Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Page 17

  375 Chūn madhhab-i qalandar rindī u ‘āshiqī-ast / Rindāna mā ṭārīq-i qalandar girifta-īm. In Shāh Ni‘matullāh Walī, Kulliyāt-i ash‘ār-i Shāh Ni‘matu’llāh Valī, ed. Nurbakhsh, ghazal 1125: 3.

  376 Chūn rūz rawshan-ast ki mā rind u ‘āshiqīm / chūn ṣubḥ dar parastash-i rū-yi tū ṣādiqīm. In Dīwān-i Kamāl Khujandī, ed. Shidfar, II.1, ghazal 668: 1, p. 695.

  377 Cf. Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 338: 1, 4.

  378 Ibid., ghazal 329: 3.

  379 Ibid., ghazal 310: 1, 3. Translation of v. 3 by Peter Russell.

  380 Dārābī, Laṭīfa-yi ghaybī, p. 90.

  381 Risālahā-yi Shāh Ni‘matu’llāh Valī, I, pp. 231–2.

  382 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 271: 4.

  383 ‘The Kingdom of this World flourishes through pious deeds, ascetical exercises and austerity, and preserving one’s honour and fair name intact, while the rind’s work lies precisely in relinquishing and disregarding such actions, in destroying and disengaging himself from all material things. It is in this sense of the word that the inspired libertine, metaphorically speaking, “sets the world on fire’.” Pūrjavādī, ‘Rindī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’, Bū-yi jān, p. 233.

  384 Kulliyāt, ed. Furūghī, p. 606.

  385 The term ‘Sufi robe’ (khirqa) is used 54 times in the Dīvān; in every instance his usage is derogatory, symbolizing insincerity, impurity and hypocrisy.

  386 For example, more than half of the 16 references to the term ‘royal crown’ (tāj) in the Dīvān are derogatory.

  387 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 78: 4.

  388 Ibid., ghazal 403: 9.

  389 Ibid., ghazal 445: * (jāhil = lout).

  390 See Ātashisawdā, ‘Zabān-i ‘āmmiyāna dar ghazal-i Ḥāfiẓ’, pp. 85–112.

  391 Speaking of Iblīs’ experience of tribulation in love of God, ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadhānī writes: ‘Do you know what Love’s touchstone is? One is affliction [balā] and wrath [qahr], and the other is blame [malāmat] and maltreatment [madhillat] ... One must suffer torment in love yet persevere in fidelity. In this fashion, the lover becomes cooked by the beloved’s mercy and wrath. Otherwise, he remains raw and nothing will ever come of him.’ Tamhīdāt, p. 221, no. 283.

  392 Kashf al-asrār, V, p. 60. Maybudī’s doctrine here is directly derived from Anṣārī’s teaching in the Ṣad maydān, where, in the fifteenth Field of Abstinence (wara‘), the Master of Herat states that piety is increased by enduring public blame for one only ever learns to abstain from worldly excesses ‘by being taunted by one’s enemies [shimātat-i ḥaṣmān: i.e. who rejoice at one’s misfortunes]’ (Majmu‘a-yi Rasā’il-i fārsī-yi Khvāja ‘Abdu’llāh Ansāri, ed. Sarvar Mawlā’ī, I, p. 269).

  393 The celebrated first verse of his poem ‘The Apparition’.

  394 Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, II, pp. 1091, citing Hujwīrī, Kashf, p. 68.

  395 Kashf al-maḥjūb, ed. Zhukovskii, p. 70. Cf. ‘If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you’ (John 15: 18–19).

  396 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 217: 4, reading malāmat for malālat.

  397 Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, I, p. 730.

  398 Pūrjavādī, ‘Rindī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’, Bū-yi jān, p. 243.

  399 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 79: 6.

  400 ‘Rindī pertains to the realm of the ‘Transcendental I’ of the poet inspiring the exterior utterance of his personal ‘I’: the Self beyond the temporal self, the Oversoul above the human soul, the interior voice of genius. But to penetrate into the realm of rindī, one must accept the presence of this dichotomy and duality of – human versus divine – identities within one poetic voice, and realize that the proper universe of rindī is ‘selflessness.’ Pūrjavādī, ‘Rindī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’, Bū-yi jān, pp. 223–4.

  401 Ibid., p. 244.

  402 Shelley, ‘Epipsychidion’, 589.

  403 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 84: 7.

  404 Lāhījī, Mafātīḥ al-i‘jāz fī sharḥ-i Gulshan-i rāz, p. 521.

  405 Ibid., p. 534.

  406 Lāhūrī, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, I, p. 202, commenting on Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 48: 3. The linking of the inspired libertine with transcendence and the highest degree of love is also the main theme of Shāh Ni‘matullāh Walī’s (1330–1431) treatise on the Spiritual Degrees of the Inspired Libertines (Marātib-i rindān) cited above.

  407 As the poet says: ‘Whoever became an initiate of the heart remained in the sanctum of the Friend, but those who did not comprehend this affair remained entangled in it.’ Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 175: 1.

  PART II

  ḤĀFIẒ AND THE SCHOOL OF LOVE IN CLASSICAL PERSIAN POETRY

  The Principles of the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

  Husayn Ilahi-Ghomshei

  translated by Leonard Lewisohn

  It’s a matter of creed for me: goblets of wine,

  My love’s lips just like rubies, this is my doctrine

  I won’t forsake. Puritans, I offer you apologies.

  Ḥāfiẓ1

  The Genealogy of the Religion of Love in Persian Poetry

  From ancient times Persian literature has featured many references to the ‘Religion of Love’ (dīn-i ‘ishq or madhhab-i ‘ishq), represented as being the only true faith, the creed most acceptable in the eyes of God. In classical Persian poetry, the most famous verses where this concept seems to have first been vocalized are by Rūdākī Samarqandī (d. 329/940):

  What use is it to serve one’s turn to face

  The Mihrab in your prayers, when all your heart

  Is set upon the idols of Taraz and of Bukhara?

  What God accepts from you are love’s transports,

  But prayers said by rote He won’t admit.2

  Rūdākī’s younger contemporary, the Sufi martyr Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (d. 304/922), when asked which religious creed he followed, in the same vein pronounced: ‘I follow the religion of my Lord’ (Anā ‘alā madhhabī rabbī).3 Ḥallāj’s bold claim was embraced by many of the later Sufis, such as his follower ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadhānī (executed 526/1132) who alluded directly to the ‘Religion of Love’ in this key passage in his Tamhīdāt:

  The lovers follow the religion and the community of God. They do not follow the religion and creed of Shāfi‘ī or Abū Ḥanīfa or anyone else. They follow the Religion of Love and the Religion of God [madhhab-i ‘ishq wa madhhab-i khudā]. When they behold God, this visionary encounter of God [liqā-yi khudā] becomes their religion and creed; when they see Muḥammad, this visionary encounter with Muḥammad [liqā-yi Muḥammad] becomes their faith [īmān]. When they behold Iblis, that station’s vision becomes to them [the meaning of] infidelity. Thus it is possible to understand what the faith and religion of this group consists in, and from whence derives their ‘infidelity’.4

  Underlining the scriptural basis for their radical theology of love, Sufis referred to the famous Qur’ānic verse affirming that God, notwithstanding recusants among mankind, will bring forth a people ‘whom He loves and who love Him’ (yuhibbuhum wa yuhibbunahu, V: 54). They interpreted this verse as referring to the saintly company who are lovers of God and who in turn are beloved by God. Similarly, one finds another Qur’ānic verse (II: 165) states: ‘The believers are stauncher in their love of God.’

  The earliest major Persian Sufi poet to make love an axiom of an individual mystical theology and personal religious creed was Sanā’ī of Ghazna (d. 525/1131). In one verse, Sanā’ī thus identifies both his Sufi path (ṭarīqat) and his sectarian creed (kīsh) as being ‘Love’ itself:

  Why do you ask about my creed and faith tradition?

  It’s clear. M
y creed is Eros. Amor is my canon.5

  Similarly, in another verse, Sanā’ī incites the reader to ‘Rise up and show forth the high stature of Love, tor the Muezzin has said: “Rise up to pray!”’ Here, the poet informs us, like Rūdakī before him, that true ritual prayer in practice is enacted by a lover and in reality sustained by love. ‘The divine Muezzin’, he declares, ‘summons you to rise up and demonstrate in every action of your life the high stature of love, since life itself is nothing but one constant adoratio amoris’’ The same teaching, using a similar metaphor, we find enunciated a few generations later by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 1273):

  In eros lies transcendent heights which rise

  And summon us to music that’s immortal.

  Save to seek those erotic highs

  One should never dance, never revel.6

  Niẓāmī of Ganja (d. 598/1202), the leading author of epic romantic poetry in Persian literature, must also be counted among the chief prophets of the Religion of Love in Persian belles lettres. In his romantic epic poem Khusraw and Shīrīn, Niẓāmī teaches that the only role that man is fit to play in the entire theatre of Existence is that of the lover in the following verses, where Love is featured as a kind of Anima Mundi:

  Naught else but love’s my labour: that’s my logo;

  So long as I’m alive, don’t offer me another motto.

  All face towards love to supplicate in every

  Temple under Heaven’s eye. The galaxy

  Itself wouldn’t have an earth unless across

  The surface Eros’ water coursed to save its face.

  Become a slave to love! All righteous thought consists

  Of this, for that’s the task of the heart’s adepts.

  The cosmos is love in sum and all the rest deceit;

  Save Amor’s play, all else’s an idle game and sport.7

  Niẓāmī, long before Newton, had posited that the entire scale of creation and Nature was permeated by a reciprocally acting gravitational force that he named ‘Love’:

  Attraction works on human temperament its lure

  And that attraction sages predicate of love,

  So when you ponder this in depth then you’ll perceive

  That Eros holds the cosmos up: all stands through love,

  And if once Eros lose its grip on Heaven’s wheel

  The great globe itself would forfeit its bloom and weal.8

  Niẓāmī continues to glorify love in the next verses and describes the fundamental message of his poetic composition as a summons to Love:

  Devoid of Eros, life appeared to me soulless.

  I sold my heart and in its place a soul purchased.

  I’ve filled the rims and cornices of the globe

  With Amor’s smoke. I’ve made the eyes of reason doze.9

  After Niẓāmī, the next great prophet of the Religion of Love in Persian poetry was ‘Aṭṭār of Nishapur (d. 618/1221 or 627/1229). Like the poets mentioned above, in line with the Qur’ānic doctrine of love (V: 54), ‘Aṭṭār believed the only commendable and worthwhile connection between man and God to be a Lover–Beloved relationship. Like many other Muslim mystics before him, ‘Aṭṭār emphasized that the superiority and pre-eminence of Adam over the other angels lay in Adam’s/man’s love-passion and agony.10 In fact, in ‘Aṭṭār spiritual teachings, the cure for all psychological and spiritual ailments lies in the transformative suffering and passion of love (dard).11 That is why he asks for that passion to be increased:

  Give me an ounce of pain, O you

  Who cure all pain, for left without

  Your pain, my soul will die.

  To heretics let heresy apply,

  And to the faithful – grant them faith;

  But for the heart of ‘Aṭṭār, let

  One ounce of your pain remain.12

  Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) of Andalusia in Spain, known as the Shaykh al-akbar, the ‘Supreme Shaykh’, was one of the first Sufis to describe the Religion of Love in a specifically ecumenical sense. In his theosophical works composed in Arabic, he gave explicit theological expression to a separate religious creed that he called the Religion of Love (Dīn al-ḥubb) – a faith which embraced all manifestations of reality – while encompassing yet transcending their divergent appearances. The following verses are among the most famous and admired lines ever composed in Islamic – if not world – civilization on the theme of this transcendental erotic religious creed:

  Pasture between breastbones

  and innards.

  Marvel,

  a garden among flames!

  My heart can take on

  any form:

  for gazelles, a meadow

  a cloister for monks,

  For the idols, sacred ground,

  Ka‘ba for the circling pilgrim,

  the tables of the Toráh,

  the scrolls of the Qur’án.

  I profess the religion of love;

  wherever its caravan turns

  along the way, that is the belief,

  the faith I keep.13

  The other great Arab mystical poet – a contemporary of Ibn ‘Arabī who lived in Egypt – who belonged to this same School of Love was ‘Umar ibn Fāriḍ (d. 633/1235). Ibn Fāriḍ’s entire poetical oeuvre is one immense paean in praise of love’s mysteries, a hymn composed in exposition of the subtleties, sublime degrees and mystical states of Islamic erotic spirituality. Although all his verse was composed in Arabic, many of the later literati of Persia honoured his genius by giving him the honorary title of ‘Ḥāfiẓ of the West’. In his famous Wine-ode (Qaṣīda-yi khamriyya), Ibn Fāriḍ describes in great detail the quickening qualities and effects of wine upon the spirit – wine being used here as an allegory for the elixir of love and its intoxication. To relish the spirit and convey the taste of this wine and also to give a small glimmer of the grandeur of the sublime station of love in his verse, it must suffice here to cite the two opening and two concluding verses of this poem:

  In memory of the beloved

  we drank a wine;

  we were drunk with it

  before the creation of the vine.

  The full moon its glass, the wine

  a sun circled by a crescent;

  when it is mixed

  how many stars appear.

  Its two final verses are:

  For there is no life in this world

  for one who lives here sober;

  who does not die drunk on it,

  prudence has passed him by.

  So let him weep for himself,

  one who wasted his life

  never having won a share

  or measure of this wine.14

  Over the rest of this period of what might be called ‘the Golden Age of Classical Persian Literature’ – the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries – the ‘Religion of Love’ (madhhab-i ‘ishq) became increasingly celebrated in verse by major poets such as Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273), Sa'dī (d. circa 691/1292) and Ḥāfiẓ. Their contributions to this central current of Islamic erotic spirituality is discussed below.

  The Religion of Love in Rūmī

  It will be worthwhile to explore Rūmī’s own understanding of this transcendental madhhab-i ‘ishq, since he devotes so many verses of his ecstatic poetry to claiming that the religion of love transcends not only Islam, but every other religion as well. He thus begins one long ghazal announcing the supra-Islamic nature of Eros as follows:

  In the summa of Amor

  where’s the idiom of Islam?

  Where’s one master exegete

  of Eros whose lore suffices

  to crack the code of its complexities?15

  In another ghazal, he delineates the above distinction between the esoteric creed of love and exoteric Islam in greater detail:

  Get lost! The lover’s secta amoris is the reverse

  Of other faiths and creeds, for from the one you love

  Untruth and perfidy beats kindness and
sincerity,

  Her fabrications inspirations, her sin all gratuity,

  All ill from her is just, her taunts all right and meet,

  Her temple is the Ka‘ba, silk-soft her adamant.

  The nettle’s sting from her I think is better than

  Rose petals and sweet basil. If scoffers then poke fun

  And say: ‘It’s deviant – this crooked creed you’ve got!’

  Reply: ‘Her eyebrow is my creed. I bid for it

  And laid down life for this – the “creed of crookedness”!

  It’s all I need, I’ll waste no words. Go read the rest in silence.’16

  We find him again extolling in a quatrain the superiority of love’s ‘crooked creed’ over the so-called ‘straight’ way of formalistic Islam:

  Her tresses’ tip our fetish-cult

  And eye that’s drunk and impudent –

  That is the creed which we adopt.

  They say that healthy piety is something else,

  Assert sound faith is different, aside from these,

  But from their ‘sound faith’ and ‘creed of wholesomeness’,

  We choose her deviant, uneven ways and crookedness.17

  This same strict distinction and difference between the formal creed of Islam and the higher transcendental religion of love is reaffirmed by Rūmī in a number of other quatrains in his Dīvān as well. In the following two quatrains, he maintains that love’s esoteric faith supersedes conventional religion and is something apart from the other world’s traditional sects: