Poems from the Divan of Hafiz gathers forty-three ghazals by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz of Shiraz, in Gertrude Bell’s celebrated 1897 translation.

Writing in fourteenth-century Iran, Hafiz (1315–1390) composed lyric poems in which earthly love and divine longing are deliberately impossible to separate. Focusing on the subjects of wine, the beloved, the nightingale, and the rose, Divan sits at the heart of the Sufi poetic tradition. It is continually referenced in the modern age, and survives in roughly 1,700 manuscripts, making it one of the most copied literary works in history.

Gertrude Bell (1868–1926) was a writer, traveller, and archaeologist. She translated a selection of the Divan from Persian to English early in her career, long before the travels through Mesopotamia, Greater Syria, Asia Minor, and Arabia that made her one of the most influential policy-makers of the twentieth century. Featuring forty-three ghazals, plus an introduction to the poet, her work is among the best-regarded translations to be published.

This edition of Poems from the Divan of Hafiz presents Bell’s translation accompanied by her own introduction to the poet and his century, her notes on all forty-three poems, and a preface by Sir E. Denison Ross, an orientalist and linguist who served as first Director of the School of Oriental Studies. Perfect for lovers of Persian literature and collectors of classic world poetry.

Key features:

• Forty-three ghazals by Hafiz of Shiraz, in Gertrude Bell’s celebrated translation
• Complete with Bell’s introduction to Hafiz, his verse, and fourteenth-century Persia
• A preface by Sir E. Denison Ross, first Director of the School of Oriental Studies
• Translator’s notes to all forty-three poems
• Verse of love, wine, and divine longing, in the symbolic language of the nightingale and the rose