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

  137 E.G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, p. 272.

  138 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 312: 9. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 62.

  139 Cited by Ghanī, Baḥth, I, p. 49.

  140 Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, II, p. 686.

  141 Baha’ al-Din Khorramshahi, ‘ii. Hafez’s Life and Times’, EIr, XI, p. 465.

  142 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 15; Dihkhudā, Lughat-nāma, V, pp. 7490f.

  143 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 15. See also Taqī Pūrnāmdāriyān, ‘Ḥāfiẓ, 1. Zindigī va rūzigār’, in Dāneshnāme-ye Zabān-o Adab-e Fārsī, II, pp. 637–44.

  144 Khurramshahī, ‘ii. Hafez’s Life and Times’, EIr, XI, p. 468.

  145 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. xii–xiii.

  146 ‘Irfān u rindī dar shi‘r-i Ḥāfiẓ.

  147 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 124: 6.

  148 Ibid., ghazal 357: 3.

  149 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 18–20.

  150 This is proven by a fragment (see Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, p. 1085; and Ghanī’s discussion in Baḥth, I, pp. 414–15) that he wrote under the rule of Shāh Manṣūr when a niggardly vizier inadvertently decreased this stipend. However, it should be stressed that Ḥāfiẓ studiously avoided taking charity from publically-funded endowments: ‘Even though my Sufi robe be hocked in pawn at the tavern, come and look – you’ll not find a single diram in the records of public endowments in my name!’ Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 462: 3.

  151 ‘It is a matter of extreme probability that Ḥāfiẓ was well versed in the school of Ibn ‘Arabī and his commentators. Taking into account this deep influence and general popularity of the Akbarian school among the intelligentsia of Ḥāfiẓ’s day, combined with the poet’s fiery and sensitive nature and penchant to absorb philosophical, theological and mystical ideas and thoughts current in the culture contemporary to him, it would be absurd to maintain that he was entirely uninformed, uninfluenced by, lacked interest in, or held himself aloof from the Shaykh’s teachings’ (Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, p. 600). Elsewhere, Khurramshāhī (Dhihn va zabān-i Ḥāfiẓ [2005; 3rd edn], p. 420) adjudicates even more positively that ‘the mystical philosophy of Ḥāfiẓ (‘irfān-i Ḥāfiẓ) is the complicated speculative theosophy of Ibn ‘Arabī and his followers. It was not the simplistic Iranian mysticism of the 11–12th centuries’. See also Zarrīnkūb’s (Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 188–90) extended analysis of Ḥāfiẓ’s immersion in the intellectual milieu of fourteenth-century Shīrāz, where Akbarian teachings were very much the fashion.

  152 Some of ‘Irāqī’s verses imitated by Ḥāfiẓ are given by Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 220f., n. 52.

  153 As Khurramshāhī shows, at least in one ghazal (no. 148, ed. Khānlarī), Ḥāfiẓ paraphrased the theosophy of ‘Irāqī’s Lamā‘at, which is based on Akbarian teachings, see Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, 596–607, particularly his commentary on v. 3.

  154 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 206, n. 14.

  155 Ibid., p. 19.

  156 Ibid., p. 9.

  157 Cf. Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 26. Mu‘īn’s observations (Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 138–42) about verses in the Dīvān alluding to his wife, children and family are entirely speculative and incapable of definitive historical demonstration.

  158 Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, pp. 287–8.

  159 Such as Haravī, Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, II, p. 910; the line comes from Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 210: 1.

  160 Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, p. 288. The theory that ghazal 210 by Ḥāfiẓ was written in praise of his wife is also accepted by Zarrīnkūb, Bā kāravān-i hullih, p. 239, though criticized by Mihdī Burhānī (‘Mājārā-yi hamsar-i Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 123–37), who points out that in the history of classical Persian literature, aside from Nāṣir-i Khusraw, practically no poet ever made any reference to his wife or wife’s name.

  161 Ṣahbā, ‘Sukhanī chand dar bāb-i aḥwāl va ash‘ār-i Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 175–8. See also Zarrīnkūb (Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 17–18) and Dihkhudā (Lughat-nāma, V, p. 7490) on his so-called brothers.

  162 On which, see Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, pp. 1147f.

  163 The celebrated commentary of the Qur’ān by al-Zamakhsharī.

  164 Of the many works by this name, that of al-Muṭarrizī (d. 610/1213) on Arabic grammar is probably intended.

  165 The Maṭālī‘u’l-Anẓār of al-Bayḍāwī (d. 683/1284) is probably intended.

  166 The Mifṭāḥu’l-‘Ulūm of as-Sakkakī (d. 626/1229) is probably intended.

  167 This translation and the four accompanying notes to its text are cited directly from E.G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, p. 272.

  168 The classic studies of the political background and social environment of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry remains Ghanī’s Baḥth dar āthār, vol. I, and Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, vol. I, a ground revisited by Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 1–126. In English, a good overview of political context of his poetry, his patrons and panegyrics, and the courtly circles and princes which favoured him, can be found in Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, pp. 274–91 (an account based on the Indian critic Shiblī Nu‘mānī); Arberry, Shīrāz: Persian City of Saints and Poets, pp. 139–60; Schimmel, ‘Ḥāfiẓ and His Contemporaries’, pp. 933–6; Jan Rypka, A History of Iranian Literature, pp. 264ff.; Khorramshahi, ‘ii. Hafez’s Life and Times’, EIr, pp. 465–9. Limbert’s excellent Shīrāz in the Age of Hafez may also be perused.

  169 Fouchécour, intro.: Hafiz de Chiraz, pp. 49–69; P. Jackson, ‘Muẓaffarids’, EIr, VII, pp. 820–2; H. Roemer, ‘The Jalayirids, Muzaffarids and Sarbadārs’, pp. 1–41; Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties, pp. 264–5; Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 264–70; Limbert, Shīrāz in the Age of Hafez, pp. 33–45.

  170 Annemarie Schimmel, ‘Ḥāfiẓ and His Contemporaries’, p. 934.

  171 H. Roemer, ‘The Jalayirids, Muzaffarids and Sarbadārs’, in P. Jackson et al. (eds), Cambridge History of Iran, VI, p. 13.

  172 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 45.

  173 Ibid., pp. 22–3.

  174 See Dīwān-i Khwājū Kirmānī, ed. Qāni‘ī, p. 549, 569–70, 584–7.

  175 Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd Zākānī, ed. Maḥjūb, Index, s.v. ‘Shāh Shaykh Abū Isḥāq’.

  176 See Khurramshāhī’s discussion of the range of Ḥāfiẓ’s poems composed during the reign of Shaykh Abū Isḥāq (Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 754–6), and the references given there.

  177 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, pp. 1034–7.

  178 Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, p. 644. Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 164: 1–2.

  179 Schimmel, ‘Ḥāfiẓ and His Contemporaries’, p. 934.

  180 Cited by Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, p. 644.

  181 For instance, Ghanī (Baḥth dar āthār, I, p. 101–3) speculates that ghazal 162 (Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī) was written around 743/1343, right after the accession of Abū Isḥāq Īnjū, but Haravī (Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, II, p. 713) thinks that the ghazal was inspired by the poet’s fear of Tamerlane, while Khurramshāhī (Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, p. 638), momentarily kowtowing to Ghanī’s theory, sees nothing political in it at all, writing, ‘from head to toe this whole poem is surcharged with mystical gratitude and delight’.

  182 Measure for Measure, III.ii.215–24. The Duke’s quip to Escalus.

  183 Cf. Cicero’s frequently cited phrase, ‘O tempora, O mores’, which Shakepeare versified in his exclamation: ‘it is a strange-disposèd time...’ (Julius Caesar, I.iii.33).

  184 ‘This day and age are an era when discourse [of Sufism] has become utterly masked behind the veil, when impostors pretend to be representatives of genuine spirituality and mimic the adepts of the heart
’. Tadhkirat al-awliyā’, ed. Isti‘lāmī, p. 8.

  185 Yeats’ poem, from ‘The Curse of Cromwell’.

  186 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 11: 10. ‘This verse by the Master of the Poets Khwāja Ḥāfiẓ’, stated Samarqandī (Maṭla‘-i sa‘dayn, Part 1, p. 265), ‘offers sufficient praise of Ḥajjī Qawām’s stature’. For further discussion of Ḥāfiẓ and Ḥajjī Qawām, see Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 24–5; Stockland, ‘The Kitab-i Samak ‘Ayyar, Persica, XV (1993–5), p. 161.

  187 Rawḍat al-ṣafā, ed. Zaryāb, II, p. 749.

  188 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, vol. II, pp. 1031–40.

  189 Ibid., vol. II, p. 1033, vv. 36–7.

  190 Cf. Ibid., ghazal 203: 7 (Rāstī khātim-i fīrzūza-yi bū ishāqī / khwush darakhshīd, valī dawlat-i mosta‘jil būd, on which see Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 754–9; Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 27–8).

  191 Contrary to what Zarrīnkūb speculates, asserting that Ḥāfiẓ ‘was like a courtier at his court’ (Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 27 and 31).

  192 The author here paraphrases a verse by Ḥāfiẓ (Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 197: 6), composed during Mubāriz al-Dīn’s reign: ‘They have bolted up all the doors of the Taverns. Great God! Let them not leave open the House of Deceit and Hypocrisy!’ This verse belongs to one of some 15 to 20 ghazals composed by Ḥāfiẓ in protest against the fundamentalist Islamist regime of Mubāriz al-Dīn, as Qāsim Ghanī (Baḥth, I, p. 216) points out. Zarrīnkūb’s own turn of phrase was directly borrowed from Ghanī’s, ibid., p. 214.

  193 Ghanī’s Baḥth, I, p. 214. The Muḥtasib was a special vice-squad police officer concerned with controlling matters of public morality, particularly the prevention of wine-drinking. Ḥāfiẓ’s ironic mockery of the sere and grave man who acts like ‘a ruler in the gatherings of fair beauties by day and by night commands the vice squad (muḥtasib) in drinking wine’ (Nāṣir-i Khusraw) is a stock topos in Persian poetry. See Dihkhudā, Lughat-nāma, XII, pp. 17978–9, s.v. muḥtasib.

  194 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 42: 1. This verse is cited by Mīrkhwand in his history of the period Rawḍat al-ṣafā, ed. Zaryāb, II, p. 744; and also mentioned by Samarqandī, Maṭla‘-i sa‘dayn, Part 1, pp. 269–70, as having been composed in protest by Ḥāfiẓ to this ruler.

  195 Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 735–6; Barzigar-Khāliqī, Shakh-i nabāt-i Ḥāfiẓ, p. 503.

  196 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Qazwīnī and Ghanī, ghazal 202: 1. For other ghazals referring to this Islamist dictator, see Ghanī’s Baḥth, I, pp. 215–17.

  197 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 51.

  198 Ibid., p. 51.

  199 Ghanī’s Baḥth dar āthār, I, p. 219.

  200 Rawḍat al-ṣafā, II, p. 746.

  201 Samarqandī (Maṭla‘-i sa‘dayn, Part 1, p. 304) uses the final verse of an entire philosophical ‘fragmentary poem’ (qiṭa) by Ḥāfiẓ (Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, pp. 1071–2) to sardonically summarize the incident: ‘He who was the delight of his eyes had a needle poked through his seeing eyes by him at last.’

  202 Haravī, Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, III, p. 1490, citing Ghanī, Baḥth dar āthār, I, pp. 128–9. This is one of two ghazal-panegyrics addressed to this vizier, the other being no. 453 in Khānlarī’s edition.

  203 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 354: 4.

  204 Punning on the monarch’s name shujā‘ (‘the Brave’): ibid., ghazal 278: 1.

  205 On which see Ghanī’s Baḥth dar āthār, I, p. 336ff.

  206 Khorramshahi, ‘ii. Hafez’s Life and Times’, EIr, p. 467.

  207 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 122–4.

  208 Ibid., pp. 112–13.

  209 On the basis of a single verse in one of Ḥāfiẓ’s ghazals (Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 163: 2), which was satirized by Kamāl Khujandī: ‘My beloved, who never went to school and couldn’t even write a line / By a single glance solved the tangled issues of a myriad professors’, Ghanī asserts (Baḥth, I, p. 361) that the entire ghazal was a panegyric for Shāh Shujā‘. But since Shāh Shujā‘ had actually gone to school and wrote excellent prose and poetry both in Persian and Arabic, it is improbable that the ghazal could have been a panegyric for the prince (as Haravī, Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, II, p. 704, rightly argues). Many commentators (e.g. Lāhūrī, II, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī, pp. 1292–3; Haravī, ibid.) consider the verse to allude to the Prophet Muḥammad, who was illiterate (ummī). But the fifth line of the ghazal does mention Abū’l-Favāris, an epithet for Shāh Shujā‘ (as Isti‘lāmī, Dars-i Ḥāfiẓ, I, pp. 470–1, points out).

  210 Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 344–61.

  211 Rawḍat al-ṣafā, II, p. 760.

  212 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 288: 8. See also Ghanī, Baḥth, I, p. 365.

  213 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, pp. 1027–30; and Dīwān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Qazvīnī and Ghanī, pp. qiv–qka.

  214 Istiqbāl is defined as when ‘the later poet acknowledges the work of his predecessor openly and publically, but takes the initiative in receiving him and bringing him into the present literary environment’ (Losensky, Welcoming Fighani, p. 12). On Ḥāfiẓ’s ‘welcoming’ ghazals written ‘after’ Shāh Shujā‘, see Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 353, 355, 358, 361; Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 122f.

  215 Ghanī, Baḥth, I, p. 39, 344 (referring to Sa‘d al-Dīn Unsī, who compiled the prince’s Dīvān).

  216 ‘The King of the Turks gives heed to the speech of pretenders / He should feel shame at the blood of Siyavush, wrongly shed.’ The word ‘pretender’ (muda‘ī) means ‘one who falsely lays claims’, and here indicates ‘the false lover’ (comparable roughly to the topos of the lauzengiers, false flatterers, tale-bearers found in Italian troubadour poetry) who has no sense or taste for love’s heights and depths, ecstasies and agonies (cf. Khānlarī’s ghazals 78: 4; 426: 1). Haravī (Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, I, p. 449) explains: ‘In Firdawsī’s Shāhnāma, Siyāvush was the husband of Farangīs, daughter of Afrāsiyāb, King of the Turānians (enemy of Iranians). Because of the malicious gossip conducted against Farangīs by Afrāsiyāb’s brother Garsīvaz, she incurred her father Afrāsiyāb’s wrath and was put to death. In order to avenge her murder, the Iranians waged many years of war against the Turānians. The reference to ‘Siyāvush’s blood, wrongly shed’ is to the death that Siyāvush suffered as a consquence of his wife’s murder and the ensuing long years of warfare between the two kingdoms. The ‘King of the Turks’ in this line refers to Afrasiyāb, who was willing to listen to and be influenced by envious tale-bearers and ultimately bloody his own hands with Siyāvush’s blood because of this. The ‘King of the Turks’ is interpreted by Lāhūrī (Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, II, p. 1390) and Barzigar-Khāliqī (Shākh-i nabāt-i Ḥāfiẓ, p. 276) as a reference to Shāh Shujā‘. The latter comments: ‘The poet compares himself to Siyāvush and Shāh Shujā‘ to Afrāsiyāb, and in this line entreats him not to listen to the envious who criticise his poetry’ (ibid., p. 277).

  217 Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 125–6.

  218 Rawḍat al-ṣafā, II, p. 761.

  219 Maṭla‘ al-sa‘dayn, cited by Haravī, Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, III, p. 1834; Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 373–4.

  220 King Henry VI, Pt III, III.i.64–5.

  221 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 442. The political background of this ghazal in general and some of its moral teachings in various lines in particular is discussed by Niyāz-Kirmānī, Dawlat-i pīr-i mughān, pp. 179–86.

  222 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 40: 10 (repeating faqr va qanā‘at).

  223 Cf. Zarrīnkūb’s discussion of Ḥāfiẓ’s critical attitude to this prince: Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 159.

  224 Rawḍat al-ṣafā, II, p. 764.

  225 His arrogant behaviour was th
e probable cause of Tamerlane’s invasion of Iran: see Ghanī, Baḥth, I, p. 383.

  226 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 298: 7 (‘Drink wine and spare the world, for by your lasso’s curl / The evil miscreant’s neck is now captive in chains’); see Haravī, Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, II, pp. 1271–2; Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 160–1.

  227 H.R. Roemer, ‘The Jalarids, Muzaffarids and Sarbadārs’, pp. 60–1.

  228 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 298. See Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 82 (and notes). Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 376–80, cites five other ghazals that were also composed for Shāh Yaḥyā: nos. 12, 206, 384, 413, 425 in Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī.

  229 Al-Mu‘jam, cited and discussed by Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 82–3; 228–9, n. 30.

  230 As revealed by Muḥammad Dārābī, Laṭīfa-yi ghaybī, p. 24 and Lāhūrī, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī, III, pp. 2081–2.

  231 Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 383–9.

  232 According to Samarqandī’s Maṭla‘ al-sa‘dayn, the verse: ‘Do not devote your heart to the fair, Ḥāfiẓ: Look at what that Samarqandī Turk did to the folks of Khwārazm’ (Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 431: 8) was penned in sympathy for the victims of Tamerlane’s brutality; see Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 160; Ghanī, Baḥth, I, p. 374, n. 1.

  233 Tadhkirat al-shu‘arā’, ed. ‘Abbāsī, p. 341, citing Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 3: 1; the dubious historicity of the quaint tale about this verse, which, though unconfirmed by any contemporary historians, is discussed in detail by Browne, A Literary History of Persia, III, pp. 188–9; Ghanī, Baḥth, I, pp. 393–5, and Zarrīnkūb, Az kūcha-i rindān, p. 159.

  234 Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’, in Kwasny (ed.), Toward the Open Field, p. 76.

  235 See Zarrīnkūb’s profoundly engrossing discussion of Ḥāfiẓ’s attitude towards Tamerlane: Az kūcha-i rindān, pp. 159–62.

  236 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 237; see Ghanī, Baḥth, I, p. 401, and also Mumtaḥan, ‘Sukhanī chand dar mājarā-yi zindigī-yi Shāh Manṣūr Muẓaffarī: mamdūḥ-i Khwāja Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī’, pp. 431–64.