Hafiz: Wisdom of Madness

Hafiz (1315-1390) was a Persian poet who “lauded the joys of love and wine but, also, targeted religious hypocrisy”. His collected works, the Divan being the most well-known, are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are often found in the homes of people in the Persian speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and still use them as proverbs and sayings.

Hafiz primarily wrote in the literary genre of lyric poetry or ghazals, that is the ideal style for expressing the ecs…