70
(^334) Feuillebois-Pierunek,ALaCroiséedesVoiesCélestes, p. 70.
(^335) Farhang-i ash‘ār-i Ḥāfiẓ, p. 361.Shāhid(witness) is also one of the divine Names found in the
Qur’ān, denoting ‘God-the-Universal-Witness’ – that is, the divine Omniscience aware both of the
Invisible (ghayb) and the Visible (shāhada) (IX: 94). The term has juridical significations as well,
although these are seldom referred to in Persian poetry – on which see R. Peters, art. ‘Shāhid’,EI^2 , IX,
pp. 207–8.
(^336) Furūzānfar,Aḥādīth-iMathnawī, p. 42.
(^337) Cited in al-Daylamī,Kitāb‘aṭfal-alif, trans. Vadet,LeTraitéd’AmourMystiqued’al-Daylami, n. 244, p. 118.
See also the discussion of this saying by Ernst, ‘Rūzbihān Baqlī on Love’, p. 184.
(^338) Karbalā’ī Tabrīzī,Rawḍātal-jinān, I, pp. 506–7.
(^339) Symposium, 192e – drawing on White’s (Love’sPhilosophy, p. 56) analysis.
(^340) ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadhānī,Tamhīdāt, p. 115, no. 162.
(^341) Bukhārā’ī,Farhang-i ash‘ār-i Ḥāfiẓ, p. 364, citing al-‘Abbādī’sAl-taṣfiya fī aḥwāl al-mutaṣawwifa, pp.
211–12. This passage is largely based on the section on the 3rdbābon theshāhidin Qushayrī’sRisāla:
seeTarjama-iRisāla-yiQushayrī, edited by Furūzānfār, pp. 130–2. It is significant that Gīsū Dārāz, in his
commentary on this passage in hisSharḥ-iRisāla-yiQushayrī, pp. 375–6, links such views to ‘the words
of Rūzbihān, Shaykh Khwāja [Ḥāfiẓ] and Sa‛dī, and their true masters who are Shaykh Aḥmad Ghazālī
and Qāḍī ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt – peace be upon all their spirits – and as for Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī, don’t ask
me, because he professes the entire world to be God’s witness!’. Cf. also Ritter’s discussion inThe
Ocean, pp. 485–502.
(^342) From his introduction to his great romantic poemEpipsychidion.
(^343) Sawāniḥal-‘ushshāq, ed. Ritter, ch. 38, p. 58. For further discussion, see my ‘Divine Love in Islam’, in
EncyclopaediaofLoveinWorldReligions, I, pp. 163–5; and also my ‘Sawanih’, inEncyclopaediaofLove, II,
pp. 535–8.
(^344) Dīvān-iḤāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī,ghazal121: 1. For an overview of the meaning ofān, see J. Nurbakhsh,Sufi
Symbolism, I, pp. 32–3.
(^345) Papadopoulo,IslamandMuslimArt, pp. 144 ff., cited by Renard,SevenDoorstoIslam, p. 127.
(^346) Renard,SevenDoors, p. 127.
(^347) On Ḥāfiẓ’s practice of ‘Beauty Worship’, see Murtaḍawī,Maktab-iḤāfiẓ, pp. 775–94.
(^348) Jahramī, ‘Mākhaz-i andīshahā-yi Sa‛dī: Rūzbihān Baqlī Shīrāzī’, pp. 95–112.
(^349) Ḥāfiẓ-ishīrīn-sukhan, I, pp. 420–4; and also Mu‘īn’s introduction to Rūzbihān’sLeJasmindesfidèles, pp.
54–63.
(^350) See my ‘Romantic Love in Islam’, inEncyclopaediaofLove, II, pp. 513–15. This adage was epitomized in
Rūmī’s verse in theMathnawī: ‘What is beloved is not a phenomenal form, whether it be the love of
this world or love of the Next’ (Mathnawī, II, ed. Nicholson, v. 703).
(^351) Dīvān-irubā‘iyyāt-iAwḥadal-DīnKirmānī, pp. 70–1; p. 233.
(^352) Jāmī,Nafaḥātal-uns, p. 589.
(^353) See myBeyondFaithandInfidelity, chap. VI, for further discussion of this transcendental erotic theory
in Persian poetry.
(^354) As Jāmī explains: ‘If the spiritually realized mystic [‘ārif] sees beauty, he contemplates the beauty he
sees as something divine, as belonging to God, as a loveliness that has descended down through var-
ious degrees of existence. But the common man who is a non-mystic [ghayr-i‘ārif], doesn’t possess
such a regard [naẓar], it would be better if he refrained from contemplation of the fair lest he fall
headlong into a chasm of perplexity’,Nafaḥāt, p. 588. Describing the impoverishment of the common
man’s ‘regard’ for beauty, the American philosopher of aesthetics Elaine Scarry points out: ‘It some-
times seems that a special problem arises for beauty once the realm of the sacred is no longer
believed in or aspired to. If a beautiful young girl or a small bird, or a glass vase, or a poem, or a tree
has the metaphysical in behind it, that realm verifies the weight and attention we confer on the girl,
bird, vase, poem, tree. But if the metaphysical realm has vanished, one may feel bereft not only
because of the giant deficit left by that vacant realm, but because the girl, the bird, the vase, the book
now seem unable in their solitude to justify or account for the weight of their own beauty. If each
ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry