked Mir Amman, an employee of the college, to translate it into the Urdu language. Mir Amman translated it from Persian into everyday Urdu, under the title "Bagh o Bahar" (The Garden and the Spring Season). Later, in 1857, Duncan Forbes retranslated it into English. The translation of Mir Amman is still enjoyed as a classical work of literature for the common daily language of its time.