UC Berkeley

Hāfiz (d. 1390) of the fourteenth century is admired as the most iconic Persian poet. However, almost no scholarship has examined the status of the poet throughout Iranian history. This dissertation investigates the early modern reception of Hāfiz, and demonstrates the multiple ways in which the poet was appropriated by the Safavids, the theocratic dynasty that ruled Persia from 1501 to 1722. The characteristic ambivalence of Hāfiz’s language in reference to the mystical and/or the lyrical and the courtly imagery embedded in his poems allowed the shahs, in the formative Safavid period, to draw from Hāfizian legitimacy, while highlighting their Sufi background as well as the royal grandeur they were seeking. At the same time, the Safavid’s major political rivals reacted to the emerging cult of Hāfiz. The Ottoman’s engagement in this discourse is reflected in the commentary on Dīvān’s beginning line by Sūdī (d. ca. 1590) as well as in the fatwa issued by Shaykh al-Islam Ebussuud (d. 1574) who warned against unconditional recitation of Hāfiz’s poetry.

Towards the end of the Safavid era, the courtly-sponsored approach to Hāfiz altered commensurate with the religious reorientation of the state. Having turned its support from Sufis toward Imamite scholars, the Safavid house disseminated new religious norms through the poetry of Hāfiz. Two versions of a single poetryline by Hāfiz, inscribed on two monuments in Isfahan, the capital of ‘Abbās I (r. 1588-1629), capture the Persianate Sufi/Shii controversy in the seventeenth century. Finally, the attempts to read Hāfiz in line with the contemporary Safavid discourse expanded to exegetical and commentarial texts, which discussed the theological basis of Hāfiz’s verse to render him a true Shii. This project, therefore, traces the contemporary intimacy of the Persian speakers with Hāfiz, in retrospect, to the early modern period, when the first Iranian nation-state self-identified with Hāfiz despite the transformative dynamics of their religious policies.