42self-righteous conceit [‘ujb] and arrogance. Therefore, God has set the com-
mon herd over them to tongue-lash and blame them ... so that no matter what
they do, they suffer blame and abuse ... For it is a fundamental axiom in the
Way of God that there is no affliction or veil on the Way tougher than being
wise in one’s own conceit [‘ujb].^323Ḥāfiẓ’s defence of the erotics of the heart and the eye (the philosophy ofshāhid-bāzī,
discussed below, pp. 43ff.) against medieval Islamic Puritanism is manifest in the
first verse above.
In the second verse, devoted to Sufi bacchanalian doctrine, Ḥāfiẓ basks in hissuc-
cèsdescandaleat being blamed as a drinker of wine, in ruining his reputation – that
‘good name’ which is more culpable than any sin since it leads to self-righteous con-
ceit (‘ujb, as Hujwīrī observed). Whereas ascetic abstinence and religious piety often
culminate in self-righteousness, the adoration of wine ‘dissolves all the effects and
traces of egocentric self-worship from the mystic’s being. This verse thus exempli-
fies the poet’smalāmatītastes and disgust with the false reputation which ensue
from fame and name and receiving public honours from people.’^324
Lastly, in the third verse, the termmalāmatis then explicitly invoked by the poet
as he elucidates the metaphysical reason why the sage never feels aggrieved at the
disapprobation and censure of the common horde of men.^325
From this hasty overview of Ḥāfiẓ’s views on the Sufi Path of Blame (which com-
prise but a tiny portion of these expressions), it is apparent how profoundly his rad-
ical spiritual nonconformism is indebted to the earlymalāmatīSufi teachings.^326 As
we can see, the ethic of the inspired libertine (rind) in his detachment from self and
society, self-denigration and self-inculpation, anti-materialism and warm-hearted
generosity, all have precise antecedents in Sufimalāmatīteachings. Ḥāfiẓ’s imagery
of the figure connected with the inspired libertine, who represents the highest
degree of the lover, who repudiates the trammels of the ethical absolutes of con-
ventionalSharī‘a-oriented piety, who engages in the sport of gazing on beauty
(naẓar-bāz) and is a lover of beautiful women/boys (shāhid-bāz), who drinks the
dregs of love-passion (durdī-yidard), who cares naught for fair name, ill-fame or
shame (nāmunang), recking neither praise or blame, and who disdains preachers of
ascetical piety (zuhduzāhid), can be found exactly mirrored in verse after verse by
Sanā’ī, ‘Aṭṭār and Sa‛dī in thoseghazals that belong to the literary genre of theqalan-
dariyyawhich they composed.^327 As revealed above, the qalandarīimagery in
medieval Persian Sufi poetry and theqalandarhimself reflectmalāmatīconceptions.
With Ḥāfiẓ’s highlighting of the romantic ideals ofrindandrindīwithin this stock
qalandarīpoetic lexicon, a kind of semantic transformation took place, as
Khurramshāhī observes:
In accordance with hismalāmatīperspective, Ḥāfiẓ came to view both the
acceptable or ‘good’ characters and positions of society and the rejected or
‘bad’ figures and circumstances of society with a highly critical eye, subjectingḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry