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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GUI-HAN |
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HAFIZ . Shams-ud-din Mahommed, better known by his takhallus or nom de plume of Hafiz, was one of the most celebrated writers of Persian lyrical poetry. He was born at Shiraz, the capital of Fars, in the early part of the 8th century of the Mahommedan era, that is to say, in the 14th of our own. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but he attained a ripe old age and died in 791 A.H. (A.D. 1388). This is the date given in the chronogram which is engraved on his tomb, although several Persian biographers give a different year. Very little is actually known about his life, which appears to have been passed in retirement in Shiraz, of which he always speaks in terms of affectionate admiration. He was a subject of the Muzaffar princes, who ruled in Shiraz, Yazd, Kirman and Ispahan, until the dynasty was overthrown by Timur (Tamerlane). Of these princes his especial patrons were Shah Shuja' and Shah Mansur. He early devoted himself to the study of poetry and theology, and also became learned in mystic philosophy, which he studied under Shaik Mahmud 'Attar, chief
bounty ." Timur was so pleased at his ready wit that he dismissed the poet with a handsome present. Unfortunately for the truth of this story Timur did not capture Shiraz till A.U. 1393, while the latest date that can be assigned to Hafiz's death is 1391. Of his private life little or nothing is known. One of his poems is said to record the death of his wife, another that of a favourite unmarried son, and several others speak of his love for a girl called Sheikh i Nabat, " Sugar-cane branch," and this is almost all of his personal history that can be gathered from his writings. He was, like most Persians, a Shi'ite by religion, believing in the transmission of the office of Imam (head of the Moslem Church) in the family of Ali, cousin of the prophet, and rejecting the Hadith (traditional sayings) of Mahomet, which form the Sunna or supplementary code of Mahommedan ceremonial law. One of his odes which contains a verse in praise of Ali is engraved on the poet's tomb, but is omitted by Sudi, the Turkish editor and commentator, who was himself a rigid Sunnite. Hafiz's heretical opinions and dissipated life caused difficulties to be raised by the ecclesiastical authorities on his death as to his interment in consecrated ground. The question was at length settled by Hafiz's own works, which had then already begun to be used, as they are now throughout the East, for the purposes of divination, in the same manner as Virgil was employed in the middle ages for the divination called Sortes Virgilianae. Opening the book at random after pronouncing the customary formula
His principal work is the Diwan, that is, a collection of short odes or sonnets called ghazals, and consisting of from five to sixteen baits or couplets each, all the couplets in each ode having the same rhyme in the last hemistich, and the last couplet always introducing the poet's own nom de plume. The whole of these are arranged in alphabetical order, an arrangement which certainly facilitates reference but makes it absolutely impossible to ascertain their chronological order, and therefore detracts from their value as a means of throwing light upon the growth and development of his genius or the incidents of his career. They are often held together by a very slender thread of continuous thought, and few editions agree exactly in the order of the couplets. Still, a careful study of them, especially from the point of view indicated by the Sufiistic system of philosophy, will always show that a single idea does run throughout the whole. The nature of these poems has been the subject of much discussion in the West, some scholars seeing in their anacreontic utterances nothing but sensuality and materialism, while others, following the Oriental school, maintain that they are wholly and entirely mystic and philosophic. Something between the two would probably be nearer the truth. It must be remembered that Hafiz was a professed dervish and Sufi, and that his ghazals were in all probability published from a takia, and arranged with at least a view to Sufiistic interpretation. At the same time it is ridiculous to suppose that the glowing imagery, the gorgeous and often tender descriptions of natural beauties, the fervent love passages, and the roystering drinking songs were composed in cool blood or with deliberate ascetic purpose. The beauty of Hafiz's poetry is that it is natural. It is the outcomeof a fervent soul and a lofty genius delighting in nature and enjoying life; and it is the poet's misfortune that he lived in an age and amongst a people where rigid conventionality demanded that his free and spontaneous thoughts should be recast in an artificial mould. Besides the Diwan, Hafiz wrote a number of other poems; the Leipzig
periodicals
Hammer
original
Hafiz "; Sir William Ouseley's Oriental Collections (17971798); A Specimen of Persian Poetry, or Odes of Hafiz, by John Richardson (London, 18o2); Biographical Notices of Persian Poets, by Sir Gore Ouseley (Oriental Translation Fund, 1846); and an excellent article by Professor E. B. Cowell in Macmillan's Magazine (No. 177, July 1874); J. A. Vullers, Vitae poetarum Persicorum (1839, translated from Daulatshah); S. Robinson, Persian Poetry for English Readers (1883). The best edition of the text is perhaps that edited by Hermann Brockhaus of Leipzig
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