By Mansoor Limba - Minda News - Davao City,Philippines
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Today is the commemoration day of Hafiz.Who is Hafiz?
Khwajah Shams ad-Din Muhammad Hafiz (circa 1325-1391) of Shiraz was the world-renowned fourteenth century Muslim lyric bard and panegyrist of Persia, and usually regarded as the preeminent master of the ghazal form of poetry.
Bearing a name which literally signifies “Sun of the Religion, the Praised One and Memorizer of the Qur’an,” Hafiz is known to his compatriots under the titles of the Tongue of the Hidden and the Interpreter of Secrets.
With striking similarity to the European sonnet, ghazal, which Hafiz perfected, is a lyric form of Persian poetry, with rhyme in the first two and in even numbered lines, and allowing various metric forms. With respect to content, it usually does not express the linear development of an idea, but rather its couplets express variations on an idea or mood.
Hafiz’s poetry is a rich source of Islamic mysticism or the esoteric dimension of Islam which is known in the religious literature as ‘irfan but loosely and thus imprecisely dubbed as Sufism. The Muslim traders and/or missionaries who introduced Islam to Southeast Asia were believed to be ‘arifin or “Sufis” from among the Prophet’s descendants in Hadramawt, Yemen.
Blunt condemnation of the woolen garment-wearing traditional Sufis’ pretentious asceticism and the official Muslim scholars’ sanctimonious claim to orthodoxy is a recurring theme in the Divan or Diwan (collection of poetry) of Hafiz.
For instance, in repudiating his contemporary Sufis who clad themselves only in blue garments (signifying that their minds were allegedly filled with heavenly desires only, just as their bodies were clothed in the color of heaven), he sings, “Give me not the cup (of spiritual wine) until I have torn down from my breast the blue robe,” by which he implies that he is unwilling to know the teachings of true wisdom unless he has divested himself of the errors of the uninitiated.
On account of his stern criticism of the self-righteous mullahs, so strong was their animosity against him that on his death, they initially refused his corpse to be given the rites of Muslim burial for his alleged heresy and impious poetry. The issue was only settled by referring to his poems, which, on being consulted haphazardly, reveals this couplet: “Fear not follow with pious feet the corpse of Hafiz, for though he was drowned in the ocean of sin, he may find a place in paradise.” (Couplet 7, Ghazal 60)
Hafiz’s influence can remarkably be traced in the poems of succeeding and even contemporary Iranian poets one of whom is Ruhullah Musawi Khumayni, a hardly known poet outside Iran but recognized everywhere as a towering political figure and prominent religious authority.
In a Hafiz-like rejection of both the dervish’s pretension of purity and the cleric’s self-claimed sanctimony, Khumayni composes these lines:
I did not find purity in the session of the dervishes.
Within the cloister, I heard none call on Him.
I did not find the Friend in the books of the seminary.
At the top of the minaret, I saw no sound of the Beloved.
I did not uncover anything in any scholarly books.
In the lessons of Scripture, I was led nowhere.
I spent my life in the temple, spent my life in vain.
Among my companions, I found neither cure nor affliction.
To the circle of the lovers I would go, and there I find
a breeze from the garden of a sweetheart, and footprints.
In the world today where the seclusion of the “ascetics” serves as a moral carte blanche to the bullies while the militant extremism of the “puritans” victimizes the innocents, Divan-e Hafiz is a must reading.
Friday, December 08, 2006
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Friday, December 08, 2006
Remembering Hafiz
By Mansoor Limba - Minda News - Davao City,Philippines
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Today is the commemoration day of Hafiz.Who is Hafiz?
Khwajah Shams ad-Din Muhammad Hafiz (circa 1325-1391) of Shiraz was the world-renowned fourteenth century Muslim lyric bard and panegyrist of Persia, and usually regarded as the preeminent master of the ghazal form of poetry.
Bearing a name which literally signifies “Sun of the Religion, the Praised One and Memorizer of the Qur’an,” Hafiz is known to his compatriots under the titles of the Tongue of the Hidden and the Interpreter of Secrets.
With striking similarity to the European sonnet, ghazal, which Hafiz perfected, is a lyric form of Persian poetry, with rhyme in the first two and in even numbered lines, and allowing various metric forms. With respect to content, it usually does not express the linear development of an idea, but rather its couplets express variations on an idea or mood.
Hafiz’s poetry is a rich source of Islamic mysticism or the esoteric dimension of Islam which is known in the religious literature as ‘irfan but loosely and thus imprecisely dubbed as Sufism. The Muslim traders and/or missionaries who introduced Islam to Southeast Asia were believed to be ‘arifin or “Sufis” from among the Prophet’s descendants in Hadramawt, Yemen.
Blunt condemnation of the woolen garment-wearing traditional Sufis’ pretentious asceticism and the official Muslim scholars’ sanctimonious claim to orthodoxy is a recurring theme in the Divan or Diwan (collection of poetry) of Hafiz.
For instance, in repudiating his contemporary Sufis who clad themselves only in blue garments (signifying that their minds were allegedly filled with heavenly desires only, just as their bodies were clothed in the color of heaven), he sings, “Give me not the cup (of spiritual wine) until I have torn down from my breast the blue robe,” by which he implies that he is unwilling to know the teachings of true wisdom unless he has divested himself of the errors of the uninitiated.
On account of his stern criticism of the self-righteous mullahs, so strong was their animosity against him that on his death, they initially refused his corpse to be given the rites of Muslim burial for his alleged heresy and impious poetry. The issue was only settled by referring to his poems, which, on being consulted haphazardly, reveals this couplet: “Fear not follow with pious feet the corpse of Hafiz, for though he was drowned in the ocean of sin, he may find a place in paradise.” (Couplet 7, Ghazal 60)
Hafiz’s influence can remarkably be traced in the poems of succeeding and even contemporary Iranian poets one of whom is Ruhullah Musawi Khumayni, a hardly known poet outside Iran but recognized everywhere as a towering political figure and prominent religious authority.
In a Hafiz-like rejection of both the dervish’s pretension of purity and the cleric’s self-claimed sanctimony, Khumayni composes these lines:
I did not find purity in the session of the dervishes.
Within the cloister, I heard none call on Him.
I did not find the Friend in the books of the seminary.
At the top of the minaret, I saw no sound of the Beloved.
I did not uncover anything in any scholarly books.
In the lessons of Scripture, I was led nowhere.
I spent my life in the temple, spent my life in vain.
Among my companions, I found neither cure nor affliction.
To the circle of the lovers I would go, and there I find
a breeze from the garden of a sweetheart, and footprints.
In the world today where the seclusion of the “ascetics” serves as a moral carte blanche to the bullies while the militant extremism of the “puritans” victimizes the innocents, Divan-e Hafiz is a must reading.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Today is the commemoration day of Hafiz.Who is Hafiz?
Khwajah Shams ad-Din Muhammad Hafiz (circa 1325-1391) of Shiraz was the world-renowned fourteenth century Muslim lyric bard and panegyrist of Persia, and usually regarded as the preeminent master of the ghazal form of poetry.
Bearing a name which literally signifies “Sun of the Religion, the Praised One and Memorizer of the Qur’an,” Hafiz is known to his compatriots under the titles of the Tongue of the Hidden and the Interpreter of Secrets.
With striking similarity to the European sonnet, ghazal, which Hafiz perfected, is a lyric form of Persian poetry, with rhyme in the first two and in even numbered lines, and allowing various metric forms. With respect to content, it usually does not express the linear development of an idea, but rather its couplets express variations on an idea or mood.
Hafiz’s poetry is a rich source of Islamic mysticism or the esoteric dimension of Islam which is known in the religious literature as ‘irfan but loosely and thus imprecisely dubbed as Sufism. The Muslim traders and/or missionaries who introduced Islam to Southeast Asia were believed to be ‘arifin or “Sufis” from among the Prophet’s descendants in Hadramawt, Yemen.
Blunt condemnation of the woolen garment-wearing traditional Sufis’ pretentious asceticism and the official Muslim scholars’ sanctimonious claim to orthodoxy is a recurring theme in the Divan or Diwan (collection of poetry) of Hafiz.
For instance, in repudiating his contemporary Sufis who clad themselves only in blue garments (signifying that their minds were allegedly filled with heavenly desires only, just as their bodies were clothed in the color of heaven), he sings, “Give me not the cup (of spiritual wine) until I have torn down from my breast the blue robe,” by which he implies that he is unwilling to know the teachings of true wisdom unless he has divested himself of the errors of the uninitiated.
On account of his stern criticism of the self-righteous mullahs, so strong was their animosity against him that on his death, they initially refused his corpse to be given the rites of Muslim burial for his alleged heresy and impious poetry. The issue was only settled by referring to his poems, which, on being consulted haphazardly, reveals this couplet: “Fear not follow with pious feet the corpse of Hafiz, for though he was drowned in the ocean of sin, he may find a place in paradise.” (Couplet 7, Ghazal 60)
Hafiz’s influence can remarkably be traced in the poems of succeeding and even contemporary Iranian poets one of whom is Ruhullah Musawi Khumayni, a hardly known poet outside Iran but recognized everywhere as a towering political figure and prominent religious authority.
In a Hafiz-like rejection of both the dervish’s pretension of purity and the cleric’s self-claimed sanctimony, Khumayni composes these lines:
I did not find purity in the session of the dervishes.
Within the cloister, I heard none call on Him.
I did not find the Friend in the books of the seminary.
At the top of the minaret, I saw no sound of the Beloved.
I did not uncover anything in any scholarly books.
In the lessons of Scripture, I was led nowhere.
I spent my life in the temple, spent my life in vain.
Among my companions, I found neither cure nor affliction.
To the circle of the lovers I would go, and there I find
a breeze from the garden of a sweetheart, and footprints.
In the world today where the seclusion of the “ascetics” serves as a moral carte blanche to the bullies while the militant extremism of the “puritans” victimizes the innocents, Divan-e Hafiz is a must reading.
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