Hafez

Khwaja Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez Shirazi (c. 1325–1390) is one of the greatest poets of the Persian ghazal. His pen name was Hafez, and tradition also calls him Lisan al-Ghayb, the Tongue of the Unseen. His mastery of the ghazal and his place in Persian literary culture are without parallel.

Despite his worldwide fame, firm historical details about Hafez’s life are scarce. Scholars differ over his exact name, year of birth, and other aspects of his biography. It is generally accepted that he was born in Shiraz and spent most of his life there.

Hafez studied religious and literary subjects with leading scholars of his time and was well versed in law, Qur’anic commentary, theology, and related disciplines. Tradition holds that he had memorised the Qur’an in fourteen modes of recitation, which gave rise to the name Hafez. His poems weave together love, mystical insight, wisdom, human feeling, and the finer experiences of life.

The Divan of Hafez is among the most widely read books of Persian poetry. It consists chiefly of ghazals, with a smaller number of qasidas, masnavis, qit‘as, and ruba‘iyat. Its influence travelled far beyond the Persian-speaking world. The German poet and thinker Goethe drew deeply on Hafez when writing his West-Eastern Divan.

Hafez died in Shiraz in 1390. His tomb, the Hafeziyeh, remains an important literary and cultural gathering place for readers, scholars, and admirers of Persian poetry.