Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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means that God is contemplating Himself in him, is contemplating the evidence of
Himself.’^332
Although the imagery ofshāhid-bāzīis all-pervasive in Persian poetry, unfortu-
nately there exists no adequate treatment of its erotic theology in any Western
language.^333 Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek underlines the ambiguity of the practice in
her definitive study of Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Irāqī’s (d. 688/1289) erotic theory:

il désigne un jeune homme ou une jeune fille de toute beauté, pris comme

miroirs ou ‘témoins’ de la Beauté divine. C’est aussi l’Image de Dieu dans le

Coeur: témoin, contemplation et adorateur ne font alors plus qu’un. Certains

soufis semblent avoir fait un usage régulier de supports humains de contem-

plation, et cette attitude est connue sous le nom deshāhid-bāzī, contemplation

de la Beauté divine sous un forme humaine.^334

In his chapter devoted to the meaning of the term in Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry (which covers

its usage by the important authorities of the Sufi Path who have written about

shāhid/shāhid-bāzī, including ‘Abdu’llāh Anṣārī [d. 482/1089], Qushayrī [d. 465/1074]

and Rūzbihān Baqlī [d. 606/1210]), Aḥmad ‘Alī Rajā’ī Bukhārā’ī reveals that ‘in the

Sufi lexicon, the Witness signifies both “the Absolute Good” and “Fair-faced” at

once, with the connotation that theshāhidis one who bears “witness” to God’s arti-

fice’.^335 In this regard, Sufis often referred to the renowned saying of the Prophet:

‘Indeed, God is beautiful and loves beauty.’^336 Alluding to thisḥadīth, while com-

menting on the Sufi poet Kamāl Khujandī’s doctrine ofshāhid-bāzī(Ḥāfiẓ’s and

Kamāl’s erotic teachings are essentially identical), the Sufi hagiographer Ibn

Karbalā’ī explains, ‘Dhū’l-Nūn the Egyptian said: ‘Whoever becomes an intimate of

God becomes intimate with every beautiful thing [shay’malīḥ], every beautiful face

[wajhṣabīḥ], every beautiful form and every delectable fragrance [rā’iḥaṭayyiba].’^337

The king of lovers and gnostics, Shaykh Abū Muḥammad Rūzbihān al-Baqlī pro-

nounced: ‘The inner aspect of the realm of divinity [lāhūt] is effortlessly incarnated

in the realm of humanity [nāsūt], and the realm of humanity in turn reflects the

beauty of the realm of divinity.’^338

The reflection of divinity within humanity, described here by Rūzbihān, was

based on the Sufi mystico-erotic doctrine that taught, similar to Aristophanes’

speech in theSymposium,^339 that love always pursues wholeness and is essentially

the desire of lover and beloved to merge into one. Under the sway of the divine

theophany, the mystic’s individual identity could virtually melt into that of his

theophanic Witness, as ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī (executed 526/1132: a disciple of

Aḥmad Ghazālī) explains:

The love of the contemplated Object/Witness [shāhid] becomes one with the

divine contemplated Subject [mashūd], causingshāhidandmashūdto merge

into one. You imagine this to be incarnationism [ḥulūl], yet it is not. It is the

quintessence of mystical oneness [ittiḥād], and according to the religion of the

ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry