The man who wanted to give away Samarkand for a single mole on his beloved’s cheek was Khwaja Shamsuddin Muhammad Hafez-e-Shirazi, the Sufi poet of Persia. He was born in the first part of the 14th century at a place called Musalla in the city of Shiraz. No city of Iran but Nishapur has won the worldwide fame of Shiraz. This city of Shiraz is the place of pilgrimage of almost every great poet of Iran. Iranians called Hafez affectionately the “nightingale of Shiraz.” They love him not only as a poet: they revere him still more as “Lisan-ul-Ghaib” (the tongue of the unseen) and “Tarjuman-ul-Asrar” (the interpreter of mysteries). Hafez’s tomb in Iran is a place of reverence for the learned. No biography of him was written even a century after his death. Most of the events of the poet’s life remain in darkness. Opinion in Iran too therefore differs over the dates of his birth and death. His probable year of death is 791 AH, or 1389 CE.
Hafez’s father, Bahauddin, came from the city of Isfahan to Shiraz on business and settled there. As he left nothing behind at his death, however, the child Hafez and his mother fell from comfort into the grip of poverty. Hafez was obliged to earn a living by the sweat of his brow. That he had gained considerable learning before he won fame as a poet is clear from reading his poetry. Hafez’s real name was Shamsuddin Muhammad. “Hafez” was his takhallus, the pen name used in the signature line of his verse. He began composing poetry through natural facility while still a student.
Hafez did not collect his poems in his lifetime. It was his friend Gul Andam who first collected and compiled all of Hafez’s poems in the form of a Divan after his death. More than five hundred of Hafez’s poems survive. Many others have been lost.
Hafez was a detached Sufi. So if a friend did not collect a poem after it was written, it was lost. But most of his poems were ghazals, songs. They were sung by word of mouth as soon as they were written. His songs won popularity everywhere, from the shrine to the tavern. Almost all of Hafez’s poems resound with the praise of an Iranian beauty called “Shakh-e-Nabat.” Many say this was an affectionate name given by Hafez.
He kept her real name secret. Which fortunate woman was the poet’s beloved, and where her home was, has been the subject of much speculation. To seekers of mysteries this doe-eyed beauty remains behind a veil of mystery to this day. Hafez may have been a votary of wine and the cup-bearer in his youth; afterwards he drew the reverence of his country and its people as a Sufi.
The great poet Goethe said: “Hafez, your word is as great as eternity, for it has no beginning and no end. Your language stands alone upon itself like the dome of the sky. No difference at all can be made between the half of your ghazal, or its first line, or any other part, for the whole of it is a mark of beauty and perfection. If one day the world’s span runs out, heavenly Hafez, my hope is that I shall be with you alone, at your side. I shall drink wine with you. I shall be lost in love as you were. For that is the glory of my life and the provision of my living.” The poetic genius and philosophy of Hafez of Shiraz have stirred the poetic and thoughtful minds of the whole world from age to age. The great poet and thinker of the Western world Goethe said: “Suddenly I became acquainted with the heavenly fragrance of the East and the eternal, life-giving breeze that blows from the roads and fields of Iran. I came to know a miraculous person whose astonishing personality has made me mad for him from head to foot.” Goethe became so devoted to Hafez that he forgot everything and everyone for a time and felt himself a small devotee of this poet of the Persian language. Inspired by Hafez’s feeling for love and his spiritual thought, he even wrote his world-famous dramatic poem Faust, which is called the Divan in the West. He has stirred Bengali-speaking poets and writers deeply too. Rabindranath Tagore himself went to the poet’s tomb in the city of Shiraz in Iran in 1932 to pay his respects. The poet’s father, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, was an immense devotee of the poet. Rabindranath Tagore himself wrote on this: “I know that the religious philosophy and poetry of Hafez moved my father more than the philosophy and music of the Vaishnavas could. Hafez was his divine joy. He did not write poetry himself. Hafez’s poetry fulfilled his desire to create. The Upanishads satisfied his hunger and Hafez quenched his thirst.” It is said that Maharshi Debendranath Tagore knew the whole Divan by heart.
Girish Chandra Sen, Krishna Chandra Majumdar, Satyendranath Dutta, Mohitlal Majumdar, Jatindra Mohan Bagchi, Kanti Chandra Ghosh and Harendranath Deb, among others, have translated many of Hafez’s rubaiyat and ghazals. Our national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam loved Hafez so wholeheartedly that he translated his rubaiyat even as he sat at the deathbed of his son Bulbul. He translated 73 rubais directly from Persian into Bengali. On the day he finished the translation his son Bulbul died. The poet therefore wrote in sorrow that he had invited the nightingale poet of Shiraz to Bengal by making a gift of the most precious and most beloved possession of his life. The emperor of Iranian poets, Hafez, did not answer the invitation of Bengal’s Sultan Ghiyasuddin. But he could not fail to answer my invitation. The book written as a discussion of Persian literature is Mohammad Barkatullah’s “Parashya Pratibha.” It contains an excellent essay on the poet Hafez. Muhammad Mansuruddin wrote “Iraner Kabi.” The piece in that book called “Shamsuddin Hafez,” however, is not especially informative. There have been many Bengali translations of the Divan of Hafez. Among them Dr Muhammad Shahidullah’s translation is an extraordinary publication in the Bengali language. In its long introduction he tried to present Hafez to Bengali speakers. Kazi Akram Hossain’s translation is also excellent. Two modern poets of West Bengal who are also known as progressives, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Subhash Mukhopadhyay, have translated Hafez’s work and praised it highly.
At a conference held in Dhaka to mark the 600th anniversary of the poet’s death, the national professor Syed Ali Ahsan said: “The poet Hafez was present in our thought and mind for a very long time. He has awakened anew in Bengali poetry.” In the Bengali mind of the 18th and 19th centuries Hafez was a very great genius, a very great poet and a lover. Seeing the poet’s mastery of the Quran, a contemporary pir gave him the title of Hafez. The poet himself wrote on this: “Hafez! I have seen no song more beautiful than yours by anyone. The Quran hidden in your mouth — that is more beautiful still.”
The poet was a lover. Grieving at the death of his wife he wrote: “My beloved was, alas, like a fairy, an apsara — from her feet to the tip of her hair, flawless, just like a fairy.”
Grieving at the death of his beloved child the poet wrote: “The apple of my eye, the fruit of my heart — my soul weeps for him. He went away laughing, and I am overcome with grief.” Although Hafez raised this cry here for his own child, this lament cannot fail to move the heart of every father in the world who has lost a son.
One thing has been left unsaid. The world-conquering Mongol warrior Timur summoned the poet because he could not understand one of his poems. The poem was: “If that lover of Shiraz would win this heart of mine, I would give away Samarkand and Bukhara for the mole on her cheek.”
Timur asked the poet whose poem it was. When the poet admitted it was his own, Timur said: “What I have built up in exchange for the blood of thousands upon thousands of soldiers, you want to give away in exchange for a black mole on a woman’s cheek?”
The poet understood that the glory of poetry was not likely to enter the head of the warlike Timur. So he said humbly: “Your majesty. It is by giving away in this fashion that I have come to this poor and wretched state today. It is precisely because you have not done as I have that you are today an emperor famed throughout the world.” Timur was pleased with Hafez’s fine reply. He gave the poet a gift of gold ashrafis and sent him on his way.
It is known from the poet’s Divan and other books that he was the greatest scholar of his age. He was learned in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), hadith, theology (kalam), tafsir and Persian literature. He had even mastered the science of astrology. The poet of Shiraz is said to have become accomplished in writing while still in his youth. He was able to win fame and renown in his own lifetime, although his was a very bad time for literature and poetry, because his country was then beset by strife and war of many kinds. After his fame as a poet spread, devotees in various countries of the world began inviting him to be among them. The accomplished Sultan Ahmad bin Uwais of Baghdad sent invitation after invitation to bring Hafez to Baghdad. But the poet was unwilling to go anywhere at that time, leaving his beloved birthplace, and so he declined even the emperor’s call.
The minister of the ruler of Isfahan, Ummad bin Mahmud, invited the poet. But the poet did not accept this invitation either. The Bahmani sultan of the Deccan, Shah Mahmud, held poets and writers in immense regard and honoured poets and writers from home and abroad in various ways. At this time Hafez formed the intention of coming to the Deccan. But for various reasons it did not prove possible. A matter of pride for Bengalis is that the ruler of Bengal in that period, Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah, invited the poet of Shiraz to visit Bengal. Although the poet could not come, he wrote about it in his poetry. It is said that Ghiyasuddin had three favourite handmaids, named Sarab, Gul and Lala. One day the sultan composed a line but could not complete the line that was to follow. The poets of his court could not produce anything to the sultan’s liking either. The sultan then sent the line to Hafez of Shiraz, who completed the poem in reply and sent it back to the sultan. The sense of the poem’s last two lines is: “Hafez, do not stay silent in the assembly of Sultan Ghiyasuddin, for his work has ended in weeping.” It is known that the poet of Shiraz made up his mind to come to Bengal after receiving Sultan Ghiyasuddin’s invitation, but could not come because of a cyclone and natural disaster. Our pride is that, for inviting the poet, Bengal’s Sultan Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah has become immortal in the literature of Iran.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report