Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

Know it for certain that the lover’s not a Muslim

For in the creed of love there’s neither infidelity

Or faith – once you fall in love, you have no body,

No soul, no heart, no mind: who ain’t like this, ain’t nothin.^19

In his mystical epic ‘The Rhyming Spiritual Couplets’ (Mathnawī-yima‘nawī), Rūmī
frequently celebrates the ‘Religion of Love’ as well. The following verse from his
Mathnawīconstitutes his most famous statement concerning the pre-eminence of
this highersectaamoris:

Love’s state is apart

from religions and faith

God is the lover’s creed –

God is the lover’s state.^20

TheReligionofLoveinḤāfiẓ

Ḥāfiẓ is Persia’s greatest erotic lyricist who remains the supreme – and in some
senses the last – prophet of the Religion of Love in Persian literature. There are
many verses in hisghazals that appear as a manifesto of this transcendental creed:

Both human beings and spirits take their sustenance

From the existence of love. The practice of devotion

Is a good way to arrive at happiness in both worlds.^21

Become a lover; if you don’t, one day the affairs of the world

Will come to an end, and you’ll never have had even

One glimpse of the purpose of the workings of space and time.^22

In Persian literature, the Prophet Ḥāfiẓ’s collected poems (Dīvān) constitute a
sacred scripture which, just like the works of Sa‛dī, is a faithful reflection of the
divine Beloved’s countenance. Both poets were prophets; both composed poetic
Scriptures that remain miracles of beauty in Persian, their verses appearing as
divine signs (āyat) of loveliness and grace. For Ḥāfiẓ, the entire world reflects the
grace and loveliness of the divine countenance, for, insofar as ‘Wheresoever you
turn, there is the Face of God’ (Qur’ān, II: 115), that Face reveals and casts a ray
of the infinite divine beauty in the mirrors of man, cosmos, microcosm and
macrocosm:^23

Your beautiful face divulged to us

the chapter and verse of divine grace,

which is why nothing exists

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