Most of the great medieval Sūfīs lived saintly lives, dreaming of God, intoxicated with God. When they tried to tell their dreams, being men, they used the language of men. If they were also literary artists, they naturally wrote in the style of their own day and generation. In mystical poetry the Arabs yield the palm to the Persians. Any one who would read the secret of Sūfism, no longer encumbered with theological articles nor obscured by metaphysical subtleties--let him turn to ʿAttār, Jalāluddīn Rūmī, and Jāmī, whose works are partially accessible in English and other European languages. To translate these wonderful hymns is to break their melody and bring their soaring passion down to earth, but not even a prose translation can quite conceal the love of Truth and the vision of Beauty which inspired them. Listen again to Jalāluddīn: “He comes, a moon whose like the sky ne’er saw, awake or dreaming, Crowned with eternal flame no flood can lay. Lo, from the flagon of Thy love, O Lord, my soul is swimming, And ruined all my body’s house of clay. When first the Giver of the grape my lonely heart befriended, Wine fired my bosom and my veins filled up, But when His image all mine eye possessed, a voice descended, ‘Well done, O sovereign Wine and peerless Cup!’” The love thus symbolised is the emotional element in religion, the rapture of the seer, the courage of the martyr, the faith of the saint, the only basis of moral perfection and spiritual knowledge. Practically, it is self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, the giving up of all possessions--wealth, honour, will, life, and whatever else men value--for the Beloved’s sake without any thought of reward. I have already referred to love as the supreme principle in Sūfī ethics, and now let me give some illustrations. “Love,” says Jalāluddīn, “is the remedy of our pride and self-conceit, the physician of all our infirmities. Only he whose garment is rent by love becomes entirely unselfish.” Nūrī, Raqqām, and other Sūfīs were accused of heresy and sentenced to death. “When the executioner approached Raqqām, Nūrī rose and offered himself in his friend’s place with the utmost cheerfulness and submission. All the spectators were astounded. The executioner said, ‘Young man, the sword is not a thing that people are so eager to meet; and your turn has not yet arrived.’ Nūrī answered, ‘My religion is founded on unselfishness. Life is the most precious thing in the world: I wish to sacrifice for my brethren’s sake the few moments which remain.’” On another occasion Nūrī was overheard praying as follows: “O Lord, in Thy eternal knowledge and power and will Thou dost punish the people of Hell whom Thou hast created; and if it be Thy inexorable will to make Hell full of mankind, Thou art able to fill it with me alone, and to send them to Paradise.”