I have recently been playing with a Middle Eastern music group, and last week one of us came up with a song in Persian to words by Rumi. The poet says that he is so drunk (with divine love) that if someone were to grow wheat on his grave and try to bake bread from it, the bread would turn to alcohol which would not only intoxicate anyone who ate it, the oven itself would get drunk and dance.

Which sounds like it has to have been derived from some version of John Barleycorn current in
mediaeval Persian/Anatolian culture.

There are quite a lot of just-pre-Islamic songs about drink in Arabic, anyone know them and know if there's a John Barleycorn in there?