Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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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
wayuhibbunahu, V: 54). They interpreted this verse as referring to the saintly com-
pany 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 mys-
tical 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. My creed isEros.Amoris 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 constantadoratio amoris’’ The same teaching,
using a similar metaphor, we find enunciated a few generations later by Jalāl al-Dīn
Rūmī (d. 1273):

Ineroslies 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 Persianbelles lettres. In his romantic epic poemKhusraw 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 ofAnimaMundi:

ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry