Hafiz was a celebrated poet even in his own time, and became an enormous influence on writers throughout the Muslim world - and even beyond, being loved by Western poets too such as Thoreau, Goethe, W. B. Yeats, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. He has often been called the Persian Petrarch, given his dedication to romantic themes, and is considered a national treasure in Iran, where tens of thousands of visitors flock to his mausoleum in Shiraz each year, to pay him homage. Hafiz would write much of his poetry in the form of Ghazals, an Arabic style of lyrical writing from the 7th century, which were particularly noted for their romantic themes of unrequited love, yearning, and the pain of separation. He became a master of this style, and incorporated a spiritual and religious dimension, where every word had a possible mystical as well as romantic connotation, that added multiple layers of interpretation. In this short excerpt from our video on Gertrude Bell: the Desert Queen, we look at Hafiz and his work, which had a significant impact on Gertrude, whose translated his collected works stands as among the most well respected. You can watch the full video on Gertrude Bell here: • Desert Queen: The Extr...
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