Hafiz of Shiraz

Shams al-Din Muhammad, known as Hafiz of Shiraz, was a Persian lyric poet widely regarded as the supreme master of the ghazal, the short rhyming love-and-wine lyric of classical Persian. His pen name "Hafiz" (Arabic, "guardian/memorizer") signals that he had memorized the Qur'an by heart. Modern scholars place his birth in Shiraz around 1315-1320, with sources differing; he died there in 1390 (792 AH, per the poet Jami's account). He appears to have lived almost his entire life in Shiraz.

Reliable detail is scarce. The earliest biographical notices (tazkiras) are considered unreliable, and much of what circulates - a forty-day mystic vigil, a famous showdown with the conqueror Timur over a verse - is later legend rather than documented history. What is reasonably attested is that Hafiz received a classical religious education, taught and commented on Qur'anic and theological subjects, and worked as a court poet under the Inju ruler Abu Ishaq and later the Muzaffarid Shah Shuja.

Hafiz is generally described as a Sufi (a follower of Islamic mysticism), though scholars debate how literally to read his imagery of wine, taverns, and the rind (the antinomian "rogue"): some treat it as mystical allegory, others as social-religious provocation against hypocrisy. Tales of exile to Yazd or Isfahan, and invitations from rulers in Baghdad, Bengal, and Hormuz, are reported in tradition but unconfirmed; he is said to have declined them.