Hafez and the Persian ghazal in Shiraz

Little is certain about his life: the old biographical anthologies are unreliable, and the earliest document is a preface to his Divan by a contemporary, perhaps one Muhammad Golandam. He was born in Shiraz around 1315 or 1317 (some reference works give c. 1320 or 1325), learned the Qur’an by heart — hence the pen name Hafez — and studied the religious sciences. His poems name his patrons: the Injuid Abu Ishaq, ruler of Fars, who was overthrown and in 1357 executed by the Muzaffarid Mubariz al-Din Muhammad; Mubariz al-Din himself, a harsh enforcer of public morals whom his own son nicknamed the muhtasib, the moral inspector — a figure Hafez apparently mocks in several ghazals; that son, Shah Shuja, who deposed and blinded his father in 1358 and under whom most of Hafez’s career was spent — by Qasem Ghani’s count, 39 of the 70 allusions to rulers in the Divan concern him; and finally Shah Mansur. Hafez died in Shiraz in 792 AH (1390) according to most modern scholars, or in 791 (1389) according to some sources.

His ghazals — about five hundred in the modern critical editions (495 in that of Qazvini and Ghani, 486 in Natel-Khanlari’s) — weave mystical and earthly love, the tavern and the beloved into poems whose ambiguity has been debated ever since. The story of his meeting with Timur and many anecdotes of later biographers are treated by historians as legends. Translated into English by William Jones in 1771, Hafez left a mark on Goethe, Emerson and other Western writers, and his tomb in Shiraz still draws crowds of visitors.