The Well-Tempered Lyric of Bīdel Dehlavī (d.1720): Galenic Humoral Theory in Islamic Medical Science, Sufi Thought, and Persian Lyric Practice

Bīdel of Delhi (d.1720) is a philosopher, Sufi, and poet for whom abstract thinking, embodied cognition, and lyric practice are inseparable. This interconnectedness of the physical, the spiritual, and the poetic is especially evident in the way Bīdel inherits the ideal of the well-balanced temperament from Islamic medical science and Sufi thought. He yokes this concept to the important figuration of the human body as a manuscript copy (noskhe) in order to articulate his distinctive vision for how to realize the ethical imperative of self-knowledge. Not one to compose prose treatises, Bīdel distributes his ideas about temperament across several genres in his vast corpus. For instance, in the narrative poem Ṭelesm-e ḥeyrat (The Enchanted World of Wonder, 1669), he unfolds a systematically mapped geography of the embodied human imagination. The reader is taken on a tour of the senses and faculties, is introduced to Galenic theories of temperament, and is invited to consider the interconnectedness of the body and the mind in Sufi spiritual practice – in other words, to see how affect, perception, and imagination are enmattered. This important theoretical discussion undergirds Bīdel’s overarching project of understanding the role of the imagination in the attainment of certain knowledge of true reality.
This paper examines the ideal of the well-balanced temperament (mezāj-e moʿtadel) in Bīdel’s thought. First, the evolution of this concept is briefly traced in the works of Avicenna, Ibn ʿArabī, Hojvīrī, Jāmī, and Dāra Shikoh – a lineage (hypothetically reconstructed, and necessarily schematic!) that aids in the appraisal of the specific functions this concept performs within Bīdel’s own system of thought. By reading passages from Ṭelesm-e ḥeyrat alongside Bīdel’s autobiography, Chahār ʿonṣor (The Four Elements) and one lyric poem, this paper suggests that for Bīdel, the process of working towards self-mastery – striving to become balanced, regulated, un-erratic – involves a laborious lifelong struggle to acquire command simultaneously over one’s physical (corporeal), mental (rational and emotional), and imaginative (creative, poetic) domains. Taking these domains to be conceptually, figuratively, and literally interdependent is a key to understanding what Bīdel means by collectedness (jamʿīyat) and ideal composure (jāmeʿīyat) – the attainment of which is the stated aim of his lyric endeavors.