Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

through His theophanic human form (shāhid), founding a cult of love upon the
adoration of beauty.^377 This is the meaning of so many of Ḥāfiẓ’s plaints, such as the
following verse:

ManĀdam-ibihishtī-amammādarīnsafar

ḥālīasīr-i‘ishq-ijavānān-imahvasham

I am Adam come down from heaven

Yet, here and now, in this journey, remain

Bewitched – ensnared in love

With youths with faces like the moon.^378

In Ḥāfiẓ’s erotic theology it is only through the romantic experience of becoming
ensnared by earthly beauty through contemplation of the theophanic witness
(shāhid) that the mystic paradoxically obtains release from the bonds of selfhood,
which is why he says:

I broadcast it out loud, and in this boast take delight:

I am Love’s bondslave, free of earth and heaven both.

I was an angel and the supreme paradise my sanctuary;

It is man who brought me to this deserted cloister.^379

In the universe of Romance and the realm ofrindī, liberation from the confines of
mortality can only be obtained by the lover casting his glance (naẓar-bāzī) on the
Sublime-in-mundane-disguise; that is, by practising the art of contemplation of the
theophanic witness (shāhid-bāzī) whose presence gives him visual testimony of
the existence of heavenly love and beauty. The Ishrāqī philosopher Muḥammad
Dārābī, in his commentary on this verse, thus explains:

How should Love’s bondslave – who is not fettered by any attachment, nor

subject to any of the degrees of being, nor bound by the chain of existent

beings either in this world and the Next and so is king over the realms of

Appearance and Reality – not be delighted and find gratification in knowing

that the entire cosmos is subject to Him? For his ‘slavery’ is the source of all

liberty ... Being detached from everything, he is free, and from that standpoint

he realizes that all the appearances in the world are but diverse manifesta-

tions of that Beauty, and thus he is alsowitheverything...^380

‘Inspired’ by being ‘enthralled’ to Love, the ‘libertine’ is thus paradoxically ‘free’
through being fettered by the bonds of romantic attachment. Shāh Ni‘matullāh pro-
vides a subtle summary of this romantic ‘theology of liberation’ through servitude
to love preached by the inspired libertine in his essay on theSpiritualDegreesofthe
InspiredLibertines(Marātib-irindān):

ḤāfiẓintheSocio-historical,LiteraryandMysticalMilieuofMedievalPersia 51