Hafez

Khajeh Shams-od-Din Mohammad Hafez Shirazi, known by his pen name Hafez, was a Persian lyric poet who lived from 1325 to 1390. His collected works are considered by many Iranians a peak of Persian literature. Persian speakers often keep his poems in their homes, memorize them, and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. He is also called Lisan al-Ghayb, meaning "Tongue of the Unseen."

Hafez is most famous for his Divân, a collection of his surviving poems likely compiled after his death. His work is described as antinomian and, in the medieval sense, theosophical—meaning mystical writing inspired by Islamic holy books, as opposed to theology. He wrote mainly in the ghazal form, a lyric style ideal for expressing divine ecstasy through mystical love poems. He was a Sufi. His ghazals explore themes of the beloved, faith, and hypocrisy, often dealing with love, wine, and taverns to convey religious ecstasy and freedom from restraint. His influence appears in divination using his poems (similar to the Roman Sortes Vergilianae) and in Persian traditional music, visual art, and calligraphy. His tomb in his birthplace, Shiraz, is regularly visited. Adaptations, imitations, and translations of his poems exist in all major languages.

Hafez was born in Shiraz and identified as a Sufi Muslim. Few details of his life are known; early accounts rely on traditional anecdotes and are considered unreliable. As a child, he memorized the Quran, earning the title Hafez, which he later used as his pen name. The preface to his Divân was written by an unknown contemporary, possibly Mohammad Golandâm. Modern editions by Allame Mohammad Qazvini and Qâsem Ghani contain 495 ghazals, while Parviz Natel-Khanlari’s has 486. Scholars generally agree he was born in 1315 or 1317, though Gulfishan Khan suggests 1320. According to Jami, he died in 1390. He was supported by several local regimes: Shah Abu Ishaq, Timur, and the strict ruler Shah Mubariz ud-Din Muhammad. His work flourished most under Jalal ud-Din Shah Shuja, though Hafez may have briefly fallen out of favor for mocking inferior poets, forcing him to flee to Isfahan and Yazd—but no historical evidence confirms this. He exchanged letters and poetry with Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah, Sultan of Bengal, who invited him to Sonargaon, but Hafez could not go. He was a contemporary of the theologian Adud al-Din al-Iji, whom he praised as one of the five notables of Fars.

Twenty years after his death, a tomb was built in the Musalla Gardens in Shiraz. The current mausoleum, designed by French archaeologist André Godard in the late 1930s, has the tomb raised on a dais amid rose gardens, water channels, and orange trees. Inside, Hafez’s alabaster sarcophagus bears two of his poems.

Many semi-miraculous legends grew around Hafez after his death. He is said to have learned the Quran by heart at an early age by listening to his father’s recitations, and also memorized the works of Rumi, Saadi, Attar Neyshapuri, and Nizami Ganjavi. One tradition says that before meeting his Sufi master Hajji Zayn al-Attar, Hafez worked in a bakery delivering bread to a wealthy quarter, where he first saw Shakh-e Nabat, a beautiful woman to whom some of his poems are addressed. His love unrequited, he held his first mystic vigil, encountering a being of surpassing beauty who identified itself as an angel, turning his pursuit into one of spiritual union with the divine. At age 60, he began a 40-day vigil in a circle he drew for himself. On the 40th day, he met Zayn al-Attar again and was offered a cup of Shirazi wine, where he is said to have attained "Cosmic Consciousness." He hints at this in a verse advising the reader to let wine "sit for 40 days." In another tale, Timur angrily summoned Hafez over a verse offering Samarkand and Bukhara for the mole of a Shirazi Turk.