Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Read online

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  31 Schimmel, ‘Ḥāfiẓ and His Contemporaries’, p. 943.

  32 Cited by Jalāl Khāliqī-Muṭlaq, ‘Tan-kāma-sarayī’, p. 27.

  33 On important verse-parallels between Ḥāfiẓ and Khwājū, see Manṣūr Rastigār-Fasā’ī, Ḥāfiẓ: paydā’ī va pinhān-i zindigī, pp. 20–1; Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, pp. 294–5; Dīwān-i Khwājū Kirmānī, ed. Qāni‘ī, passim; Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 68–74; ‘Alī Akbar Dihkhudā, Lughat-nāma, V, pp. 7497–8.

  34 Ṣafā, Tārīkh-i Adabiyāt-i Īrān, III, p. 1073.

  35 The ghazal from which this verse derives is featured in a number of good manuscripts, although it is found neither in Qazwīnī’s or Khānlarī’s editions; for a good overview of opposing scholarly opinions on this verse, see Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 306–8.

  36 See the various verses by Khwājū concerning these issues, cited by Ḥasan Anvarī in his introduction (‘Ṭarz-i sukhan-i Khwājū’) to Dīwān-i Khwājū Kirmānī, ed. Qāni‘ī, pp. vi–viii. See also Yāsimī, ‘Salmān va Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 599–602.

  37 Yārshāṭir, Shi‘r-i fārsī dar ‘ahd-i Shāhrukh, p. 83.

  38 Samarqandī, Tadhkirat al-shu‘arā’, ed. ‘Abbāsī, p. 286.

  39 Yāsimī, Sharḥ-i aḥwāl-i Salmān Sāvajī, p. 105.

  40 Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 329–34, Browne, Literary History of Persia, III, pp. 296–8, and Taqī Tafaḍḍulī’s introduction to Dīvān-i Salmān Sāvajī, ed. Mushfiq, pp. xxvii–xxxii, where the poetic parallels between them are presented. Ṣafā, Tārīkh-i Adabiyāt-i Īrān, III, p. 1013 points out ‘the unity of metre, rhyme, and poetic imagery in some of the ghazals of Salmān and Ḥāfiẓ is so omnipresent as to make one imagine that these two masters were in correspondence with each other, consciously vying with one other in composing similar ghazals’. For further parallelisms, see Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 79–85.

  41 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 251: 13.

  42 Dīvān-i Salmān Sāvajī, ed. Mushfiq, p. 182.

  43 Ibid., p. 232.

  44 Dīvān-i Ḥilālī Chughatā’ī. This verse is cited in the famous 1960s Iranian music programme: Barg-i Sabz, no. 293.

  45 Losensky, ‘Kamāl of Khojand’.

  46 On which, see Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 85–90; Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 337–9; Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 34–5.

  47 Referring to the Shīrāzi ruler Abū’l-Favāris Jalāl al-Dīn Shāh Shujā‘ (reg. 760/1358–786/1384) to whom Ḥāfiẓ addressed several panegyrics.

  48 Dīvān-i Kamāl Khujandī, ed. Shidfar, vol. 1, p. 451 (ghazal 428, in reply to Ḥāfiẓ’s ghazal 163 [vv. 9–10], ed. Khānlarī). Ghanī (Baḥth, p. 34) believes the entire ghazal from which this verse was drawn was written as a welcoming response (istiqbāl) to Ḥāfiẓ’s original. But Kamāl’s comments about Ḥāfiẓ are indeed sometimes abusive (cf. Lewisohn, ‘The Life and Times of Kamāl Khujandī’).

  49 Dawlatabādī, ‘Kamāl Khujandī va Ḥāfiz Shīrāzī’, in idem., Tuḥfa-yi darvīsh, pp. 529–35.

  50 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazals 8: 3; 47: 8; 444: 5, in which ‘name and shame’ (nām u nang) are repudiated.

  51 Dīwān-i Kamāl Khujandī, ed. Shidfar, no. 233: 1.

  52 Ibid., no. 282: 5

  53 For a discussion of this doctrine in classical Islamic love philosophy, see Griffen, The Theory of Profane Love Among the Arabs, pp. 118–37.

  54 Sa‘dī, Kulliyāt-i Sa‘dī, ed. Muḥammad ‘Alī Furūghī, ghazal 309, p. 524 (maqṭa‘); ghazal 251: 7.

  55 See J.T.P. De Bruijn, ‘‘Emād al-Dīn ‘Alī Faqīh Kermānī’, EIr, VIII, pp. 378–9.

  56 See Dīvān-i qaṣā’id va ghazaliyyāt-i Khwāja ‘Imād al-Dīn ‘Alī Faqīh Kirmānī, ed. Rukn al-Dīn Humāyūn-Farrakh (who discusses the relationship between Ḥāfiẓ and ‘Imād Faqīh), pp. lxv–lxviii. Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 322–6, also discounts these legends.

  57 See the examples given by Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 324–6.

  58 Cf. Mu‘īn’s remarks to this effect: ibid., I, p. 324.

  59 There is a large bulk of scholarship on the relationship (or lack thereof) between the Ḥāfiẓ and Shāh Ni‘matu’llāh, of which Ḥamid Farzām, Taḥqīq dar aḥwāl va naqd-i āthār va afkār-i Shāh Ni‘matu’llāh Walī, pp. 276–301, provides a learned overview. For discussions about the ghazal in question, see Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 293–6, and ‘Alī Aṣghar Maẓharī Kirmānī, ‘Shāh Ni‘matu’llāh Walī Kirmānī va Khvāja Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī’, pp. 12–21.

  60 Kulliyāt-i Qāsim-i Anvār, p. 281: 4621.

  61 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 418: 7. Parallel adduced by Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, p. 298.

  62 See Hasan Javadi, trans. ‘Obeyd-e Zakani: the Ethics of Aristocrats and Other Satirical Works.

  63 See J.T.P. De Bruijn, ‘‘Ubayd-i Zakānī’, EI2, X, p. 764.

  64 ‘Abbās Iqbāl’s squeamish judgement about his 64 largely pornographic quatrains in his introduction to Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd Zākānī, ed. Maḥjūb, p. xli.

  65 His pornographic works have been fully published in the West in Persian (Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd Zākānī) and a large selection translated in Paul Sprachman’s Suppressed Persian: An Anthology of Forbidden Literature, pp. 44–75.

  66 Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd Zākānī, ‘A. Iqbāl’s introduction, p. xli.

  67 Cf. the reference to bad-nāmī in Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd Zākānī, ghazal 78, v. 575, replicated by Ḥāfiẓ’s ghazal (ed. Khānlarī) 177: 5 (composed in the same metre and rhyme).

  68 Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 315–16 on this, and also pp. 320ff. for the literary parallels between the two poets.

  69 Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, p. 315.

  70 Riyāḥī, Gulgasht, p. 59; Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 48.

  71 Ḥāfiẓ never used hazl or hajv, as Khurramshāhī (‘Ḥāfiẓ dar farhang-i mā u farhang-i mā dar Ḥāfiẓ’, p. 137) stresses.

  72 Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, p. 315, n. 28.

  73 See Dominic Brookshaw, ‘Odes of a poet-princess: the ghazals of Jahān-Malik Khātūn’, p. 174, who also points out that there is a ‘noticeable degree of overlap in the rhyme, meter and content ... between the ghazals of Ḥāfiẓ and Jahān-Malik’ (p. 188, n. 60), with the implication that they influenced each other.

  74 See Rastigār-Fasā’ī, ed., Kulliyāt-i Bushāq Aṭ‘amah, introduction, pp. lxvii–lxxviii; and Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 345–9, who provides a shortlist of these parodies of contemporary poets. See also Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 35–8, for his parodies of Ḥāfiẓ.

  75 For example, on the influence of Sa‘dī on Ḥāfiẓ, see, e.g.: Adīb Ṭūsī, ‘Muqāyisa bayn-i shi‘r-i Sa‘dī va Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 40–60. On Rūmī’s influence on Ḥāfiẓ, see Khurramshāhī, ‘Ḥāfiẓ va ghazaliyyāt-i Shams’, in his Az sabza tā sitāra, pp. 181–92. For further parallels between other poets and Ḥāfiẓ, see idem., Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 40–90.

  76 ‘Azīz Dawlatabādī, ‘Kamāl Khujandī va Ḥāfiz Shīrāzī’, in his Tuḥfa-yi darvīsh, p. 534. See also Franklin Lewis’ essay in this volume (p. 267, notes 33–5), where the same point is made.

  77 For further discussion of this phenomenon, see my ‘The Life and Poetry of Mashriqī Tabrīzī’, pp. 115–17. On this grand tradition in Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry, see Carl Ernst’s judicious comments in his The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, pp. 163–4.

  78 Although written in 892/1487 (nearly a century after Ḥāfiẓ’s death), Dawlatshāh Samarqandī’s remark about the over-abundance of poetry in late Timurid Iran easily holds true of the earlier literary milieu of fourteenth-century Shīrāz as well: ‘Today everywhere you go, you find hordes of impostors laying claim to this profession [of poetry]. Wherever you listen is heard some poet muttering
his doggerel verse, wherever you look appears some subtle wit, pleasant jester or critic (laṭīfī u ẓarīfī u naẓīrī [also names of Timurid poets]), yet they cannot tell the difference between verse and barley, between rhyme and an ass’s rump. As the adage goes “the abundance of anything reduces its worth”’ (Tadhkirat al-shu‘arā’, ed. M. ‘Abbāsī, p. 13).

  79 See Yārshāṭir, Shi‘r-i fārsī, pp. 57–71. The poetry fad was particularly widespread among the Sufis, who, as Ghanī (Baḥth dar āthār, II, p. 480) points out, from the eleventh century onwards had begun using poetry in their samā‘ ceremonies and preaching assemblies for contemplative and homiletic purposes.

  80 Yārshāṭir, Shi‘r-i fārsī, p. 54.

  81 Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, pp. 207–8.

  82 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 211: 7.

  83 The two aspects of Ḥāfiẓ’s superior genius and supremacy in being ‘the greatest Persian poet’, as ‘Alī Muḥammad Ḥaqq-shinās (‘Ma‘nā va āzādī dar shi‘r-i Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 157–8) observes, lies (a) in his intratextual appropriation of other poets’ meanings and metaphors in such a manner that his transcreations invariably consitute an improvement on their lines, and (b) the inability of all later poets to improve on him by their own verse imitations.

  84 As Ghanī points out, ‘the impact of Ḥāfiẓ on the city of Shīrāz has been so tremendous that even the bare mention of the word Shīrāz often evokes the name of Ḥāfiẓ in the listener’s mind, for which reason a contemporary poet in a verse speaks of Shīrāz as the “cradle of Ḥāfiẓ”’. Baḥth, II, p. 688.

  85 Khurramshāhī, ‘Ḥāfiẓ dar farhang-i mā u farhang-i mā dar Ḥāfiẓ’, in idem., Ḥāfiẓ Hāfiẓa-yi mā’st, p. 128 – drawing heavily on the depth psychology of C.G. Jung. His statement is echoed by Zaryāb-khū’ī’s (Ā’yina-yi jām, p. 24) view that ‘Ḥāfiẓ is a compendium of our [Persian] culture and the symbol and archetype of the Persian spirit’.

  86 Khurramshāhī, ‘Ḥāfiẓ dar farhang-i mā’, p. 132.

  87 The earliest copy of his poems is an incomplete manuscript composed 20 years after his death; see Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. xiii.

  88 See Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, pp. 1146–7; Fouchécour, Hafiz de Chiraz, introduction, p. 12. This manuscript is currently in the British Library: Or. 3247.

  89 See Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, p. 1148.

  90 See Ibid., II, pp. 1136–7, and his ‘Darbāra-yi muqadama-yi jāma-yi Dīvān, pp. 1145–9.

  91 Dihkhudā, Lughat-nāma, V, p. 7493.

  92 Cited by Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, II, p. 684.

  93 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 218: 3; Browne, Literary History, III, p. 283.

  94 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 431: 9; Browne, Literary History, III, p. 283.

  95 Cf. J. Schimdt, ‘Ḥāfiẓ and Other Persian Authors in Ottoman Bibliomancy: the Extraordinary Case of Kefevī Hüseyn Efendi’s Rāznāme (Late Sixteenth Century)’.

  96 See Sūdī Busnawī, Sharḥ-i Sūdī bar Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, preface by S. Nafīsī, p. 6.

  97 Schimmel, ‘Ḥāfiẓ and His Contemporaries’, p. 939.

  98 Lāhūrī, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, I, Khurramshāhī’s introduction, p. ii. For a good overview of commentaries on his Dīvān, see Rādfar, Ḥāfiẓ-pazhūhān va Ḥāfiẓ-pazhūhī, pp. 271–97.

  99 Lāhūrī, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, I, Khurramshāhī’s introduction, p. iv.

  100 Lāhījī, Mafātīḥ al-i‘jāz fī sharḥ-i Gulshan-i rāz.

  101 Anqaravī, Sharḥ-i kabīr-i Anqaravī bar Mathnawī-yi Mavlavī.

  102 Bahā al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, ‘Printed Editions of the Divān of Hafez’, EIr, XI, pp. 479–80.

  103 For an excellent discussion of these editions, see ibid., pp. 479–83.

  104 Some of these shortcomings are detailed by Aḥmed, ‘Naẓarī bar Dīwān-i Ḥāfiẓ Chāp-i Duktur Qāsim-i Ghanī va Qazwīnī va Chāp-i Duktur Khānlarī’; idem., ‘Credibility of the Diwan of Ḥāfiẓ Published by the Late Mr. Qazwini and by Dr. Khānlarī’, pp. 63–82. For other critical comments on Khānlarī’s edition, see Ḥusayn Haravī, ‘Sukhanī az taṣḥīḥ-i jadīdī az Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 141–55; and idem., ‘Nuktahā dar taṣḥīḥ-i Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 177–202.

  105 On this edition, see the bibliography, s.v. ‘Ḥāfiẓ’.

  106 Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, II, p. 690.

  107 See Bahā al-Dīn Khurramshāhī, ‘Rawnaq-i bāzār-i Ḥāfiẓ-shināsī’, in his Chārdah ravāyat, pp. 142–8, for a good account of Iranian scholarship on Ḥāfiẓ down to the late 1980s.

  108 As Mu‘īn observed: ‘All the most articulate and persuasive writers in history have thrown up their hands, despairing of ever matching his eloquence, acknowledging their impotence to create anything equal to his verse’. Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, II, p. 686. For a good discussion of why Ḥāfiẓ always has the final say and ends up defeating the Iranian literary reformists and modernist critics who would accuse him of being ‘out of step with the times’, see Hamadānī, ‘Chirā Ḥāfiẓ? Ta’ammulī dar ma‘nā-yi tārīkhī-yi Ḥāfiẓ-shināsī-yi mā’, pp. 2–10.

  109 See, for instance, Lloyd Ridgeon’s studious analysis of the controversy raised by Kasravī’s diatribes against Ḥāfiẓ and the resultant rage they aroused in Iranian literary circles in the 1930s in his Sufi Castigator: Ahmad Kasravi and the Iranian Mystical Tradition, chapters 6, 7. Several decades earlier the modernizing Pakistani philosopher Muḥammad Iqbāl (1873–1938) had also penned a devastating tirade against Ḥāfiẓ in his Persian poem Asrār al-khudā, but in later editions of the poem, due to the vociferous protests by Indian literati, he immediately recanted his invective and excised the offending passage. There are also the largely forgotten controversies over Ḥāfiẓ’s verse between Taqī Raf‘at (who attacked the poet) and Malik al-Shu‘arā Bahār (who defended him), not to mention Nimā’s hollow quibbling with Ḥāfiẓ’s views of love. On the latter, see Firoozeh Papan-Matin, ‘Love: Nima’s Dialogue with Hafez’, pp. 173–92.

  110 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 37: 11. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 30.

  111 Hamadānī, ‘Chirā Ḥāfiẓ?’, p. 3.

  112 Khurramshāhī, ‘Ḥāfiẓ dar farhang-i mā’, p. 151.

  113 Ibid., p. 144.

  114 Hamadānī, ‘Chirā Ḥāfiẓ?’, p. 2.

  115 See www.hafezstudies.ir for further details of this centre. Ḥāfiẓ-pazūhishī is a journal published in Shīrāz (inaugurated in 1996), edited by Jalīl Sāzigār-nizhād, currently (2009) in its thirteenth volume.

  116 See the 662-page bibliography of Ḥāfiẓ studies in Nīknām, Kitāb-shināsī-yi Ḥāfiẓ.

  117 Cf. Margaret L. Caton, Hāfez: ‘Erfān and Music as Interpreted by Ostād Mortezā Varzi.

  118 Massignon, Essai, trans. Clark, pp. 34–6; Nywia, Exégèse coranique, p. 22.

  119 On this phenomenon, see Shafī‘ī-Kadkanī, ‘Ḥāfiẓ va Bīdil’, p. 35, and Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, II, pp. 683–6, who compares the place occupied by the Qur’ān in Arabic with Hāfiẓ’s Dīvān in Persian – whence Zarrīnkūb’s exclamation: ‘Who’s not obsessed with Ḥāfiẓ in Iran?’ (Az kūcha-i rindān, p. xv). In his autobiography, Sadriddin Aini describes how illiterate peasants and farmers ploughing in the fields of Tajikistan sang Ḥāfiẓ’s and Bīdil’s poetry by heart (Bukhara Reminiscences, pp. 165–6), and how he was taught to memorize Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry from age six (pp. 97f.). On Ḥāfiẓ’s place in classical Tajik literature, see Yury Boboev, Muqaddama-yi adabiyāt-shināsī, pp. 171–2, 179 (with thanks to Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda for this reference).

  120 On which, see Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible, p. 1.

  121 Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, II, p. 695. The other two most studied texts are the Kulliyāt of Sa‘dī and the Mat
hnawī of Rūmī.

  122 ‘On ne peut, en lisant – ou mieux, en écoutant – les ghazal de Hāfez, manquer de relever la presence constante, explicite ou non, de la Parole révélée dans le Coran’. Monteil and Tajvidi (trans.), L’amour, l’amant, l’aimé: cente ballades du Divān (-i Ḥāfiẓ), introduction, p. 13. See also the essay by James Morris below, pp. 227–34.

  123 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 438: 7.

  124 Many scholars have demonstrated the link between Ḥāfiẓ’s artistic style and the Muslim missal: see Khurramshāhī, ‘Uslūb-i hunarī-yi Ḥāfiẓ va Qur’ān’, pp. 3–20; Partaw ‘Alavī, ‘Iqbabāsāt-i Khwāja Shīrāz az aȳāt-i Qur’ān-i majīd va ishārāt bi-āhādith va tafāsīr’, in idem., Bāng-i jaras, pp. 37–86.

  125 Enjoined in the Qur’ān itself; for a good account of which, see Waley, ‘Contemplative Disciplines in Early Persian Sufism’, pp. 497–548.

  126 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 250: 10. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 14.

  127 See Gulandām’s introduction given in ‘Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī’, in Dihkhudā, Lughat-nāma, V, p. 7489.

  128 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 19.

  129 This verse is found in five of the manuscripts used by Khānlarī in his edited Dīvān, ghazal 312.

  130 Dīwān-i Khwāja Ḥāfiẓ-i Shīrāzī, ed. Anjawī-Shīrāzī, p. 228, l. 15. Also cf. Zarrīnkūb’s discussion: Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 58–60.

  131 Cited by Ghanī, Baḥth, I, p. 50.

  132 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 93: 10. My translation here follows Khurramshāhī’s (pace Sūdī’s) reading of the second hemistich as gar khwud, and not Khānlarī’s lectio (= var khwud). Further discussion of the meaning(s) of this verse is given in Khurramshāhī, Chārdah ravāyat, pp. 27–8.

  133 Khurramshāhī, Chārdah ravāyat.

  134 Ibid., p. 23.

  135 See R. Paret, ‘Ḳirā’a’, in EI2, V, pp. 127–9.

  136 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 19.