Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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and for this purpose resorted to regarding the appearances of figurative human
beauty [tawaṣṣulbihmaẓāhir-iḥusniyya-yimajāzī]...his eyes preoccupied in contem-
plation of the True Beauty [jamāl-iḥaqīqī] through the veil of the appearances of
these moon-faced ladies’.^371 Thus,tobehumanisto‘regard’humanbeauty, the measure
of humanity lying in the capacity to love and to experience the erotic in all its
degrees human and divine, according to the Religion-of-Love poets.^372

With this brief introduction into the two key contemplative disciplines of Ḥāfiẓ’s

erotic spirituality, we are now in a better position to re-examine the amatory

psychology of the wild romanticrindwho incarnates their practice.

One of the key verses summarizing Ḥāfiẓ’s erotic theology of inspired libertinism

(rindī) is the following:

Zāhidarrāhbirindīnabaradma‘dhūr-ast/

‘Ishqkārī’stkaymawqūf-ihidāyatbāshad

If the zealous puritan never found the way

To penetrate into Romance’s universe, well,

He’s forgiven – since Love’s a business that hinges

On inculcation and tutelage.^373

By pairingrindīin the first hemistich with Love (‘ishq) in the second, the poet makes

rindīhomologous to love, while love, in turn, is affirmed to be the quintessence of

rindī. Thus one may deduce that loverhood (‘āshiqī) and inspired libertinage (rindī)

are identical in essence, a teaching that Ḥāfiẓ professes in a number of other verses

as well.^374 In Persian Sufi poetry of theqalandariyyagenre, the pairing of lover

(‘āshiq) and libertine (rind) is very common, as we can see in this verse by Shāh

Ni‘matu’llāh:

Since faith and creed ofqalandarsconsists in taking lovers

And libertines as examples, we too takeqalandarways.^375

Exactly the same juxtaposition of these terms appears throughout Kamāl Khujandī’s

Dīvānas well, as in this verse:

It’s clear as day that I’m a lover and a libertine;

In paying homage to your visage, I am true as dawn.^376

This ubiquitous terminological cohabitation of loverhood and libertinism (rindīva
‘āshiqī) in Ḥāfiẓ’sDīvān, and in the works of these two other major Sufi poets con-
temporary with him, reveals therindto be afedelid’amorewho adoptsErosand infat-
uation with Beauty-as-Beloved in all manifestations as his personal religious creed.
Turning from Eternity towards the realm of space and time, this mystic lover, who
is anextremeromantic, contemplates God’s appearances as the Beautiful (al-Jamīl)

ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry