Appropriating Hafez’s ghazals for Shiite rites and rituals in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Abstract

ABSTRACT The poetry of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) is commonly grafted to classical Persian topoi, imagery, metaphors. Several war poets use classical poetry to communicate with their audiences as this poetry is familiar and they can effortlessly convey their political and ideological message. This article investigates how modern amateur poets use classical poetry to create their own poems for political and religious use. I shall specifically analyse a few instances in which the poetry of the classical Persian poet Hafez of Shiraz (1315–1390) is integrated in various ideologically Shiite contexts. Some scholars have argued that Hafez’s ghazals have little cohesion, characterizing the poem’s couplets as ‘pearls at random strung’, but as we shall see these ghazals enjoy thematic coherence, even their ambiguity creates spaces for a modern appropriation and interpolation of couplets in his poetry, allowing the use of a poem as a commentary on religious and political events. While I shall give attention to Hafez’s art of poetry, my main focus will be upon the modern application of his poetry by professional Shiite singers (maddāḥs) who perform such poems to whet the emotions of their audiences, placing the poem in a purely Shiite or ideologically Islamist propaganda.