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Personality: A visionary poet: Hafiz Shirazi
“No book has been so reverenced, no poet so celebrated, and no verse so cherished as Hafiz’s ghazals. Auguries from his Divan have decided the fates of the individuals and the empires, rebels and heretics as well as the pious have died with lines of Hafiz on their lips, and religious and philosophic arguments have been won by apt quotation of a hemistich. Hafiz sang a rare blend of human and mystic love so balanced, proportioned, and contrived with artful ease that it is impossible to separate the one from the other; and rhetorical artifice is so delicately woven into the fabric of wisdom and mysticism that it imparts a freshness to ideas ...”
—Wheeler M. Thackston.
Khwaja Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz-e Shirazi was born in Sheraz in south central Iran, probably in the years between 1320 -1325 AD (as his date of birth has not been confirmed). His father, Baha-ud-Din, had two more sons other than Hafiz. Hafiz’s real name was Shams al-Din Muhammad. His pen name was Hafiz, a title given to those who had memorized the Holy Quran by heart. It is known that Hafiz had memorized the Quran in fourteen different ways. He also memorized many works of his hero, Saadi. His favourites included Attar, Roomi and Nizami.
Hafiz was one of the finest lyric poets of Persia. His Divan, a collection of short odes, extols the pleasures of life and satirizes his fellow Dervishes.
Early life
Hafiz’s teenage was marked by the death of his father who was a coal merchant, leaving him and his mother with much debt. Hafiz and his mother went to live with his uncle (also called Saadi). Hafiz left day school to work in a drapery shop and later in a bakery.
Middle years
Still working at the bakery, Hafiz delivered bread to a wealthy quarter of town and saw Shakh-e Nabat, a young woman of entrancing beauty. Many of his poems are addressed to Shakh-e Nabat. In pursuit of reaching his beloved, Hafiz kept a forty-day and night vigil at the tomb of Baba Kuhi. After successfully attaining this, he met Attar and became his disciple.
Hafiz married in his twenties and had a child, even though he continued his love for Shakh-e-Nabat, as the manifest symbol of her Creator’s beauty.
He then became a poet of the court of Abu Ishak and gained much fame and influence in Shiraz. This was the phase of “Spiritual Romanticism” in his poetry. Hafiz was thirty-three when Shiraz was taken over by Mubariz Muzaffar. Mubariz ousted Hafiz from his position of teacher of Quranic studies at the college. At this time he wrote protest poems. However, five years later Shah Shuja took his tyrant father as prisoner, and re-instated Hafiz as a teacher at the college. He began his phase of subtle spirituality in his poetry. In his early forties his relations with Shuja deteriorated and he fled Shiraz for his safety, and went into self-imposed exile in Isfahan. His poems mainly talk of his longing for Shiraz, for Shakh-e-Nabat, and for his spiritual Master, Attar.
When Hafiz was 52, Shuja invited him back. Hafiz thus ended his exile and came back to Shiraz.
During his sixties up to the age of 69 when he died, he composed more than half of his ghazals, and continued to teach his small circle of disciples. His poetry at this time, talk with the authority of a Master who is united with God.
Poetry
As put by Goethe, in his poetry Hafiz has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly ... Hafiz has no peer!
The popularity of Hafiz’s poetry is due to his simple and musical language, which is free from artificial virtuosity. His poetry is characterized by love of humanity, contempt for hypocrisy and mediocrity, and an ability to universalize everyday experience and to relate it to the mystic’s unending search for union with God. The best musician of words, Hafiz, wrote around 500 ghazals, 42 rubaiyees (couplets), and a few qaseedahs, composed over a period of 50 years. Hafiz only composed when he was divinely inspired, and therefore his works are limited to 10 ghazals per year. His focus was to write poetry worthy of the beloved.
Hafiz, himself, didn’t compile his work into a divan. Mohammad Golandaam, who also wrote a preface to his compilation, completed it in 1410 AD, some 22 years after Hafiz’s death. One of Hafiz’s young disciples Sayyid Kasim-e-Anvar, who collected 569 ghazals attributed to Hafiz, also compiled his works.
Death and burial — a story itself
Hafiz died in late 1388 or early 1389 in Shiraz. His tomb is in Musalla Gardens, along the banks of Ruknabad River in Shiraz, which is referred to as Hafizeih. At the time of his death a controversy arose. The orthodox clergy who always opposed Hafiz, refused to allow him to have a Muslim burial. Hafiz’s support among the people of Shiraz, however, created an atmosphere of conflict. To resolve this controversy it was decided to use Hafiz’s poetry. His ghazals were to be divided into couplets and a young boy would be asked to draw a couplet. It was agreed that however the couplet directed them, they would all consent to follow. The couplet, which was chosen, seemed to be a tongue-in-cheek response from Hafiz to the orthodox clergy. It read:
Neither Hafiz’s corps, nor his life negate,
With all his misdeeds, heavens for him wait.
To this day Hafizs collection (divan) is utilized as an Oracle to give guidance to our questions, and directions to realize our wishes.
As put by Emerson, “Hafiz defies you to show him or put him in a condition inopportune or ignoble ... He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see or be.”
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