Shaikh Ahmad Jami (1048 – 1141 CE) was born in Namagh, Persia, and died in Jam, in what is present day Afghanistan. He came from a farming family, and was reputedly so tall, strong and courageous (as well as gruff) that he was nicknamed ‘Colossal Elephant.’ Medieval sources say that he had red hair, a wine coloured beard and dark blue eyes. As a young man he was rather dissolute, but witnessing a miracle led him to a spiritual conversion. He then withdrew from the world, living alone in the mountains until, around the age of 40 he began to accept students and teach. His writing influenced the later Sufi Nuradin Abd-ar Rahman Jami, who was born some three hundred years later in Jam.

Each who has seen Your beauty fine
Utters honestly, ‘I have seen the Divine.’

Everywhere Your lovers wait for grace,
Remove Your veil, reveal Your face!

I am in the ocean and an ocean is in me;
This is the experience of one who can see.

He that leaps into the river of Unity,
He speaks of union with his Beloved’s beauty.

Translation Mahmood Jamal