Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

al-Dīn ‘Abū’l-Ḥasan ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Khatmī Lāhūrī (fl. seventeenth century in

India), the commentator, when explaining this poem, alludes to the particular

meaning given to the term ‘infidel’, or ‘traitor’ or ‘heretic’(kāfar) in the philosophy

of Ibn ‘Arabī, as being ‘someone who conceals the existence of God through

manifestation of existing phenomena’.^28 Lāhūrī explains that the mystic versed

in Sufi erotic theology should not allow phenomena to veil his vision of

Noumena, and should realize that the transcendent beauty must – and can only – be

contemplated through the translucent veil of human beauty. Paraphrasing Ḥāfiẓ,

Lāhūrī states:

That Transcendent Beloved Being then spoke, stating that any gnostic who is

a confidant of the arcane mysteries, who recognizes the true face of such an

affair, when given such a wine – that is, beauty and loveliness decked out in

the garb of the veiled presentment of a figurative mortal sweetheart – will

only end up veiling and concealing this display of God, this divine theophany,

unless he does becomes a worshipper of beauty [ḥusn-parast].This is because it

is through the forms of mortal beauty [suwar-ihusniyya] that God-as-Absolute

in reality attracts the hearts of lovers to Himself.^29

For Ḥāfiẓ, as for the other followers of the religion of love, this adoration of beauty

(jamāl-parastī) reveals itself through the cult’s opposition to the self-aggrandizing

Sharī‘a-oriented Islam of the common mob of Muslims. To relish the taste of this

erotic faith, say the Sufi poets, one must divorce old barren reason from bed (along

with its religion pursued for selfish worldly ends) and take the daughter of the vine

to spouse instead, just as Iran’s greatest bacchanalian poet ‘Umar Khayyām (d. circa

519/1125–527/1132) taught.^30 Edward Fitzgerald, in his classic translation of

Khayyām, while slightly misrepresenting the letter, perfectly conveys the spirit

of this idea in this quatrain:

You know, my Friends, how long since in my House

For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:

Divorced old barren reason from my Bed,

And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.^31

Ḥāfiẓ also uses exactly the same terminology to refer to his conversion to this tran-
scendental nonconformist religion of love. He sprinkles his verse with a variety of
terms to this end: ‘Love’s creed’ (madhhab-i ‘ishq),^32 the ‘Magian master’s faith’
(madhhab-i pīr-i mughān),^33 the ‘creed of inspired libertines’ (madhhab-i rindān),^34
the ‘faith of the Sufi Path’ (madhhab-iahl-iṭarīqat)^35 and, occasionally, simply ‘our
creed’ (madhhab-imā).^36 Among these terms, each of which have a slightly different
connotation in his erotic spirituality, the following verses comprise his key
statements:

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