Let not those who are niggardly with the bounty that God has given them reckon that it is better for them. In the language of knowledge and according to the Shariah, “niggardliness” is withholding the in- cumbent. The incumbent in wealth is a little bit of a lot, so a man gives the poor a little and keeps a lot for himself. But in the language of the Tariqah and the folk of allusion, niggardliness is leaving a little for oneself, a tiny amount of property, or a moment of the state. “The ransomed slave stays a slave so long as a dirham is owed.” Wealth and states in the path of these chivalrous men have the form of a dog, and passion in its own world has the form of an angel. MuṣṬafā's Shariah reports that the angel gets along badly with the dog and never descends into a house that has one. “No angel enters the house within which there is a dog or pictures.” When will the angel come forth if you do not take the dog from the door and the painting from the wall? When will you arrive at AḤmad and Abū Bakr, with a spider spinning its web at the door of the cave? Lift up the veil so that down may come a litter of magnificence to the bench of the threshold. [DS 200]
