Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

(^201) Samarqandī (Maṭla‘-isa‘dayn, Part 1, p. 304) uses the final verse of an entire philosophical ‘fragmen-
tary poem’ (qiṭa) by Ḥāfiẓ (Dīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, pp. 1071–2) to sardonically summarize the
incident: ‘He who was the delight of his eyes had a needle poked through his seeing eyes by him at
last.’
(^202) Haravī,Sharḥ-ighazalhā-yiḤāfiẓ, III, p. 1490, citing Ghanī,Baḥthdarāthār, I, pp. 128–9. This is one of
twoghazal-panegyrics addressed to this vizier, the other being no. 453 in Khānlarī’s edition.
(^203) Dīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī,ghazal354: 4.
(^204) Punning on the monarch’s nameshujā‘(‘the Brave’):ibid.,ghazal278: 1.
(^205) On which see Ghanī’sBaḥthdarāthār, I, p. 336ff.
(^206) Khorramshahi, ‘ii. Hafez’s Life and Times’,EIr, p. 467.
(^207) Zarrīnkūb,Azkūcha-irindān, pp. 122–4.
(^208) Ibid., pp. 112–13.
(^209) On the basis of a single verse in one of Ḥāfiẓ’sghazals (Dīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī,ghazal163: 2), which
was satirized by Kamāl Khujandī: ‘My beloved, who never went to school and couldn’t even write a line
/ By a single glance solved the tangled issues of a myriad professors’, Ghanī asserts (Baḥth, I, p. 361)
that the entireghazalwas a panegyric for Shāh Shujā‘. But since Shāh Shujā‘ had actually gone to
school and wrote excellent prose and poetry both in Persian and Arabic, it is improbable that the
ghazalcould have been a panegyric for the prince (as Haravī,Sharḥ-ighazalhā-yiḤāfiẓ, II, p. 704, rightly
argues). Many commentators (e.g. Lāhūrī, II,Sharḥ-i‘irfānī, pp. 1292–3; Haravī,ibid.) consider the verse
to allude to the Prophet Muḥammad, who was illiterate (ummī). But the fifth line of theghazaldoes
mention Abū’l-Favāris, an epithet for Shāh Shujā‘ (as Isti‘lāmī,Dars-iḤāfiẓ, I, pp. 470–1, points out).
(^210) Ghanī,Baḥth, I, pp. 344–61.
(^211) Rawḍatal-ṣafā, II, p. 760.
(^212) Dīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī,ghazal288: 8. See also Ghanī,Baḥth, I, p. 365.
(^213) Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, II, pp. 1027–30; and Dīwān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Qazvīnī and Ghanī, pp.
qiv–qka.
(^214) Istiqbālis defined as when ‘the later poet acknowledges the work of his predecessor openly and pub-
lically, but takes the initiative in receiving him and bringing him into the present literary environ-
ment’ (Losensky,WelcomingFighani, p. 12). On Ḥāfiẓ’s ‘welcoming’ghazals written ‘after’ Shāh Shujā‘,
see Ghanī,Baḥth, I, pp. 353, 355, 358, 361; Zarrīnkūb,Azkūcha-irindān, pp. 122f.
(^215) Ghanī,Baḥth, I, p. 39, 344 (referring to Sa‘d al-Dīn Unsī, who compiled the prince’sDīvān).
(^216) ‘The King of the Turks gives heed to the speech of pretenders / He should feel shame at the blood of
Siyavush, wrongly shed.’ The word ‘pretender’ (muda‘ī) means ‘one who falsely lays claims’, and here
indicates ‘the false lover’ (comparable roughly to the topos of thelauzengiers, false flatterers, tale-
bearers found in Italian troubadour poetry) who has no sense or taste for love’s heights and depths,
ecstasies and agonies (cf. Khānlarī’sghazals 78: 4; 426: 1). Haravī (Sharḥ-ighazalhā-yiḤāfiẓ, I, p. 449)
explains: ‘In Firdawsī’sShāhnāma, Siyāvush was the husband of Farangīs, daughter of Afrāsiyāb, King
of the Turānians (enemy of Iranians). Because of the malicious gossip conducted against Farangīs by
Afrāsiyāb’s brother Garsīvaz, she incurred her father Afrāsiyāb’s wrath and was put to death. In order
to avenge her murder, the Iranians waged many years of war against the Turānians. The reference to
‘Siyāvush’s blood, wrongly shed’ is to the death that Siyāvush suffered as a consquence of his wife’s
murder and the ensuing long years of warfare between the two kingdoms. The ‘King of the Turks’ in
this line refers to Afrasiyāb, who was willing to listen to and be influenced by envious tale-bearers
and ultimately bloody his own hands with Siyāvush’s blood because of this. The ‘King of the Turks’ is
interpreted by Lāhūrī (Sharḥ-i‘irfānī-yiDīvān-iḤāfiẓ, II, p. 1390) and Barzigar-Khāliqī (Shākh-inabāt-i
Ḥāfiẓ, p. 276) as a reference to Shāh Shujā‘. The latter comments: ‘The poet compares himself to
Siyāvush and Shāh Shujā‘ to Afrāsiyāb, and in this line entreats him not to listen to the envious who
criticise his poetry’ (ibid., p. 277).
(^217) Zarrīnkūb,Azkūcha-irindān, pp. 125–6.
(^218) Rawḍatal-ṣafā, II, p. 761.
(^219) Maṭla‘al-sa‘dayn, cited by Haravī,Sharḥ-ighazalhā-yiḤāfiẓ, III, p. 1834; Ghanī,Baḥth, I, pp. 373–4.
ḤāfiẓintheSocio-historical,LiteraryandMysticalMilieuofMedievalPersia 63