66
in society’ (Ehsan Yarshuter, ‘Hafez I. An Overview’,EIr, XI, p. 463). Advocates of this viewpoint
consequently refuse to acknowledge that the poet’s usage of these terms can have any possible higher
symbolic meaning, any refined mystical sense or, indeed, any esoteric significance at all. But assuming
their views are correct leads to an extremely absurd conclusion. Namely, that – to take but a single
instance – the demandingly complex and intricately argued 3,000-page commentary written by Abū’l-
Ḥasan ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Khatmī Lāhūrī on Ḥāfiẓ’sDīvānis complete balderdash. This seems to be exactly
what the same scholar argues when he categorically asserts that ‘reading Hafez as codified poetry
implying an esoteric meaning’ is ‘not dissimilar to the explanations offered by addicts of “conspiracy
theories” in political affairs’ (ibid., p. 464). In Iranian intellectual circles, reductionist views based on
this sort of socio-political ‘new criticism’ unfortunately represent by no means a minority opinion
today – even if such theories have been refuted by solid text-based research into theDīvānby formi-
dable and serious scholars such as Khurramshāhī, Fouchécour, Pūrnāmdāriyān and Isti‘lāmī. One rea-
son for these distortions is that the horizons of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetic cosmology are so broad as to allow his
admirers and enthusiasts to easily mould his verses to suit their own earthly or heavenly preconcep-
tions, and so he has been labelled everything from free-thinker (āzād-andīsh), to Mazdean, to orthodox
Shī‘ite, to faithless agnostic (ibāḥī), to philosopher, to Ḥurūfī... For a survey of the wide divergence of
scholarly opinion about the poet, see Qarāguzlū, ‘Ḥāfiẓ dar miyān-i haftād u dū millat’, pp. 61–74.(^264) Zarrīnkūb,Azkūcha-irindān, pp. 47–8.
(^265) Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, p. 408. Elsewhere Khurramshāhī writes: ‘The tolerance, open-mindedness, liberality and
humaneness which are visible for all to see in Ḥāfiẓ’s crystalline verses, have caused those so-called
“free-thinkers” without any particular religious commitment and without any interest in gnostic
spirituality, to fall into the delusion and harbour the mistaken conception that he was such a free-
thinker who was weak in his own faith.’Ibid., I, p. 3. A similar observation is made by N. Pūrjavādī,
‘Rindī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’,Bū-yijān, p. 330. On Ḥāfiẓ’s personal religious views, particularly concerning escha-
tology, see Khurramshāhī, ‘Ḥāfiẓ va inkār-i ma‘ād?’, in hisDhihnuzabān-iḤāfiẓ, pp. 93–123.
(^266) On which see Murtaḍawī,Maktab-iḤāfiẓ, p. 418.
(^267) Sārimī,Muṣṭalahāt-i‘irfānīwamafāhīm-ibar-jastadarzabān-i‘Aṭṭār, pp. 329–33.
(^268) Pūrjavādī, ‘Rindī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’,Bū-yijān, p. 228.
(^269) The phrase is Zarrīnkūb’s coinage, from the title of his study of Ḥāfiẓ: ‘Down Rogues’ Alley’ (Azkūcha-
irindān, pp. 3–5, 7–8).
(^270) Limbert,ShīrāzintheAgeofHafez, pp. 104–5.
(^271) Gulistān-iSa‛dī, ed. Khaṭīb Rahbar, II: 40, p. 221.
(^272) For the oneghazalin which he uses this phrase, seeDīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī,ghazal186: 6.
(^273) Murtaḍawī,Maktab-iḤāfiẓ, p. 145, n. 1; Pūrnāmdāriyān,Gumshuda-yilab-idaryā, p. 24.
(^274) Shayegan, ‘The Visionary Topography of Ḥāfiẓ’, inTemenos, p. 224.
(^275) Zarrīnkūb rightly speculates that ‘the careless desperado attitude and their notoriety-seeking of the
hoodlums [rindān] may have been interpreted as a model for mystical detachment’,Azkūcha-irindān,
p. 4.
(^276) Pūrnāmdāriyān underlines that ‘Therindin Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry is not the marketplace ruffian [rind-ibazārī]
whose entire character personified avarice and hypocrisy, but, rather, the collegiate and intellectual
libertine [rind-imadrasīvarawshanfikrī]’,Gumshuda-yilab-idaryā, p. 24.
(^277) Cf. ‘Rindī-yi Ḥāfiẓ’, in Pūrjavādī,Bū-yijān, p. 286.
(^278) Dīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī,ghazal93: 3. My translation is based on Isti‘lāmī’s interpretation (Dars-i
Ḥāfiẓ, I, p. 303), but follows Khānlarī’s text of the verse. On various interpretations of this verse, see
Khurramshāhī,Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 407, 440 and Lāhūrī,Sharḥ-i‘irfānī, I, pp. 443–4.
(^279) Zarrīnkūb,Azkūcha-irindān, p. 51.
(^280) As Ghanī relates (Baḥthdarāthār, I, p. 215), this nickname was given to him by his son and assassin-
successor Shāh Shujā‘ in a distich which Ḥāfiẓ here paraphrases: ‘The libertines [rindān] have for-
sworn their love for wine – all of them, that is, except the policeman who’s drunk without wine.’
(^281) Cited by Ghanī,Baḥthdarāthār, I, p. 216, this verse is found in manuscript ‘L’ inDīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed.
Khānlarī,ghazal122.
ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry