Work of classical Persian poet Hafez Shirazi highlighted

PESHAWAR: The Faculty of Social Sciences at the Institute of Management Sciences Hayatababd arranged a literary session to introduce the classical Persian poets to the audience and highlight the work of Hafez Shirazi. A scholar of the Persian language and author of several books, Syed Ghayyur Hussain, was the speaker at the function, which was attended by the students and faculty members.

Prof Sikandar Tangi welcomed the guest speaker and introduced him to the audience. Praising the literatus from Astarzai village of the Kohat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said he has been serving the Persian for a long time by teaching the language to an unspecified number of people and authoring books for students of various grades.

Syed Ghayyur Hussain divided his session in three parts. The initial part was about the importance of the Persian language. He said Persian represented a great civilisation.“We will forget our traditions and values if we distance from Persian,” said the scholar while stressing the audience to learn the language if they wanted to comprehend great poets such as Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Allama Iqbal and others.

In the second part of the session, the literatus gave a brief introduction of the Persian poets such as Jalaluddin Rumi, Mohammad Rudaki, Fariduddin Attar, Sheikh Saadi and Amir Khusrow. He quoted from their verses as well.

The third part the session was about Hafez Shirazi. Syed Ghayyur Hussain frequently recited from the verses of the great classic poet which were liked by the audience. The speaker also took the occasion to narrate anecdotes related to the great classic poet which explained the topic appropriately.

The tale about the verse “Agar Aan Turk Shirazi Badast Ared Dile Mara, Bakhaal Hinduash Bakhsham Samarkand O Bukhara” (If that Shirazi Turk would take my heart in hand, I would remit Samarkand and Bokhara for her black mole) was well received.

The scholar said Tamerlane or Amir Timur, the founder of the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia angrily summoned Hafez for the above verse. The king told Hafez that Samarkand was his capital and Bokhara was the kingdom’s finest city. He said how he (Hafez) could sell them for the black mole of some girl in Shiraz.

Syed Ghayyur Hussain said the Hafez replied and said it was this prodigality which was the cause of the misery in which the king found him. Timur was happy with the response and offered him handsome gifts.

The author said the work of Hafez was rightly regarded a pinnacle of the Persian literature. He said the people in Iran have learnt Hafez poems by heart and used them as proverbs. Syed Ghayyur Hussain said life and work of Hafez were subjected to extensive analysis, commentaries and interpretations which gave him a distinct status.