ABSTRACT
On hearing this song the dervishes fell into ecstasy and kept up the dance till daybreak. The qawwal sang the quatrain so often that AbU Sa'id got it by heart. When he returned home, he asked his father the meaning of the verses that had thrown the dervishes into such transports of joy. "Hush!" said his father, "you camiot understand what they mean: what does it matter to you?" Afterwards, when AbU Sa' id had attained to a high spiritual degree, he used sometimes to say of his father, who was then dead, "I want Babu Bu '1Khayr to-day, to tell him that he himself did not know the meaning of what he heard on that night 1 . "
