Divan of Hafez
The collected ghazals of Hafez, among the most beloved works of Persian literature, used in many Iranian homes for bibliomancy (fal) and inspiration.
Read in context →At a glance
- Poet
- Hafez of Shiraz (14th c.)
- Number of ghazals
- ~500
- Main form
- Ghazal
- Folk tradition
- Fal-e Hafez (bibliomancy)
Detail
The Divan of Hafez is the collected poetry of Khwaja Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez of Shiraz, the great poet of the eighth Islamic / fourteenth Christian century, who spent most of his life in Shiraz. The Divan contains nearly 500 ghazals (between about 480 and 500 depending on the edition) and other verse, and has made Hafez the undisputed master of the Persian ghazal. His poetry is renowned for its concision, musicality, and layered ambiguity: each couplet may simultaneously evoke earthly love, divine love, mystical experience, and social satire against hypocrisy and false piety. So deeply is his Divan rooted in Iranian culture that the tradition of fal-e Hafez — divination by randomly opening the book — is part of everyday life and of festivals such as Nowruz and Yalda Night. Six centuries after his death, Hafez remains the most beloved poet of Iranians.
Related entities
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Iranica — 'Hafez'
- Britannica — 'Hafez'
- Divan-e Hafez (Qazvini & Ghani edition)