Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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avant la lettre.According to the latter interpretation, ‘the free-thinking libertine
[rind] is a enlightened mystic [‘ārif] who will neither surrender himself to following
the dictates of hypocritical spiritual leaders nor bend his knee to the brute power
and dictatorial will of political authority. He rejects and regards them all with
scornful indifference’.^264 Regarding these and other similar secular constructions
put on the poet, Khurramshāhī judiciously comments:

Although there is a type ofrindwho is an irreligious freethinker, therindof

Ḥāfiẓ is preoccupied and concerned with the obligations of religion. While he

believes in and reflects upon the Life Hereafter, he does not fear it since

he finds that divine Love and Grace are his real saviours. Nor does he rely on

his own piety, knowledge, learning, or understanding. Contrary to the ascetic

[zāhid]–even the true ascetic – therindis not someone who goes to an

extreme in giving priority to the Life Hereafter, neither does he consider the

life of the world to be entirely insubstantial or without basis.^265

The inspired libertine (rind) is the most manifest yet most camouflaged, the
most publically promulgated yet most carefully disguised figure in Ḥāfiẓ’s religion
of love (madhhab-i‘ishq).^266 Ensconced and encoded within this key term can be
found all the important theosophical notions in Ḥāfiẓ’s thought. While the poetic
termsrindandrindīoccur frequently in earlier Persian theoerotic poets, especially
in ‘Aṭṭār,^267 these terms only take on a central role in the poetry of Ḥāfiẓ, who
made them the key concept in his writing, using them to qualify his spiritual
position and degree – and in this respect, he has no predecessor in Persianbelles
lettres.^268
Although Ḥāfiẓ’s conception ofrindandrindīis multi-dimensional, there are basi-
cally three facets of his doctrine: social, literary and metaphysical, that will concern
me here:

• therindas a socio-political phenomenon


• therindas a literary–allegorical trope belonging to theqalandariyyagenre


• therindas a symbol in Sufi erotic theology for a degree of advanced spiritual
  realization.

Each of these facets is examined individually below.

TheRindān:MafiaofMedievalPersia

Viewed from the social-historical perspective of fourteenth-century Shīrāzī society,
the rogues and rakes (rindān) of Persia in Ḥāfiẓ’s day were actually Mafioso thugs
and hoodlums in charge of specific quarters of the city, exactly like Sicilian or

ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry