Hatim Tai – as a fictional character inspired by the legendary chieftain from pre-Islamic Arabia Felix – is a strange hero. I must confess that as a child I found Hatim rather dull when I compared him with the immensely robust and invincible Amir Hamza – the protagonist of Urdu’s longest dastaan – or Hamza’s intelligence chief – the cunning and hilarious Amr Ayyar, who is now generally known as Umro Ayyar.
As a child, the only moment when I heartily laughed while reading the Araish-e-Mehfil – Haider Baksh Haideri’s 1802 Urdu translation of Persian dastaan Haft Sayr – came when Hatim cuts one of his buttocks to feed a starving wolf so that the predator might spare the life of a mother deer.
Hilarious or not, this episode – which appears at the very beginning of the first of his seven arduous journeys – encapsulates Hatim Tai’s character.
Hatim is a moral hero. He is mortal and does not possess superhuman strength but he is always ready to sacrifice even his life in order to help not only his fellow human beings but all creatures of God, including animals. Sacrifice is one of the main themes of the Araish-e-Mehfil, also known as Haft Sayr.
Munir Shami, the prince of Khwarazm, has fallen in love with Husn Banu, the daughter of Barzakh the Merchant, but the latter will only marry the person who answers her seven questions – which are more like seven seemingly impossible tasks or labours.
Hatim, the young prince of Yemen, undertakes these herculean tasks for the sake of Munir Shami just to help this stranger meet his beloved and spends ten years, seven months and nine days of his life in search of the answers to Husn Banu’s riddles while also facing innumerable difficulties.
However, it would be wrong to suggest that Hatim’s only power is his magnanimity, generosity and selflessness and immense pity. Hatim seems to have the strange ability to communicate with all orders of creation including people of every region, animals, fairies, giants, mermaids and even death.
He also possesses an amulet – a “mohra” presented to him by his first wife, the daughter of a bear – which miraculously protects him from all poisons and fire.
And he makes it a point to help all and solve everyone’s problems. That is why he offers a lion to either devour him or his horse in order to satisfy its hunger; presents a piece of his meat to a wolf and intercedes with badgers on behalf of jackals and a hunter on behalf of a fox.
In fact Hatim’s merciful and caring nature often compels him to put his “original tasks” in abeyance to help address the problems of the people and creatures that he accidently meets during his journeys.
While seeking the answer to Husn Banu’s second question, Hatim comes across another desperate lover – an itinerant merchant – who is unable to undertake the three labours his beloved has set as a precondition to their marriage.
Upon hearing his plight, Hatim immediately sets out to solve those riddles as well. However, these temporary deviations in his journey, which also provide digressions from the main narrative – often help the protagonist make new friends and devoted allies who later help him in answering Husn Banu’s questions.
In fact another major theme of Hatim’s story is that if you decide to help someone just for the sake of God, all creatures of God – in fact the entire universe – come to your aid. That is why Hatim seldom sleeps hungry even in the most desolate of wildernesses as some mysterious person often appears from nowhere with a platter of well-prepared food and a pitcher of cold, clean water at the time of a meal.
He is also guided by saintly old men in his dreams and even Hazrat Khizer – the immortal helper of the misguided – comes to his rescue in person more than once when Hatim is enchanted by the magic of Sham Ahmar Jadu. People of distant lands and even animals recognize this hero when they see him or learn about his dedicated self-sacrifice and generosity. There is a mention of Hatim in the oral stories and legends of different cultures, people and creatures, who often welcome him as the savior promised by their ancestors.
However, despite all this, Hatim is a human with some weaknesses. According to famous researcher and scholar Dr Muhammad Aslam Qureshi, Hatim is also highly susceptible to beauty.
“Like all the other lovers of this dastaan, Hatim [is also highly influenced by the beauty of the fair sex] and he loses his mind when he looks at Algan Pari. He [even] faints when he witnesses [the good looks] of Pari Noosh Lub and is smitten by Malka Zari Poosh and becomes a victim of love at first sight.”
In his preface to the Araish-e-Mehfil, Dr Qureshi highlights that despite his immense generosity, the sight of a valley made up of jewels and pearls “makes his mouth water” and he starts greedily filling his pockets with as many jewels as he can.
“Fear is also a part of human nature and Hatim also trembles with fear at times. He is so terrorized once that he cannot muster enough strength to take his mohra [amulet] out of his pocket. He at times closes his eyes and sinks to the ground out of fear. Sometimes he even starts weeping at the thought of death and sometimes he suffers from confusion and anxiety.”
However, the scholar believes that all these shortcomings do not mitigate Hatim’s stature as an Ideal personality rather these weaknesses also make him “a human character” and “immortal personality.
According to Dr Qureshi, the Araish-e-Mehfil [Haft Sayr] is full of direct or implied lessons in morality. He believes that three of the “questions” of Husn Banu – Do good act and cast upon the waters; Don’t do evil, for what goes around comes around and truthfulness ensures happiness – are ethical principles. Dr Qureshi also gleans a number of lines from the book which highlight moral values like “everyone treats his guests gently” or “good people don’t break a promise after making a commitment” or “the people who cause pain to others make their own lives difficult”.
While Dr Qureshi views the Araish-e-Mehfil [or Haft Sayr] as a didactic story, highlighting the moral values as well social and cultural life and beliefs of a people in mediaeval or traditional communities, Duncan Forbes, the man who in 1830 translated Hatim’s story into English, believes that the “one merit” that the dastaan “certainly possesses” is its “humane and heroic tendency”.
Otherwise, to Duncan Forbes, the dastaan is very much similar to European romances of “the chivalrous ages” post crusades in its belief in “demons, fairies, magicians with their enchanted palaces, and talismans and charms.”
According to Forbes, the unknown writer of Haft Sayr has spurned “the bounds of reality” and “has created an ideal world of his own, with that wildness and extravagance of fancy which characterize an eastern imagination.”
But is the Araish-e-Mehfil or the Haft Sayr just a didactic story or a fantasy created by some primitive and superstitious artist? I have no definitive answer to this question but I always feel that the story of Hatim hides a secret and subtle meaning.
The name of Husn Banu’s father “Barzakh” is pretty meaningful as this Arabic word refers to “limbo” – the place where human spirits live prior to the Day of Judgment, according to Islamic metaphysics. Barzakh is not a common name among Muslims.
In his first journey, Hatim ultimately reaches Dasht-e-Huwaida, which literally means the world of manifestations or the material world. It is also aworld of beautiful images. You can watch these images and beautiful forms but if you tried to get hold of them they would disappear.
Sohail Ahmed Khan, a scholar and academic, also hints at the possibility of Hatim’s seven journeys representing the seven stages of Rah-e-Salook, the spiritual path.
He has resembled these seven journeys to the journey of the birds in Farid Uddin Attar’s Mantiq-ut-Tayr – the Conference of the Bird – which is regarded as a text book of Islamic mysticism.
He enumerates names of the seven valleys – valleys of Desire, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Wonderment and Poverty and Annihilation – that the birds in Attar’s book cross to reach their legendary king and then draws parallels between the birds’ tribulations in each valley and Hatim’s journey’s.
“[The first step of Rah-e-Sulook is Desire and Husun Banu’s] first question is also about desire: What I once saw, I long for a second time. In the first journey Hatim continually meets animals and weds the bear's daughter. Probably it means that this journey is taking place within the body.
“[The second question is] “do good and cast it upon the waters”. In this journey, Hatim kills Huluqa – a monster with nine heads by showing it the mirror. If it is the Valley of Love then this monster represents pride and arrogance, which [in Islamic Sufism] is the root cause of all sins.
“The third question is “do no evil; if you do, such shall you meet with”. In this journey Hatim meets fairies and the Angel of Death tells him that he will reach an old age.
“[Husn Banu’s fourth question is] “he who speaks the truth is always happy”. In this journey, the most significant [symbol] is the river of blood on the bank of which there is a tree with human human heads dangling from it and laughing. In this episode, Hatim is also thrown into fire.”
According to Sohail Ahmed Khan, Hatim’s last task is “to bring an account of the Bath of Badgard”, which may represent annihilation of a Sufi’s self. I tend to agree with Khan.
Haft Sayr or Araish-e-Mehfil?
The Haft Sayr is the Persian dastaan about Hatim Tai. According to Duncan Forbes, the manuscript of “Haft Sayr” that he translated into his “Adventures of Hatim Tai” was “procured in the East in 1824” and it did not mention the time and place of its writing.
While translating ‘Haft Sayr”, he came across eight other manuscripts with slight variations in narrative.
The Araish-e-Mehfil is the Urdu translation of the Haft Sayr, by Haider Baksh Haideri, an employee of Calcutta’s Fort-William College. The Araishe-e-Mehfil appeared for the first time in 1801.
In his preface, Haideri writes that he translated the book written by “someone” in Persian into “Zuban-e-Rekhta” – that is Urdu – while also making some additions to make the story longer and interesting.
Duncan Forbes, however, writes that the manuscript of the Haft Sayr at the Fort-William College – which Haideri apparently relied on – was “greatly abridged”. “The adventures and scenes that remain [in the Fort-William] manuscript are altered and the language rendered more flowery and artificial.”
Interestingly, Forbes’s translation also censors many scenes or dialogues probably in an attempt not to hurt the moral sensibilities of the Victorian Age. For example, he has translated “buttocks” as “thigh” in the first adventure.
He also changes the dialogues in the sequence when the King of Bears tries to persuade Hatim to marry his daughter and tells him that: “Men and animal are the same when it comes to sexual urge [shehwat]”.
“For particular reasons, the whole truth of the original is not given here,” Duncan Forbes writes in the footnote to a passage where the consummation of the bear’s daughter and Hatim is described.
Husn Banu’s seven questions or labours
1. What I once saw, I long for a second time
2. Do good and cast it upon the waters
3. Do no evil; if you do such shall you meet with
4. He who speaks the truth is always happy
5. Let him bring an account of the Mount of Nida
6. Let him produce a pearl of the size of a duck’s egg
7. Let him bring an account of the Bath of Badgard