Hakim Sanai Ghaznavi

Hakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā'ī Ghaznavi was a Afghan Sufi poet who lived in Ghazna between the 11th century and the 12th century. He died around 1131.

Sanai's best known work is The Walled Garden of Truth or the The Hadiqat-ul Haqiqah. Dedicated to Bahram Shah, the work expresses the poet's ideas on God, love, philosophy and reason. The work contains 10,000 couplets in 10 section.

For close to 900 years, in the East at any rate, The Walled Garden of Truth has been consistently read and employed as a classic and Sufi textbook. According to Major T. Stephenson: Sanai’s fame has always rested on his Hadiqa; it is the best known and in the East by far the most esteemed of his works; it is in virtue of this work that he forms one of the great trio of Sufi teachers — Sanai, Attar, Jalaludin Rumi.. Sanai taught that lust and greed, emotional excitement, stood between humankind and divine knowledge, which was the only true reality (Haqq). Love('Ishq') and a social conscience are for him the foundation of religion; mankind is asleep, living in what is in fact a desolate world. Sanai's view on common religion was that it was only habit and ritual.

Sanai's poetry had a tremendous influence upon Persian literature. He is considered the first poet to use verse forms as the qasidah (ode), the ghazal (lyric), and the masnavi (rhymed couplet) to express the philosophical, mystical, and ethical ideas of Sufism. His book of poetry (divan) contains some 30,000 verses.

Hakim Sanai's Works:

a) Kulliyat containing thirty thousand verses

( Seven Mathnavis viz.

(1) Hadiqa (2) Sayr-al-Abad (3) Kamama-i-Balkh (4) Tariqa-al-Tahqiq (5) Ishq-nameh (6) Aql-nameh (7) Bahruz-Bahram. Hadiqa is the only extant work of Sana’i, others are extinct.


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