Hafez Shirazi, Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad

Hafez Shirazi, Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad

(Hafezieh (the tomb of Hafez

Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafez Shirazi was born 1319 CE in Shiraz in South-Central Iran. 

In his childhood he had memorized the Koran by listening to his father's recitations of it, therefore he gained the title of Hafez (a title given to those who had memorized the Koran by heart. It is claimed that Hafez had done this in fourteen different ways). He also had memorized many of the works of his hero, Saadi, as wells as Attar, Rumi and Nizami. 

A Brief History of Persian Literature

The Persian Language

The Old Persian of the Achaemenian Empire, preserved in a number of cuneiform inscriptions, was an Indo-European tongue with close affinities with Sanskrit and Avestan (the language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts). After the fall of the Achaemenians the ancient tongue developed, in the province of Pars, into Middle Persian or Pahlavi (a name derived from Parthavi - that is, Parthian). Pahlavi was used throughout the Sassanian period, though little now remains of what must once have been a considerable literature. About a hundred Pahlavi texts survive, mostly on religion and all in prose. Pahlavi collections of romances, however, provided much of the material for Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.