Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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As this extraordinarily profound passage teaches, the Sufi’s love of God is, psycho-
logically speaking,nolensvolens, couched in the terminology of human erotic rela-
tionships. Thus, while theshāhidis both ‘an interior spiritual reality’ through which
the mystic experiences intimacy with the Divine, the reflection of that ‘reality’ can
also become manifest in any mundane phenomenon, be it a person, song, verse of
poetry or meditative mood. ‘One is always in love with something or other’, the
Romantic poet Shelley admitted, ‘the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits
encased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the like-
ness of what is perhaps eternal’.^342
This refined amatory psychology obtained its most sophisticated elaboration in
theSawāniḥ al-‘ushshāq(‘The Lovers’ Experiences’), written by Aḥmad al-Ghazālī
(d. 520/1126), younger brother of Islam’s great Sunni-Sufi theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-
Ghazālī (d. 505/1111). In this short treatise, the first treatise on erotico-mystical
love in the Persian language, Ghazālī describes the various erotic appearances of the
beloved as constituting ‘the physiognomy or intuitive discernment of love [firāsat-i
‘ishq]’. The lover must have enough discernment and a sufficient understanding of
physiognomy to recognize the physical appearances of the beloved in this world.
‘Each of these [appearances]’, states Ghazālī, ‘lies upon the path of the lover’s intu-
itive discernment through love; each of them is an expression of his spiritual or
physical quest, or else some ill-aspect or deficiency in his quest. This is because love
manifests certain signs beneath and behind the many veils that becurtain it, each of
the spiritual realities [ma‘ānī] is a sign of love that is displayed through the [semi-
diaphanous] curtain of imagination [parda-yikhiyāl].’^343
The trueshāhid, says Ḥāfiẓ, is not simply a girl possessed of a ‘slender waist and
beautiful hair’ – that is, some sexually attractive woman (or man) – but one whose
beauty incarnates a certain ineffablejenesaisquoithat is described by Sufis as the
metaphysical ‘mystery-of-beauty’ (ān):

The beloved is not one with beautiful hair or a slender waist;

Be the slave of that radiant face which has amystery-of-beauty.^344

By his elucidation of the metaphysics of the erotic theology sustaining the Sufi
contemplative experience in theSawāniḥ, Aḥmad Ghazālī established himself as a –
if notthe– founder of the literary topos and mystical persuasion that later came to
be known as the ‘religion of love’ (madhhab-i‘ishq) in Islamic Sufism. In Ghazālī’s
Sawāniḥ, in ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt’sTamhīdāt– and two centuries later, in theDīvāns of Sa‛dī,
Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī, Ḥāfiẓ and Kamāl Khujandī –shāhid-bāzībecame featured as
one of the key contemplative disciplines of this new, challenging and radical
Religion of Love. Following Ghazālī’s lead, the erotic vocabulary of Sufi poetry came
to be characterized by a parabolic quality, the result of a studied ambiguity which
involved a reserve of meaning beyond the comprehension of the average
intelligence. Exactly like thetrobarcluspoetry of the troubadours of Italy during
this epoch, in classical Persian prose and poetry devoted to the art of erotic

ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry