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(^7) AccordingtotheversioninIbnMāja’sSunan(I,44):‘Godhas70[or700/70,000]veilsoflightanddark-
ness: if He were to remove them, the radiant splendours of His Face would burn up whoever was
reached by His Gaze.’ Wensinck,Concordance(I, 464), also cites related versions of this sameḥadīth
fromthecollectionsofbothMuslimandIbnḤanbal.
(^8) Oratleastonthesurface,atfirstreading,sinceinfactthesimple,curiouslydangling‘but’(valī)atthe
endofthefirsthalf-linehereisitselfalsotheQur’ānicArabictermforthedivine‘Friend’(yār),whose
presence(andapparentabsences)arethesubjectoftheentireghazal.
(^9) Bukhārī’sSahīh, chapter ontafsīr(ofSura45); also found in theḥadīthcollections of Muslim and Ibn
Hanbal.
(^10) Dīvān-iḤāfiẓ,ed.Khānlarī,ghazal66.
(^11) Kār:intentionallyechoingtheeternally‘Working-Creator’,Kardagār,whoappearsatandasthecon-
clusionofthisjourney,attheveryendofline7.Seealsoline5oftheprecedingghazal.
(^12) The heavenly ‘spheres’ whose motions together were assumed, in the accepted Ptolemaic–
AristoteleancosmologyofḤāfiẓ’stime,tobetheultimate(visible)instrumentsofthechainsofdivine
causality,ortheultimategroundofthoseapparentsecondarycauses(sabab)thatareinquiredabout
attheendoftheopeningverse.
ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry