Understanding Iran: Importance of Poetry (Part IV)

By: Muhammad Ali Mojaradi

An imaginary illustration of great poet by Iranian painter Mahmoud Farshchian

Persian poetry was born in the centuries following the arrival of Islam in the Iranian plateau, but Persian speakers generally consider its zenith to be the 13th and 14th centuries. Hafez, the bard of Shiraz, is especially beloved and regarded as the premier Persian poet. It is his dīvān that can be found in every home beside the Qur’an, and every Iranian has at least one — if not many — of his couplets memorized. Hafez’s modest mausoleum just outside of Shiraz is a national monument, packed with locals and tourists on weekends and holidays. Both secular and religious Iranians pray and reflect for long periods of time at his gravestone.

Hafez (meaning memorizer of the Qur’an), also known as Lisān ul-Ghāyb (Tongue of the Unseen) and Tarjomān al-Asrār (Translator of Secrets) lived in the shadow of Genghis Khān’s sacking of Baghdad, a traumatic event that shook the Muslim world just a half-century before his birth. His native Shiraz avoided bloodshed but bore witness to political instability as petty dynasties rose and fell, each change of power reminding him of life’s fragility. One episode — the removal of Hafez’s favorable patron by a brutal sultan who had little appreciation for the arts and a taste for the harsh application of Islamic law — was particularly traumatic. Hafez spent the following years penning odes of protest lamenting this turn of events. Hafez also had scathing criticism for insincere piety of all kinds. The usurper sultan was eventually blinded and replaced by his more favorable son, who reinstated Hafez’s patronage. 
Just over a century after Hafez, the Safavid dynasty was founded in 1501. The new dynasty managed the various small dynasties ruling Iran under one political dominion, while converting the previously Sunni population to Twelver Shia Islam. The Safavids refashioned the Iranian identity into a Shia one, contrasting it with the larger, mostly Sunni Muslim world and their rival Ottoman empire. Iranians tend to consider the early Safavids period the most recent peak of Iranian history, both for uniting Iranian territory and the cultural heritage the vast empire patronized. Many of Iran’s most significant sites, from Isfahan’s Naqsh-e Jahan Square to Mashhad’s Imam Reza Shrine were either built or significantly developed in this era.
After nearly three centuries, the Safavid Empire would succumb to an Afghan invasion from the east and be replaced by the Qajar dynasty after a 53-year interlude. Unable to keep up with the rapid emergence of modernity, the Qajar dynasty would quickly degenerate and lose territories in the Caucasus and Central Asia, shrinking the once vast empire to the modern boundaries of Iran. Persian poetry was largely a court tradition, and as the Qajar monarchs fell into greater debt, their funding for letters declined. In any case, many of the tropes, images and ideas of Persian poetry had become well worn by this time, and the genre was in dire need of renewal. Iranians generally consider the poetry of this era to be of inferior quality, as one poet told me, “A single couplet from Sa‘di (died circa 1292) is worth 10 Qajar dīvāns.”
By the early 1900s, Iranians were pressuring the Qajar monarchy to give United Kingdom-style concessions to the people: They wanted a Western-style constitution limiting the monarch’s power and guaranteeing rights in Western terms, a parliament, and other modern institutions. Iranian poets began writing revolutionary poetry, protesting oppression and dreaming of a new Iran. Though the poetry was still written according to classic conventions, the poems had an unmistakably modern subject matter. After a general known as Reza Pahlavi dethroned the Qajars in a coup d’état, any hopes for a freer Iran were crushed. Muhammad-Taqi Bahar (known as Malek ash-Sho‘arā’ “poet laureate” or “king of poets”) wrote the famous “Morgh-e Sahar” (Dawn Bird) in prison during the early 1920s. With his dreams of a constitutional Qajar monarchy crushed, he complained about Reza Shah Pahlavi’s oppression and yearned for freedom: “Dawn bird, refresh your lament! Make my pain burn even more … The landlord’s oppression, master’s tyranny, the farmer’s turned restless from his sadness.” (morgh-e sahar nāleh sar kon, dāgh-e marā tāzeh tar kon … zolm-e malek, jawr-e arbāb zāre‘ az ḡam gashteh bītāb). The poem became so famous that Reza Shah eventually banned it, but the poem remains among the most famous odes in Iran.