SOURCE: "The Unity of the Ghazals of Hafiz," Der Islam, Vol. 51, 1974, pp. 55-96.

In the following essay, Rehder critiques A. J. Arberry's analysis (see Further Reading) of the unity of Hafiz's ghazals and discusses his own conclusions on the subject.

The study of the poetry of Hafiz is important not only in its own right and for the understanding of Persian (and Islamic) literature, but also for what it contributes to poetics, to the understanding of all poetry. Persian literature has only very rarely been looked at as literature, and this is true of Hafiz's poems as well, but one subject which has attracted some attention is the problem of the unity of his ghazals. The first discussion in any detail of this subject is A. J. Arberry's 'Orient Pearls at Random Strung,' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies [BSOAS], xi (1946), 699-712, and I...