The Material Basis of Spiritual Sensation1. 
39 
BAGH-I-MUATTAR 
 
- I - 
 
ABDULLAH EL HAJI,2 CALLED EL QAHAR3 
 
————— 
 
 
I 
 
THE ABYSS 
 
As I placed the rigid pen4 of my thought within 
the inkstand of my imagination, I tasted the bliss 
of Allah ;  and withdrawing, beheld Night and the 
Void like an hollow vortical shell.5  But it was only 
Habib’s podex ;6 and EL QAHAR would rather pos-
sess Habib’s podex than the universe. 
 
 
 
1.  I am alone responsible for these capital 
summaries ;  but a well known lady mystic in Lon-
don assures me that they are just. 
2.  [Persian text] satirist, not to be confused with 
[Persian text] pilgrim. 
3.  El 
Qahar — The 
Conqueror — Abdullah’s 
‘ Takhallus ’ or cognomen qua poeta. 
4.  Common symbols for member and po-
dex.  See Burton, Priapeia. 
5.  Not the common cowrie, which would be more 
probably taken as an emblem of pudendum mulie-
bre.  [Persian text] is the pearl-oyster shell ;  [Per-
sian text] the cowrie, here the text reads [Persian 
text] shell-whirlpool, which I took to mean the 
common spiral sea-shell.  There may be a less fan-
tastic phrase for this ;  to my Munshi, who had