Divan-e Hafez

The Divan of Hafez, known in Persian as Divan-e Hafez, is the collected poetry of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez, who lived from around 1325 to 1389, gathered into a single volume most likely compiled after his death. The collection comprises roughly five hundred poems, predominantly ghazals, arranged in the traditional Persian manner by the alphabetical order of their closing rhyme letters rather than by chronology or theme, and its poems combine lyrical treatments of love and wine with mystical Sufi imagery whose literal or allegorical intent has been debated by readers for centuries. The Divan achieved a level of cultural penetration in Persian-speaking societies matched by few other literary works, becoming a standard household possession in Iran alongside religious texts and traditionally used for a form of bibliomancy in which readers open the book at random to seek guidance or omens. It remains the most widely read and memorized work of classical Persian poetry and a central reference point for Persian literary and musical culture.