Hafez; Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Shīrāzī
Hafiz was a 14th-century Persian poet of Shiraz, whose ghazals move between the language of wine and the ache of divine longing, often in the very same line. This is a small selection of his poems, given voice.
Hafiz was born in Shiraz sometime in the early 14th century and lived his whole life in that city, then one of the great centers of Persian learning and culture. He is thought to have memorized the Quran in his youth — the likely source of his pen name, Hafiz, meaning ‘one who has memorized.’
His collected poems, gathered after his death around 1390 into a single Divan, have occupied a singular place in Persian-speaking households ever since — often kept alongside the Quran and consulted for guidance by opening the book at random, a practice still known as fal-e Hafiz.
His verses move continually between the sacred and the profane, using the language of wine, love, and the tavern to speak of divine longing — a doubleness that has made him notoriously difficult to translate, and endlessly rewarding to return to.