Hafiz and His Contemporaries ─ Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth Century Iran

Hafiz of Shiraz has long been celebrated by many as the greatest Persian poet within the annals of world literature. During the fourteenth century he was master of the Persian 'ghazal'—the pre-eminent genre of love poetry in the Iranian world in its day and which, in the hands of Hafiz, reached the pinnacle of its development and refinement. Dominic Brookshaw here places Hafiz into a broader literary context by comparing his poetry with his two most important contemporaries: 'Ubayd-i Zakani and the poet-princess, Jahan-Malik Khatun, whose 'ghazals' have received insufficient scholarly attention to date. Brookshaw presents her for the first time many previously-untranslated 'ghazals'. This detailed comparison enables a truer picture of the distinct and innovative nature of Hafiz's poetry to emerge.

Dominic Brookshaw is Lecturer in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. He has previously held academic posts at McGill University and the University of Oxford.