Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

Dr. Leonard Lewisohn

I.B. Tauris in association with Iran Heritage Foundation

After six hundred years, the Persian lyrical poet Hafiz (d. 1389) still remains the most popular poet in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia where Persian is spoken today as the mother tongue. The tradition known as the ‘Religion of Love’ (madhhab-i ‘ishq), which pervaded Persian literature from its inception, was best expressed in the verse of Hafiz, the supreme master of the classical Persian love-lyric (ghazal). In a series of original essays focused on this high romantic tradition that sustained Hafiz’s rhetoric of romance, an international roster of specialists reveal how the poet’s erotic theology partook of a single culture and civilization that was devoted to Eros in medieval Persia. This volume is not only the first study to date of the philosophical, theological and mystical bases of Hafiz’s erotic spirituality, but the most comprehensive introduction into the poet’s romantic philosophy, literary tradition, poetry and biography yet published in any European language. The work will appeal to students of Persian poetry, Islamic philosophy, Sufism, and Middle Eastern Studies as well as the wider audience interested in comparative poetics, Eastern literature and spirituality, medieval romance and the philosophy of love.

This volume is an utter delight to read. Edited with excellent intellectual rigor by Leonard Lewisohn, the essays written by a number of distinguished Iranian scholars and other specialists in Persian studies provide a literary, historical and philosophical overview and analysis of the leitmotif of Hafiz’s poetry, which is love.

Baha’ al-Din Khurramshahi, author of Hafiz-nama, a two volume Persian commentary on Hafiz’s poetry.

With the contributions by a number of prominent scholars, Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry provides a highly focused, original and, engaging edited volume on one of the most cherished Persian poets and some of the most stimulating topics of classical Persian poetry.

Kamran Talattof, Professor of Persian Language and Literature, University of Arizona.

Leonard Lewisohn brings together perhaps for the first time in Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry a rich and diverse set of essays in a single volume written by renowned specialists on Hafiz. Few people have his lifelong devotion to Hafiz and profound knowledge of classical Persian poetry to be capable of producing such a work, which is indispensable to students and scholars of Hafiz and Persian literature.’

Mehdi Aminrazavi, Professor of Philosophy & Religion, University of Mary Washington, Virginia.

Dr. Leonard Lewisohn is Senior Lecturer in Persian and Sufi Literature at Exeter University. His previous books include The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door, Thirty Poems of Hafez (2008, translated with Robert Bly), Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition; The Art of Spiritual Flight (2006, edited with Christopher Shackle), The Heritage of Sufism, vols 1-3 (1999) and Beyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Mahmud Shabistari (1995).

Leili Anvar, Peter Avery, Michael Barry, Carl W. Ernst, Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, Husayn Ilahi-Ghomshei, Franklin Lewis, Leonard Lewisohn, Parvin Loloi, James Morris, Ali Asghar Seyed-Ghorab.

£31.50 RRP £45
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