Sufi Story: Hazrat Shabli and Eunuchs

Dervish Painting

Shabli once disappeared from Baghdad, no one knew where. At last he was discovered in a house of eunuchs, sitting with humid eye and dry lips among these grotesque creatures.

His friends said: “This is no place for you who are a student of divine mysteries”.

Shabli replied: ‘These persons, in the way of religion, are neither men nor women. I am as they. I sink in inertia, and my virility is a reproach. If you use praise and blame to make distinctions you are creating idols. When you conceal a hundred idols under your khirka, why appear before men as a Sufi?’

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