ای ساربان آهسته ران
Aye Sarban Ahesta Ran
“O Camel Driver, Go Slowly”
O Camel Driver, Go Slowly — Rumi's great poem of the departing caravan, asking the driver to slow so the speaker can catch one last sight of the beloved camp that is leaving them behind.
About This Recording
O Camel Driver, Go Slowly asks for delay: the caravan is moving, the beloved is leaving, and the speaker wants just a little more time before the separation becomes permanent. The camel driver, in classical Persian poetry, is an intermediary figure — the one who controls the pace at which lovers are parted, the one on whom the speaker must rely when their own will is insufficient.
Ahmad Zahir's recording of this poem makes it feel as much a folk song as a classical text — the arrangement is accessible, the delivery conversational, the emotion legible without knowledge of the classical tradition. This was part of his particular gift: to be the bridge between the learned and the popular, to carry the weight of the tradition without making that weight felt as a burden on the listener.
Poetic Source & Adaptation
Rumi (attr.)
Attributed to Jalal al-Din Rumi, though textual attribution is debated. The poem belongs to the tradition of the camel-caravan farewell — a Central Asian form with roots in pre-Islamic Arabic and Persian poetry, where the caravan's departure carries the beloved away from the speaker. Ahmad Zahir's setting treats it as a folk song as much as a classical poem.