Through all these changes of fortune, Hafiz appears to have played the prudent, if rather un­romantic part of the Vicar of Bray. The slender thread of his personal history is made up for the most part of more or less mythical anecdote. He was the son, according to one tradition, of a baker of Shiraz, in which city he was probably educated. The poet Jami says that he does not know under what Sufi doctor Hafiz studied. As a young man, however, he was one of the followers of Sheikh Mahmud Attar, who would seem to have been some­what of a free-lance among the learned men of Shiraz. Sheikh Mahmud did not give himself up completely to the contemplative life, but combined the functions of a teacher with those of a dealer in fruit and vegetables. “Oh disciple of the tavern!” sings Hafiz, “give me the precious goblet, that I may drink to the Sheikh who has no monastery.” Sheikh Mahmud's attitude doubtless brought him under the condemnation of the stricter Sufis, of the disciples of a certain Sheikh Hassan Asrakpush in particular, who, as the title of their master denotes, clad themselves only in blue garments, and declared that their minds were filled with heavenly desires, just as their bodies were clothed in the colour of heaven. Hafiz falls foul of this rival school in several of his poems. “I am the servant,” he says, “of all who scatter the dregs of the cup and are clothed in one colour (that is, clothed in sincerity), but not of them whose bodies are clad in blue while black is the colour of their heart.” And again: “Give me not the cup until I have torn from my breast the blue robe,” by which he means that he cannot receive the teachings of true wisdom until he has divested himself of the errors of the unini­tiated. From Sheikh Mahmud, perhaps, he learnt a wholesome philosophy which enabled him to see through the narrow-minded asceticism of other religious teachers, whether Sufi or orthodox, and he was not unmindful of the debt he owed him. “My Grey-Beard,” he sings, “who scatters the dregs of the wine, has neither gold nor power, but God has made him both munificent and merciful.” And indeed if he succeeded in unchaining the spirit of his disciple from useless prejudice, it may be admitted that the Sheikh went far towards providing him with a good equipment for life. Although he never submitted to any strict monastic rule, Hafiz assumed the dervish habit of which he speaks so contemptuously. We must suppose that he took the precaution, which he himself recommends, of washing it clean in the wine that Sheikh Mahmud provided for him; in other words, that he tempered his orthodoxy with the freer doctrines he had de­rived from his teacher. He also became a sheikh.

How he first revealed his inimitable gift of song is not known. There is a tradition that upon a certain day one of his uncles was engaged in com­posing a poem upon Sufiism, and being but a mediocre poetaster, could get no further than the first line. Hafiz took up the sheet in his uncle's absence and completed the verse. The uncle was not a little annoyed; he bade Hafiz finish the poem, and at the same time cursed him and his works. “They shall bring insanity,” he declared, “upon all that read them.” Men say that the curse still hangs over the Divan, therefore let no one whose reason is not strongly seated venture to study the poet. Whatever were his beginnings, it was not long before the young man rose into high repute. Abu Ishac was his first patron. “By the favour of the vic­torious standards of a king,” says Hafiz, “I was uplifted like a banner among the makers of verse.” There is a long poem addressed to Abu Ishac, in which he is called the King under whose feet the garden of his kingdom bursts into flower. “Oh great and holy!” cries the poet, “every man who is a servant of thine is uplifted so high that the stars of Gemini are but as his girdle.” Hafiz must have been in Shiraz when Abu Ishac was brought thither, a prisoner, from Isfahan; he may even have wit­nessed his execution outside Persepolis. “Fate overtook him,” he sighs, “all too speedily—alas for the violence and oppression in this world of pit­falls! alas for the grace and the mercy that dwelt among us! Hast thou not heard, oh Hafiz, the laugh of the strutting partridge? Little considered be the clutching talons of the falcon of death.”

From the protection of Abu Ishac, Hafiz passed into that of Shah Shudja, but the relations between the two men seem to have been somewhat strained. Shah Shudja may have distrusted the loyalty of one to whom Abu Ishac had been so good a patron; moreover, he nursed a professional jealousy of Hafiz, being himself a writer of occasional verse. The historian Khondamir tells of an interview which cannot have increased the goodwill of either inter­locutor towards the other. Shah Shudja reproached Hafiz with the discursiveness of his songs. “In one and the same,” he said, “you write of wine, of Sufiism, and of the object of your affections. Now this is contrary to the practice of the eloquent.” “That which your Majesty has deigned to speak,” replied Hafiz (laying his tongue in his cheek, though Khondamir does not mention the fact), “is the essence of the truth; yet the poems of Hafiz enjoy a wide celebrity, whereas those of some other writers have not passed beyond the gates of Shiraz.” But an occasional bandying of sharp speeches, in which the King usually came off second best, did little harm to a friendship which was based upon a marked correspondence in tastes. “Since the hour,” declares Hafiz, “that the wine-cup received honour from Shah Shudja, Fortune has put the goblet of joy into the hand of all wine-drinkers”; and in several poems he welcomes Shah Shudja's accession to the throne and the consequent removal of an edict against the drinking of wine: “The daughter of the grape has repented of her retirement; she went to the keeper of the peace (i.e. Shah Shudja) and received permission for her deeds. Forth came she from behind the curtain that she might tell her lovers that she has turned about.” Partly out of gratitude, partly with an eye to future favours, Hafiz proclaimed the glory of Shah Shudja, just as he had proclaimed that of the hapless Abu Ishac, and the King was not averse from such good wishes as these from the most famous poet of the age: “May the ball of the heavens be for ever in the crook of thy polo stick, and the whole world be a playing-ground unto thee. The fame of thy good­ness has conquered the four quarters of the earth; may it be for all time a guardian unto thee!”