Post by Murtaza Ali Qazi

The History Behind a Proverb " Ya Moun aur Masoor ki Daal" We all know a proverb is a saying that conveys a specific truth in a simple way. These are short sentences drawn from long experience of popular wisdom. There is a famous Urdu proverb that we have been saying wrong our whole lives Ya Moun Aur Masoor ki Daal?…when the right version is “Ya Moun Aur Mansoor Ko Daar” as told by my late father who was a walking encyclopedia of History and Islamic studies! So who was Mansoor? Born in 858 AD in the Province of Faris, Mansoor Al Hallaj happened to be the most controversial figure in the history of Islamic mysticism. He was a philosopher, a Sufi saint/poet and a teacher and for some a magician, a heretic and a lunatic who was executed for heresy. But to his followers he was a Sufi saint who was martyred allegedly for his ecstatic utterance ‘AN-AL-HAQ’ (I am the truth). This statement landed him to the death on the gallows. The legends surrounding Hallaj are many yet a very little is known about him because his writings were burned to ashes, his only surviving work is Tawasin, which is a collection of short pieces of dialogue between Hallaj, Iblis (Satan) and the Prophet Moses. There’s no way to validate the claim that he ever uttered the words‘AN-AL-HAQ’ (I am truth