---
node: hafez
type: person
slug: hafez
title: "Hafez"
lead: "Hafez (c. 1325–c. 1390) was the lyric poet of Shiraz whose Divan of several hundred ghazals is held to have perfected the Persian lyric. He is often called the most beloved poet of the Persian language."
published: 2026-07-10
updated: 2026-07-10
---

## Who they were

His dates, c. 1325–c. 1390, are approximate. His pen name means one who has memorized the Quran. He lived under Shiraz's local dynasties — the Inju, then the Muzaffarids — in the turbulent century after the Ilkhanate, and little of his life is securely documented; much of what is told is legend.

## What they did

His ghazals sing of wine, of love, and of the hypocrisy of false piety, with a mystical shimmer that lets the verses read as both earthly and Sufi. That double reading is the point — such is the classic critical view.

## Legacy

His Divan is used for fal-e Hafez — consulting the book as an oracle — in Iranian homes to this day. The famous anecdote of a meeting with Timur, turning on a verse and the price of Samarkand, is legend. Goethe's West-östlicher Divan (1819) was inspired by translations of Hafez. His garden tomb in Shiraz, the Hafezieh, rebuilt in the 1930s, is among Iran's most visited monuments.