A087 - Hafiz Shirazi

 Hafiz Shirazi

Hafiz Shirazi (Muhammad Shams al-Din Hafiz Shirazi) (Shams al-Din Muhammad Shirazi) (Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muḥammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī) (Hafez) (1315-1390).  Known by his pen name Hāfez, Hafiz Shirazi was the most celebrated Persian lyric poet and is often described as a poet's poet. His collected works (Divan) are to be found in the homes of most Iranians, who learn his poems by heart and use them as proverbs and sayings to this day. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, and have influenced post-Fourteenth Century Persian writing more than anything else has.

Hafiz was a Persian poet who, by common consent, is deemed to be the greatest and most popular poet of ghazals (lyrics) in the Persian language.  Originally named Muhammad Shams al-Din, he gained the respectful title Hafiz, meaning “one who has memorized the Qur’an,” as a teacher of the Qur’an.  He was a member of the order of Sufi mystics and also, at times, a court poet.  His poems on one level celebrate the pleasures of drinking, hunting, and love at the court of Shiraz.  On a deeper level, according to some scholars, they reflect his consuming devotion as a Sufi to union with the divine.  They also satirize hypocritical Muslim religious leaders.

Hafiz was born in Shiraz (now in Iran) into a poor family.  His father, Baha al-Din, was a petty businessman from Isfahan who had settled in Shiraz.  The poet’s mother was from Kazirun, a town to the southwest of Shiraz.  The death of Baha al-Din left the family in dire poverty.  Shams al-Din had to earn his living (reportedly as a baker’s apprentice) at a young age, but he managed to receive a sound education in his hometown, which, despite repeated political turmoil, was still a major center of learning in the Islamic world.  He mastered the Arabic language, studied religious sciences, and attained the status of hafiz.  His poetry bears witness to his thorough knowledge of the early masters of Persian poetry. 

Hafiz Shirazi, the supreme lyricist in the classical Persian language, lived his whole life in his native Shiraz (except for a brief interlude in the early 1370s).  Though Hafiz lived in poverty in his youth, his brilliant academic record won him a position of influence and wealth at the royal court in Shiraz.

Hafiz lived in troubled times, witnessing the fall of two dynasties.  His first royal patron was Shaikh Abu Ishaq Inju, under whose liberal rule Hafiz seems to have enjoyed the comforts of life.  But Abu Ishaq was defeated and killed in 1353 by the Muzaffarid Mubariz al-Din Muhammad, who decided to make Shiraz his capital.   Muhammad was a ruthless religious zealot who had no use for Hafiz and his poetry, although his vizier seems to have patronized the poet.  Muhammad’s stern religious restrictions imposed on the wine-loving Shirazis gave him the sobriquet Muhtasib (“one who restricts”) that Hafiz immortalized in more than one ode.   However, in 1358, Muhammad was deposed and blinded by his son, Shah Shoja, himself a poet of some merit.  Hafiz could not but express his delight at the turn of events, but for reasons that are not entirely clear he lost the new monarch’s favor and had to try his fortune at Isfahan and Yazd, other centers of Muzaffarid rule.  Disappointed, he returned to Shiraz after a year or two, calling Yazd “Alexander’s Prison.”  In 1387, Shiraz was captured by Timur, who reportedly had an encounter with the poet and, impressed with his wit, granted him royal favor.

Except for short sojourns in Isfahan and Yazd and a reported trip as far as Hormuz on the way to India, Hafiz spent all of his life in his beloved Shiraz, which he has characterized as “Solomon’s Dominion” (Mulk-i Sulayman).  He is reported to have had a teaching job at a religious college in Shiraz, but his main source of income seems to have been the allowances and gifts he received from the court and the nobles whom he panegyrized.  Particularly in his old age, however, he led a life of poverty.  His poetry is rich in Sufi symbolism and imagery, but we have no report concerning his attachment to any particular Sufi order.

Hafiz died and was buried in Shiraz.  His wife and son predeceased him.  His mausoleum (the Hafiziyya) in Shiraz is the best-known monument there and a site frequenty visited by tourists.  During the last ten years of the Pahlavi regime parts of the much-publicized annual art festival of Shiraz were held in the Hafiziyya.

Hafiz is considered the pre-eminent master of the ghazal form of poetry.  He excelled not only in selection of lyrical phrases but also in juxtaposition of metaphors that maximize the ambiguity of his dominant theme.  For Hafiz, the theme of love in all its variations (bodily and spiritual, profane and sacred, terrestrial and celestial) absorbs the attention of man and draws man to the heights, and the depths, of emotional, aesthetic and mystical experience.

Hafiz’s poems have traditionally been interpreted as mystical allegories, to such an extent that his poems, like Virgil’s in Europe, were opened at random in search of a guide to conduct.  However, Western scholarship now inclines to take them literally.  Thus, the use of the term “Beloved” in his love poems is today taken to stand for a human beauty and not for God. 

Hafiz’s work, collected under the title of Divan, contains more than 500 poems, most of them in the form of a ghazal, a short traditional Persian form that he perfected.  Each consists of up to 15 highly structured rhyming couplets dealing with one subject.  The language is simple, lyrical, and heartfelt.  Hafiz is greatly admired both in Iran and, in translation, in the West.  Especially appealing are his love for the common person and his relation of daily life to the search of humanity for the eternal. 
Shirazi, Hafiz see Hafiz Shirazi
Muhammad Shams al-Din Hafiz Shirazi see Hafiz Shirazi
Shams al-Din Muhammad Shirazi see Hafiz Shirazi
Muhammad Shams al-Din see Hafiz Shirazi
Khwaja Sams ud-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Sirazi see Hafiz Shirazi
Hafez see Hafiz Shirazi