332 A brief notice of some of the [Oct» 



Hafiz. 



Commonly called Klu'tjeh Hafiz or Mohammed Shems-uddin Shir a : zi— 

 the greatest lyric poet of Persia. Hafiz was bora at Shiraz, in the v 

 reign of Sultan Shah. Mansur, fifth monarch of the Mozafferians, who 

 nourished in the eighth century of the Hejira. He died at the same 

 city according to Herbelot A. H. 797, just at the time that Sultan Baber 

 took the place. Reviezy states that his death happened when Omar 

 Shaik, son of Tamerlane, took Shiraz a few years earlier, and Doulet 

 Shah fixes the date of his demise 794 A. H. M. de Sacy, for reasons 

 that will be mentioned, thinks that this event could not have taken place 

 before 795, and this opinion seems most plausible. 



Of the life of Hafiz little is known. He appears to have seldom 

 wandered beyond the boundaries of his native province Fars, and to 

 have remained leading a meditative luxurious sort of life at its cele- 

 brated capital Shiraz, and entertaining a philosophic contempt for the 

 world and its cares. His renown, however, travelled far and wide, and 

 he found himself assailed by tempting offers from various princes to 

 quit his native land and reside at their courts. 



Ferishta relates that one of the kings of Kulburga, Mahomed Shah 

 Bdhmeni I. who commenced his reign A. H. 780, and was a great 

 patron of Persian and Arabian poets, sent him a present, together with 

 a letter from his minister Mir Faiz Allah Anju, inviting him over to 

 Kulburga. Hafiz, over-persuaded, quitted Fars and embarked for Hin- 

 dustan at Ormus ; but, encountering a severe storm, the vessel in which 

 he sailed was forced to put back. Our poet, deterred by this inauspici- 

 ous event, and not encouraged by the little desagremens, incidental to 

 landsmen on shipboard, he had experienced during the stormy trip, 

 determined not to tempt the fates farther, and accordingly returned to 

 Shiraz, but not without having first despatched an ode by the same 

 vessel to the king of Kulburga' 's minister, in which he deplores the 

 crime he had been guilty of in having suffered himself to be seduced 

 by gems and gold to forsake his country, friends, and, last though per- 

 haps not least, the delicious wine of Shiraz, for the splendour of a foreign 

 court. The king was extremely delighted by the elegance of style 

 manifested in this ode, and delivered over a thousand pieces of gold to 

 Mahomed Cassim Mushidi to purchase presents for the poet of Shiraz-— 

 but whether these presents ever reached Hafiz is to this day much 

 doubted by the learned. 



Hafiz also sent a complimentary copy of verses to Sultan Ahmed, son 

 of Sultan Aweiss Jelahir, monarch of Bagdad, who had in vain tempted 

 him to forsake Shiraz for that city. The following anecdote illustrative 



