Hafiz Shirazi nurtured yeast for living. He used to start the hard work at midnight; compensation was less. Hafiz used to remain distressed on this.
Shiraz was a place where intellectuals and poets were accredited. Hafiz could not choose to become intellectual due to his poverty so he opted for poetry. In the neighbourhood lived a fabric draper who was a poet. Other poets assembled at his place in the evenings. Hafiz joined the group and started learning in the draper’s sitting room.
Hafiz was ridiculed when he presented his first ghazal in the assembly. Even his most earnest of the efforts could not get approval but Hafiz kept on despite mockery and teasing from every where.
Dismayed, he went to the shrine of Baba Kohi and wept; falling asleep there. During his sleep a virtuous dignitary came and put some thing in his mouth that woke Hafiz up. The ghazal which Hafiz created after the incident stunned every one in the meeting at the draper’s sitting room. No one would believe that it is the work of Hafiz Shirazi regardless of his reassurances. They thought Hafiz had got it done by someone else. For an audition, he was given a stanza and asked to complete the ghazal then and there. Hafiz did it.
Then came the time when Shirazi’s Dewans (compilations) were used for taking omen from. Seeing the value Mughal King Aurangzeb Alamgir had prohibited keeping the compilations in his regime.
During this era Allama Iqbal had said that Shirazi wrote death songs in a manner that life against them seemed belittled.
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