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

  307 Bausani (Religion in Iran, p. 221) believes that the historical origins of Muslim malāmatī mysticism should be sought in Christianity. The probable connections between the Christian and Muslim malāmatī forms of spirituality have recently been highlighted by Sergey Ivanov, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond, ch. 13.

  308 Cynthia’s Revels III: 3.15–16.

  309 Milton, Paradise Lost, III, vv. 47–56 in Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, p. 472. Carey’s erudite notes reference the citations from Seneca and Jonson given above.

  310 William Blake, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, in Blake: Complete Writings, p. 152.

  311 Khurramshāhī, ‘Andīshahā-yi malāmatī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’, in his Chārdah ravāyat, p. 75.

  312 See my ‘The Esoteric Christianity of Islam: Interiorisation of Christian Imagery in Medieval Persian Sufi Poetry’, pp. 127–56, and my ‘Sufi Symbolism and the Persian Hermeneutic Tradition’, pp. 255–308.

  313 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 356: 3. Lāhūrī (Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī, IV, pp. 2434–5) offers a lengthy theosophical explanation of this line, the gist of which is that the technical term ‘eyebrow’ refers to ‘the two bow’s length’ (qāba qawsayn) mentioned in Qur’ān, LIII: 9 in reference to Muḥammad’s vision of God. This is ‘the station of all-inclusive divine Unity [waḥidiyyat] which encompasses the two arcs of [Necessary] Being and Possibility, and is also the Muḥammadean Station’. ‘Having one’s work unclenched or opened up’ indicates realization of this spiritual station in which ‘one’s own essence and attributes become transformed into God’s Essence and Attributes’. Since this station pertains to Muḥammad in particular, anyone who realizes this station must have a character of similar stamina to the Prophet’s capable of enduring blame and abuse ‘since blame has a great effect in purifying love’. He concludes that this verse ‘indicates the poet’s realization of the station of the two bow’s length’ and having suffered so much blame, like the Prophet, ‘his affairs were made to prosper (“be opened”) through attaining that station’.

  314 Kashf al-maḥjūb, ed. Zhukovskii, p. 68.

  315 See Nurbakhsh, Sufi Symbolism, vol. 1, p. 4, s.v. ābrū.

  316 See also Chebel, Encyclopédie de l’amour en Islam, II, pp. 266–7 (s.v. Reproches). Rūmī devotes an entire ghazal to this principle: see Kulliyyāt-i Shams ya Dīvān-i kabīr, II: 742/7790–4.

  317 The theological origins of this doctrine in Islam, which is tracable back to the story of Joseph and Zulaykhā in the Qur’ān, is similar to the spirit of the topos of the ‘test of love’ (assai) among the Provençal troubadour poets, on which see Paz, The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism, pp. 107–8.

  318 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 426: 7.

  319 Dīwān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Qazvīnī and Ghanī, ghazal 272: 7.

  320 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 21: 1. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 43.

  321 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 75: 9. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 10.

  322 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 385: 1–3. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 21.

  323 Kashf al-maḥjūb, p. 69.

  324 Haravī, Sharḥ-i ghazalhā-yi Ḥāfiẓ, III, p. 1606. Also cf. Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, II, pp. 1091–3, who devotes several pages to commentary on this ghazal, discussing Ḥāfiẓ’s relation to the malāmatī school.

  325 The infinitive form ranjīdan of the verb used here connotes: ‘to be hurt’, ‘take offence’, ‘to get offended’, ‘to be wounded’, ‘to suffer’. This line paraphrases a verse by Sa‘dī with the same metre, rhyme and identical meaning (Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, II, p. 1097). Explaining the subtle Sufi metaphysical doctrine underlying Ḥāfiẓ’s verse, Lāhūrī (Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, IV, p. 2562) paraphrases the mystical theology of the poet as follows: ‘Our theosophical persuasion [mashrab] consists in keeping faith with and preserving any true bonds of relationship that we have formed with everyone, cheerfully and gaily bearing the burdens of blame of all and sundry, and not becoming distressed and unhappy in any respect. The reason for this is that in our mystical way [ṭarīqat] and according to the tenets of our theosophical persuasion, getting offended and hurt by (attention to the illusion of) what’s other [ghayr, than God] constitutes infidelity [kāfarī] and “hidden polytheism” [shirk-i khafī]. This is because those who have realized the spiritual station of pure divine Unity [maqām-i tawḥīd-i ṣarf] apprehend by direct vision that there is no other really existing being and active agent in existence except God Almighty, and that all other entities, qualities and actions are annihilated, null and void. They comprehend that every delight they experience is a radiance cast by the light of absolute divine Beauty [jamāl-i muṭlaq] and consider that every pain and grief that afflicts them to be a ray cast by the light of absolute divine Majesty [jalāl-i muṭlaq]. Thus, if they were to become offended by some irritation whilst being endowed with such traits of character, they would be allowing someone else to participate and share in the divine activity – which would constitute virtual heresy on the Sufi way [kufr-i ṭarīqat] and hidden polytheism.’

  326 For a comprehensive overview of the malāmatī doctrines contained in Ḥāfiẓ’s verse, see Mu‘īn, Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 425–33.

  327 Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 404ff.; Murtaḍawī, Maktab-i Ḥāfiẓ, pp. 144–8.

  328 Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, p. 407; here citing Khānlarī ghazal 93: 3 translated above.

  329 On which see Murtaḍawī, Maktab-i Ḥāfiẓ, p. 418.

  330 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 335: 4.

  331 See also Mu‘īn’s study of the term in Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 369–71.

  332 The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, p. 92.

  333 Perhaps the most thorough study of the Sufi theology the shāhid is given by H. Ritter in his The Ocean of the Soul, pp. 484–502. There are also a number of other orientalists, such as Schimmel (Mystical Dimensions, pp. 289–93), Fouchécour, de Bruijn (Persian Sufi Poetry, pp. 39, 67) and Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek (A La Croisée des Voies Célestes, index, s.v. shāhedbāzī), who have studied aspects of the erotic theory underlying shāhid-bāzī. Peter Wilson, ‘The Witness Game: Imaginal Yoga & Sacred Pedophilia in Persian Sufism’, gives a popular account of the practice. In Persian, there are an abundance of scholarly works on the subject, for an overview of which see Jalāl Sattārī, ‘Ishq-i ṣūfiyāna, chap. 10. Rajā’ī Bukhārā’ī’s Farhang-i ash‘ār-i Ḥāfiẓ, pp. 361–6, provides a basic analysis of the Sufi background of the concept in Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry.

  334 Feuillebois-Pierunek, A La Croisée des Voies Célestes, p. 70.

  335 Farhang-i ash‘ār-i Ḥāfiẓ, p. 361. Shāhid (witness) is also one of the divine Names found in the Qur’ān, denoting ‘God-the-Universal-Witness’ – that is, the divine Omniscience aware both of the Invisible (ghayb) and the Visible (shāhada) (IX: 94). The term has juridical significations as well, although these are seldom referred to in Persian poetry – on which see R. Peters, art. ‘Shāhid’, EI2, IX, pp. 207–8.

  336 Furūzānfar, Aḥādīth-i Mathnawī, p. 42.

  337 Cited in al-Daylamī, Kitāb ‘aṭf al-alif, trans. Vadet, Le Traité d’Amour Mystique d’al-Daylami, n. 244, p. 118. See also the discussion of this saying by Ernst, ‘Rūzbihān Baqlī on Love’, p. 184.

  338 Karbalā’ī Tabrīzī, Rawḍāt al-jinān, I, pp. 506–7.

  339 Symposium, 192e – drawing on White’s (Love’s Philosophy, p. 56) analysis.

  340 ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadhānī, Tamhīdāt, p. 115, no. 162.

  341 Bukhārā’ī, Farhang-i ash‘ār-i Ḥāfiẓ, p. 364, citing al-‘Abbādī’s Al-taṣfiya fī aḥwāl al-mutaṣawwifa, pp. 211–12. This passage is largely based on the section on the 3rd bāb on the shāhid in Qushayrī’s Risāla: see Tarjama-i Risāla-yi Qushayrī, edited by Furūzānfār, pp. 130–2. It is sign
ificant that Gīsū Dārāz, in his commentary on this passage in his Sharḥ-i Risāla-yi Qushayrī, pp. 375–6, links such views to ‘the words of Rūzbihān, Shaykh Khwāja [Ḥāfiẓ] and Sa‘dī, and their true masters who are Shaykh Aḥmad Ghazālī and Qāḍī ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt – peace be upon all their spirits – and as for Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī, don’t ask me, because he professes the entire world to be God’s witness!’. Cf. also Ritter’s discussion in The Ocean, pp. 485–502.

  342 From his introduction to his great romantic poem Epipsychidion.

  343 Sawāniḥ al-‘ushshāq, ed. Ritter, ch. 38, p. 58. For further discussion, see my ‘Divine Love in Islam’, in Encyclopaedia of Love in World Religions, I, pp. 163–5; and also my ‘Sawanih’, in Encyclopaedia of Love, II, pp. 535–8.

  344 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 121: 1. For an overview of the meaning of ān, see J. Nurbakhsh, Sufi Symbolism, I, pp. 32–3.

  345 Papadopoulo, Islam and Muslim Art, pp. 144 ff., cited by Renard, Seven Doors to Islam, p. 127.

  346 Renard, Seven Doors, p. 127.

  347 On Ḥāfiẓ’s practice of ‘Beauty Worship’, see Murtaḍawī, Maktab-i Ḥāfiẓ, pp. 775–94.

  348 Jahramī, ‘Mākhaz-i andīshahā-yi Sa‘dī: Rūzbihān Baqlī Shīrāzī’, pp. 95–112.

  349 Ḥāfiẓ-i shīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 420–4; and also Mu‘īn’s introduction to Rūzbihān’s Le Jasmin des fidèles, pp. 54–63.

  350 See my ‘Romantic Love in Islam’, in Encyclopaedia of Love, II, pp. 513–15. This adage was epitomized in Rūmī’s verse in the Mathnawī: ‘What is beloved is not a phenomenal form, whether it be the love of this world or love of the Next’ (Mathnawī, II, ed. Nicholson, v. 703).

  351 Dīvān-i rubā‘iyyāt-i Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī, pp. 70–1; p. 233.

  352 Jāmī, Nafaḥāt al-uns, p. 589.

  353 See my Beyond Faith and Infidelity, chap. VI, for further discussion of this transcendental erotic theory in Persian poetry.

  354 As Jāmī explains: ‘If the spiritually realized mystic [‘ārif] sees beauty, he contemplates the beauty he sees as something divine, as belonging to God, as a loveliness that has descended down through various degrees of existence. But the common man who is a non-mystic [ghayr-i ‘ārif], doesn’t possess such a regard [naẓar], it would be better if he refrained from contemplation of the fair lest he fall headlong into a chasm of perplexity’, Nafaḥāt, p. 588. Describing the impoverishment of the common man’s ‘regard’ for beauty, the American philosopher of aesthetics Elaine Scarry points out: ‘It sometimes seems that a special problem arises for beauty once the realm of the sacred is no longer believed in or aspired to. If a beautiful young girl or a small bird, or a glass vase, or a poem, or a tree has the metaphysical in behind it, that realm verifies the weight and attention we confer on the girl, bird, vase, poem, tree. But if the metaphysical realm has vanished, one may feel bereft not only because of the giant deficit left by that vacant realm, but because the girl, the bird, the vase, the book now seem unable in their solitude to justify or account for the weight of their own beauty. If each calls out for attention that has no destination beyond itself, each seems self-centered, too fragile to support the gravity of our immense regard’ (On Beauty and Being Just, p. 47). This dichotomy between ordinary human vision and the refined mystically cognizant divine ‘regard’ for beauty is an oft-broached subject in Sufi erotic poetry. Sa‘dī states: ‘It’s said glancing on the faces of the fair [naẓar bi-rū-yi khubān] is forbidden. Indeed – and yet, not the regard which I have. I contemplate the mystery of the ineffable Creator displayed in your countenence, witnessed there as if reflected in a mirror’ (Kulliyāt, p. 427). Elsewhere, Sa‘dī issues the supreme fatwā of the manifesto of the Sufi Romantics: ‘Regarding a beautiful face [rukh-i zībā] is permissible in the Religion of Love (madhhab-i ‘ishq), with this condition – that it be done constantly! (ibid., p. 502; ki guft). Thus the determination of the meaning of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetic images does not depend so much on the polarity of the sacred or profane, moral or immoral, but on the ‘authenticity’ of the heart – that is to say, an interior discrimination between what constitutes sincere or hypocritical conduct, a discernment between the erotic regard that is unitary, holistic and leads to an imaginal synthesis, and the analytical, ratiocinative perspective that is always divisive. That is one reason why, in Ḥāfiẓ’s lexicon, images drawn from the repertoire of profane poetry ultimately have greater sacred import than the same imagery drawn from religious poetry.

  355 As Ḥāfiẓ states: Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 91: 8.

  356 My own three decades of study of Ḥāfiẓ’s Dīvān convinces me of the truth of Isti‘lāmī’s judgement that ‘the term shāhid in Ḥāfiẓ’s writings simply has the meaning of a person with a fair face [zībārū’ī] and a beloved female mistress [ma‘shūq], and if critics have said or written that it refers to pretty-faced boys, this is wrong’ (Dars-i Ḥāfiẓ I, pp. 326–7). Elsewhere, he writes that ‘there are more than 15 verses in Ḥāfiẓ’s Dīvān where this term [shāhid] refers to a person with a fair face [zībārū’ī], and in most of these instances it cannot be said to refer to the face of a pretty boy’ (ibid., I, p. 98). He adds that: ‘in most of the instances where Ḥāfiẓ employs the word shāhid, his regard is for a beautiful woman, or else it remains ambiguous – whether the reference is to a woman or a pretty boy, although it is far more reasonable to assume the former’ (ibid., I, p. 292). Isti‘lāmī emphasizes that there is only one specific instance in the Dīvān, where shāhid can be definitively said to be male (ibid., I, p. 345, referring to Dīvān, ghazal 170: Dars-i Ḥāfiẓ, I, p. 477 – zāhid-i khalvat-nīshīn, not in Khānlarī’s ed.). I should also add that the prevalence of the mainly female shāhids in Shīrāz in ‘Ubayd’s poetry (Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd Zākānī, pp. 45: ghazal 45, v. 4; 113; ghazal 114: v. 1, p. 323, lines 5–6) adds greater weight to Isti‘lamī’s opinion. This viewpoint of course is contested by some other scholars (cf. Ritter, Ocean, p. 481 infra; Sīrūs Shamīsā, Shāhid-bāzī, pp. 165–70) who largely consider his shāhid to be exclusively male, and shāhid-bāzī simply pederasty.

  357 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 484: 10: ‘Thought of self and will of self have no place in the realm of the libertine: in our creed, self-will and self-conceit are sacrilege.’

  358 Ibid., ghazal 345: 1. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 51.

  359 Schroeder, ‘Verse Translation and Hafiz’, p. 215.

  360 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 224: 9. This follows Khwājū’s erotic doctrine of the identity of human and divine love vis-à-vis divine Reality exactly: ‘Ishq-i majāzī dar rah-i ma‘nā ḥaqīqat-ast / ‘ishq ār chi pīsh-i ahl-i ḥaqīqat majāz nīst (Romantic Love on the Path of Reality is itself True and Divine / although for the truthful adepts there’s no love at all that is not divine!’ Dīwān-i Khwājū Kirmānī, p. 214, ghazal 76: 8.

  361 For the major study of this device in his poetry, see Murtaḍawī’s Maktab-i Ḥāfiẓ, pp. 455–515.

  362 This is particularly clear in Sa‘dī’s ghazals. The following verses from three different ghazals celebrate his flagrant adoration of the female shāhid: (1) ‘Sa‘dī, what a disharmonious creature it is / who claims he’s got a heart but not a sweetheart.’ (2) ‘If you are a man, do not censure Sa‘dī / for no man did ever live not inclined to the beautiful fairy-faced nymphs [parī-ruyān].’ (3) ‘Sa‘dī’s name is everywhere associated with shāhidbāzī / but that is not a flaw; in my creed it is the highest praise / The Muslim with his ritual prayers, the infidel with his heresy, and me and love: / In secret everyone you see has their own form of faith.’ Kulliyāt-i Sa‘dī, ed. Furūghī, pp. 465, 468.

  363 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 385: 9. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels, p. 22.

  364 Lāhūrī, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī, IV, p. 2566. In confirmation of the rectitude of Ḥāfiẓ’s abhorrence of sycophantic fawning over the hands of s
o-called holy men, Khurramshāhī (Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, II, p. 1097, in his commentary on this line) cites Imām ‘Alī’s dictum: ‘Do not kiss the hand of anyone except the hand of a woman by way of sensual passion [shahwat] or a child by way of compassion [raḥmat].’

  365 Once: naẓarbāzān; twice: naẓarbāzī’yi; thrice: naẓarbāzī; and four times: naẓarbāz.

  366 Fouchécour, ‘Naẓar-bāzī: le jeux du regard selon un interprète de Hāfez’, p. 5. See ghazals 31: 9; 47: 9; 305: 2, where both terms (naẓar-bāz and rind) are mentioned together; and 107: 11 (ṣūfiyān and rind).

  367 Fouchécour, ‘Naẓar-bāzī’, p. 6. See ghazals 188: 1; 206: 3; 268: 8; 271: 3; 349: 7.

  368 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 305: 2. ‘Āshiq u rind u naẓar-bāzam u mīgūyam fāsh / Tā bidānī ki bi chandīn hunar ārasta’am!

  369 Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 705–6. See also Āshūrī, ‘Rindī va naẓar-bāzī; Fouchécour, ‘Naẓar-bāzī’, pp. 3–10.

  370 Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, I, p. 428.

  371 Ibid., IV, p. 2562.

  372 Cf. Sa‘dī’s lines in the qāṣīda beginning: Har ‘ādamī ki naẓar ba yikī nadārad u did / bi-ṣūratī nadahad ṣūratī’st lāya‘qil (Kulliyāt, p. 728), repeated in another qāṣīda (beginning: Bi-hīch yār...) in this form: Har ‘ādamī ki naẓar ba yikī nadārad u did / bi-ṣūratī nadahad ṣūratī’st bar dīvār (ibid., p. 720).

  373 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 154: 3.

  374 Cf. Pūrjavādī’s analysis of this verse, ‘Rindī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’, Bū-yi jān, pp. 234–5; 246. The other verses include: ‘To be a lover is the wont and way of inspired libertines who suffer adversity...’ (Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 155: 4); ‘Initially it appeared an easy thing to learn the art of love and the inspired libertine, but how I’ve eaten out my heart and soul in pursuit of this lore!’ (ibid., ghazal 301: 2). Also, cf. ghazal 131: 7.