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

  Shīrāz is a treasury of ruby lips, a quarry of beauty.

  Bankrupt jeweller that I am, it all makes me uneasy.

  So many drunken eyes I’ve seen, by God, in this town,

  I’m so filled with cheer that I’ve abandoned wine.

  The town abounds with coy coquettes in each of the six

  Directions – I’m broke, else I’d buy all six.26

  Shīrāz inspires love in him; love inspires him to praise Shīrāz. ‘The woes of Love are all but one single tale, yet how strange it is that everyone who tells it makes it sound so novel!’, he says in one verse, before immediately in the next vaunting the beauty of Shīrāz, reminding the reader: ‘Do not fault Shīrāz nor its delicious Rukhni waters and sweet breeze – This city is the beauty-spot of all the seven climes.’27 In this fashion, the earthly metaphor of the heavenly city of Shīrāz, the temporal cynosure on the earth’s surface of eternal Paradise, for Ḥāfiẓ came to illustrate the timeless story of his love:

  Our towns are copied fragments from our breast;

  And all man’s Babylons strive but to impart

  The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.

  Shīrāz and the Galaxy of Fourteenth-Century Persian Poetry

  To enter imaginatively into Ḥāfiẓ’s times, we must examine in brief some of the literary figures and historical factors that gave shape and reality to this grand vision of Eros. The literary and philosophical thought of Ḥāfiẓ cannot be understood without comprehending something of the high culture of Persia, its monumental intellectual achievements, literary, theological and philosophical, as well as the local society of Shīrāz and contemporary politics of the province of Fars.

  The poetic cosmos of fourteenth-century Persia blazed with some of the brightest luminaries in Persian poetic history, whose ideas Ḥāfiẓ absorbed and emulated, and whose verse he followed and imitated. As a poet, Ḥāfiẓ was a genius of transformative appropriation, supreme connoisseur of verse-aphorisms and epigrams, who specialized in selecting the choicest verses from the past masters of Persian and Arabic poetry, transcreating their imagery, improvising and improving on their ideas in his own original manner. Hardly a verse of Ḥāfiẓ can be found whose sound, form, colour or sense does not hark back to similar lines in the works of ‘Umar Khayyām (d. 526/1131), Sanā’ī (d. c. 535/1140), Khāqānī (d. 595/1198), Niẓāmī (d. 598/1202), Ẓahīr Faryābī (d. 598/1202), ‘Aṭṭār of Nīshāpūr (d. 618/1221), Kamāl al-Dīn Ismā‘īl Iṣfahānī (d. 635/1237), Sa‘dī (d. c. 691/1292), Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273), Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Irāqī (d. 688/1289), Nizārī Quhistānī (d. 721/1321), Awḥadī Marāghī (d. 738/1338), or other of the grand master poets of classical Persia.28 His verse is also steeped in the poetry of Ibn Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235), the greatest Arab Sufi poet.29

  Foremost among the poets of his own day whom Ḥāfiẓ respected, knew intimately and emulated was Khwājū Kirmānī (d. after 753/1352), a Sufi poet who lived in Shīrāz during much of his lifetime where he was a disciple of Amīn al-Dīn Kāzarūnī Balyānī, a Sufi master distinguished enough to be praised by Ḥāfiẓ in his poetry.30 The spiritualized eroticism of Ḥāfiẓ, who ‘is perhaps the first poet in the Persian-speaking world who perfectly realized the unity of the mundane and the spiritual sphere’,31 was largely indebted to Khwājū’s ideas. In the erotic mathnawī verse of Khwājū, one finds explicit imagery of sexual union, intimate descriptions of carnal intercourse of the female beloved with her male lover. In Khwājū’s Mathnawī-yi Gul va Nawrūz, for instance, the love-making of Nawrūz with Gul is described in meticulous detail. The lover and his mistress are likened to a single heart (dil), one of them composed of the first letter of the word (Dal) and the other its second letter (Lam), the two letters which make up the word for heart in Persian. One is described as wine, and the other as honey, so that ‘before them lay the wine and honey. In their palms were dates and in their mouths sugar. Night and day they were transported beyond this realm of dust, unaware of the whirling spheres of heaven.’32 In such verse, the erotic becomes the metaphysical, the sentient sexual made equivalent to the transcendental suprasensual. An identical sublimation of the Erotic into the Sacred and sacralization of sexual pleasure is also found in Ḥāfiẓ’s verse. In Khwājū, as in Ḥāfiẓ, one finds the Dantesque, and later Petrachean, notion that there is more religion in the throes of earthly passion, though misdirected, than in the platitudes of holy beautitudes hymned by rote for heaven’s sake, as Shelley expressed it so perfectly in his poem Amor Aeternus:

  Wealth and dominion fade into the mass

  Of the great sea of human right and wrong,

  When once from our possession they must pass;

  But love, though misdirected, is among

  The things which are immortal, and surpass

  All that frail stuff, which will be or – which was.

  Ḥāfiẓ apparently followed Khwājū’s poetic style and views closely.33 During the years Khwājū spent in Shīrāz they were close friends34 and we find numerous ghazals in which Ḥāfiẓ responded to the Kirmānī poet’s verse, and there is even a famous verse attesting to his fondness for Khwājū:

  All agree that Sa‘dī is the master of ghazal

  But Ḥāfiẓ follows Khwājū’s genre for style.35

  As we see, there existed an all-pervasive tradition of eroticism, both metaphysical and physical, in the verse of at least one contemporary poet whom Ḥāfiẓ explicitly admired. Ḥāfiẓ not only voices his admiration of Khwājū’s rhetorical prowess in the art of verse, but pays homage to the Kirmānī poet’s iconoclastic spiritual vision: his lauding of infidelity as being superior to public displays of pharisaic ascetical piety, his declaration that lovers do not follow the conventional ways of orthodox religious piety and abstinence, his pursuit of notoriety and glorification of blame in the malāmatī tradition, and praise of selflessness as constituting the essence of the spiritual path – Sufi doctrines that are also of central significance in Ḥāfiẓ’s anti-clerical erotic spirituality.36

  The most important contemporary master lyrical poet was Salmān Sāvajī (d. 778/1376), who resided in Tabriz, the other major cultural capital city of Persia during this period. Salmān was ‘the most frequently imitated poet of his own age’.37 The great Kubrāwī Sufi Shaykh ‘Alā’ al-Dawla Simnānī (659/1261–736/1326) uttered no hyperbole at all when he asserted that ‘the like of Simnām’s pomegranates and Salmān’s poems cannot be found anywhere’.38 Even today, scholars judge Salmān to be ‘one of the supreme Persian poets of his period: his ghazals, after those of Sa‘dī, Rūmī, and Ḥāfiẓ, fall into the first-class category’.39 Salmān’s ghazals sometimes parallel those of Ḥāfiẓ so closely that it is clear that they both imitated and copied each other’s poetry,40 and in one line, where Ḥāfiẓ boasts that his own poetic abilities excel both Salmān and Khwājū, it is clear that Salmān was one of his touchstones of poetic excellence.41

  Beside these superficial commonalities of rhetoric and image, rhyme and metre shared between them, and aside from – and even more important than – this respectful literary rivalry, Salmān and Ḥāfiẓ were both inspired by the same radical Religion of Love. Eros is the main concern of their verse, as Salmān boldly declares:

  I have no job but love. To play the lover’s part to me

  Is creed and faith. Each man follows some sect and faith

  Which is his own. Of what concern to you is Salman’s faith?42

  Eschewing the pedestrian conventions of ‘Muslim’ exoteric piety just like Ḥāfiẓ, Salmān vaunts being a heretic on the Path of Love, glorifying his pursuit of ‘blame’ and ‘ill-fame’ in ghazal after ghazal:

  If being a Muslim lies in not adoring mortal beauty

  And renouncing wine, well I for one declare myself

  A lifetime heretic – if ever once I was a Muslim!

  The best path in love is blackening one’s name, Salmān

  Take it from me: my life is spent in pursuit of ill-
fame.43

  The Religion of Love only obtains probity and righteousness through ill-fame. Piety on the Path of Love is realized by being tainted with reproach and affliction with the stigma of public rebuke. In respect to this world’s wiles and ways the lover is always unwise – he is a fool. The lover’s pursuit of shame and notoriety is poles apart from the ascetic’s reasonable piety and calculated self-serving unctuous moral rectitude, for as Ḥilālī says in a verse:

  Abandon all shame and good name in the lane

  Where love’s game is played, for the inspired

  Libertine’s art does not sit well with holy piety.44

  Another first-class Persian ghazal poet, the Sufi Kamāl Khujandī (d. 803/1400), was like Salmān also based in Tabriz and shared his ethos of love. All three were well acquainted with one another’s poetry and belonged ‘to a common literary culture, despite never meeting face to face’.45 Kamāl wrote about twice as many ghazals as Ḥāfiẓ, about a fifth of which, in my opinion, rank equal in accomplishment with the Shīrāzī master. Kamāl’s many parallelisms in verse to Ḥāfiẓ’s poems46 are as important to Persian literary history as those of Salmān. He had lambasted Ḥāfiẓ in a ghazal written in reply (javāb) as a parallel poem (naẓīra) in the same metre and rhyme as one by Ḥāfiẓ, boasting: ‘Although Ḥāfiẓ might be a rakish courtier serving Sulṭān Abū’l-Favāris,47 in the stylistics of the ghazal he never matched the genius of Kamāl.’48 Despite such literary rivalry, relations between the two poets was characterized overall by cordial and fraternal exchanges.49

  As with Salmān, the unconventional Religion of Love in ‘which repute and good name are not allowed’, as Kamāl says (echoing Ḥāfiẓ’s many similar statements to this effect50), is the most oft-repeated refrain throughout his poetry. The glorification of ill-fame and the vaunting of notoriety was in fact one of the central topoi of the anti-clerical repertoire and literary counter-culture that both poets shared in common:

  Neither of shame am I worried, nor of name take heed:

  For in my creed, repute and good name are not allowed.51

  Kamāl also extols the ‘Canon-Law of Love’ (sharī‘at-i ‘ishq), praising and preaching the contemplation of beautiful faces as an act of religious devotion:

  Do not cover your face from those who’d gaze on it

  For in the Canon Law of Amor, judges say it is

  Allowed to contemplate the faces of the fair.52

  Exactly the same erotic doctrine, which grants the lover permission to gaze upon his beloved’s face,53 runs through Sa‘dī’s poems54 and fills all of Ḥāfiẓ’s ghazals as well.

  Another major Persian poet contemporary with Ḥāfiẓ was ‘Imād al-Dīn Faqīh Kirmānī (d. 773/1371), one of the most eminent Sufis of his age, whose ghazals were mostly composed during Sufi séances in the khānaqāh that he directed in Kirmān.55 Later Persian hagiographers have seasoned ‘Imād’s biography with various legends about Ḥāfiẓ’s rivalry with him, which have recently been contested and shown to be spurious.56 The parallelisms between the two poets’ ghazals are in fact so numerous that it’s clear that his younger contemporary Ḥāfiẓ admired his verse and imitated him frequently.57

  All in all, Ḥāfiẓ, Khwājū, Salmān, Kamāl Khujandī and ‘Imād al-Dīn Faqīh are stars sparkling within a single literary galaxy of geniuses in fourteenth-century Persia. Their penchant for Sufi symbolism, sharing of the same poetic rhymes, metres, images and ideas (especially their use of the same bacchanalian imagery), not to mention theoerotic sensibility, poetic vision, mystical persuasion and metaphysical thought, exhibit an overall concordance.58

  Belonging to the next generation, but evidently well known to Ḥāfiẓ, was Shāh Ni‘matullāh Walī (d. 835/1431), the greatest Sufi master of the Timurid period. Ḥāfiẓ apparently had scant personal regard for him, responding to one of his ghazals in such a manner as to expose his profound difference of opinion in respect to the former’s spiritual claims. So while some ‘correspondence’ between the two poets did exist, it hardly transcended the superficial literary level.59 While Shāh Ni‘matullāh and Ḥāfiẓ were discordant in their spiritual sensibilities despite an occasional superficial concordance of poetic rhyme, Shāh Ni‘matullāh’s foremost disciple, the great Tabrīzī Sufi poet Shāh Qāsim Anvār (d. 838/1434), venerated the poetry of Ḥāfiẓ and professed in his verse the same universal Religion of Love found in the Dīvāns of Ḥāfiẓ, Khwājū, Salmān, ‘Imād and Kamāl. These following oft-cited verse gives a taste of Shāh Qāsim’s transcendental love mysticism:

  In pagoda and mosque, in Ka‘ba and tavern,

  The God of Love is the sole aim

  And all the rest are just moonshine.60

  Qāsim’s line was directly patterned on the following verse from a ghazal composed by Ḥāfiẓ in the same metre and rhyme:

  All three are one: the boon-companion,

  The musician and the Saki, and what’s betwixt

  Them – this earthen and watery veil – is just a pretext.61

  The major – perhaps the most unusual – poet contemporary with Ḥāfiẓ in Shīrāz was the extraordinary social satirist and master parodist ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī (d. 772/1371).62 A serious court poet known for his mellifluous bachanalian ghazals in the style of Sa‘dī, ‘Ubayd was the author of qaṣīdas in praise of Abū Isḥāq Īnjū and Shāh Shujā‘ and other local rulers.63 Times and tastes change. Today he is regaled as classical Persia’s chief pornographer both in prose and verse. Due to its distinctly Adult XXX content, his bold and fantastical sexually explicit verse (and prose), which many traditional scholars continue to denigrate as ‘worthless’,64 of course remains unprintable in Iran’s would-be Islamic Republic.65 Throughout ‘Ubayd’ prose and verse the same rabidly anti-clerical sentiments present in Ḥāfiẓ frequently appear – as when he declares himself the foe of ‘preachers with chilly breath’, and the enemy of ‘hypocritical Sufi shaykhs’.66 ‘Ubayd’s caustic, sarcastic style, his courting of notoriety and ill-fame (bad-nāmī)67 – his parodying of hypocritical Muslim clerics, lampooning of fake Sufis and spoofs on proud ascetics – are replicated exactly in Ḥāfiẓ’s poems.68 Although these refined caricatures of religious hypocrites did have an influence on Ḥāfiẓ, who was his junior,69 his bawdy satires on the society of medieval Shīrāz were not by any means, as some scholars assert,70 the chief inspiration underlying Ḥāfiẓ’s doctrine of inspired libertinism or rindī (see below: Prolegomenon II, p. 31–55). In ‘Ubayd’s lyrics, which largely follow Sa‘dī’s style, the perplexing ethical and profound theological depths, amazing spiritual transports and the bewilderingly complex mystical allusiveness that fill Ḥāfiẓ’s verse are completely absent. Both poets were indeed ardent social reformists, but in his use of satire and parody the discourse and voice of Ḥāfiẓ never descends to the facetious and libellous level that ‘Ubayd almost always inhabits.71 The intellectual fraternity between the two Shīrāzī poets was a product of shared social not of common spiritual attitudes, and lay, as Mu‘īn rightly states, ‘in their mutual opposition to hypocrisy, the irrepressibility of their poetic natures, and their fully developed penchant for pleasantry and jesting’.72

  A host of lesser-known poets also flourished alongside Ḥāfiẓ in Shīrāz, whose poetic voices, moods and images all find resonances of their own in his verse. These include the likes of Princess Jahān-Malik Khātūn (d. after 795/1393), the greatest female poet of medieval Iran, who composed ‘the largest known dīvān to have survived from any woman poet of pre-modern Iran’,73 and Bushāq Aṭ‘amah-i Shīrāzī (d. 827/1423 or 830/1427), the supreme comic (and only culinary) poet in Persian literature, whose entire oeuvre consisted of lyrical lampoons on other poets using exclusively the imagery of food and eating. Most of Bushāq’s ghazals were deliberate parodies (taqīḍa) of Ḥāfiẓ and other contemporary poets, such as Shāh Ni‘matu’llāh.74