Divan-i Hafiz – Complete Ghazals of Hafez, Persian–English Bilingual Edition

Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez of Shiraz (c. 1320–1389) is the lyric poet of the Persian language. His Divan — around 500 ghazals and a handful of rubaiyat — is memorised, quoted as proverb and consulted for guidance (the fal-e Hafez) across the Persian-speaking world. The Library of Congress calls him Persia’s greatest lyric poet and Iran’s national poet; his verse is also, famously, the hardest in the language to translate.

This Persian Bell edition prints the complete Divan with the Persian ghazals and Henry Wilberforce Clarke’s English translation together on the page, so that readers of either language — and learners of both — can enjoy Hafez in full.

Why readers choose this edition

What is inside

• About 500 ghazals of Hafez in the Persian original
• The rubaiyat (quatrains) attributed to Hafez
• Henry Wilberforce Clarke's complete English translation on the same page
• The poems people quote and the ones selections leave out — the whole Divan
• Clear Persian type for recitation and fal-e Hafez
• 462 pages in a printable PDF, available as soon as the order completes

About the Divan

Hafez wrote in the ghazal, a short lyric of rhyming couplets in which every line can stand alone and the whole turns on wine, love, the rose and the nightingale — images that are at once earthly and mystical. That doubleness is why Goethe, Emerson and generations of Persian readers have found new meaning in the same poems. Manuscripts of the Divan were among the most lavishly produced books in the Persian world; the Library of Congress holds illuminated copies from the 17th and early 19th centuries.

Who it is for

Persian-speaking families who want a complete Divan for Shab-e Yalda and Nowruz; English readers who want the real Hafez rather than loose adaptations; students of Persian literature; and language learners at any level who want to read the poems people actually quote.

How to read it

Do not read it front to back. Open anywhere, read one ghazal in Persian and in English, and sit with it. For the tradition of reading Hafez on the longest night of the year, see Shab-e Yalda and Hafez-khwani; for a gentler daily path through his poems, see Through the Year with Hafiz.

Helpful links

• Classical Persian Poetry – Library of Congress
• Divan of Hafez manuscript (1801) – Library of Congress
• All Hafez books
• Exploring the Divan of Hafez
• Hafez's divination (Fal-e Hafez)
• Hafiz

Frequently asked questions