One reason we know so little of him is that, with him, thought took place of action. Verse was his way of leading an active life. An idea was action. The eyes of his fellow men might not make this interpretation. His real name was Schems-eddin-Muhammed. Hafiz is his proud poet’s name of praise, meaning Mighty in Memory. It is fabled indeed that he knew the Koran by heart. He was born in Shiraz, which is situated in the fertile valley of the Roknabad, a river he likens to the River of Paradise. Here life was pleasant just as it was with Heine in the merry Rhineland, and with Tu Fu in his youth, in the marvelous palaces of Ch’ang-an, amid moonlight carven jade and gold. The time was the early fourteenth century, making him for a little while a contemporary of Dante, Hafiz’ youth and the Italian’s old age coinciding. In his youth, or perhaps early manhood, (We are reasonably sure 1389 approximates the date of his death.) there must have been a season of peace in the valley of the river, even if it were breathing space in midst of wars. The Mongolian power had fallen. Persia was coming to her own. Sultan Sedscha, son of the conquering Mosaffer, was friend and companion poet of Hafiz. During this lull in war’s alarms each gave himself to the joy of living, and life in the blessed city of Shiraz was good to remember. He says that nowhere did roses bloom so luxuriantly. And we are glad to believe him. Sultan Sedscha was the man to value Hafiz. He, too, liked better flower-faced, almond-eyed beauties of the harem, dance, song, than fast, meditation or the swinging prayers of the mystics. Religion was the worn-out side of pleasure. It was the old clothes of men’s pleasures gone to rags. For a little while there was general inclination among the people to turn to real life and give over vain dreaming. Of this healthful, sane impulse, Hafiz was poet, uniting as he did the imaginative reach of Rûmi, with the firm grasp on material things, the worldly wisdom of Saadi. But he was greater than either in artistic sense of form, which in the quatrain attained grace and distinction comparable with Anacreon. After the winter of war this was fertile spring, when life blossomed, and with it, genius. Genghis Khan preceded Hafiz. Tamerlane came along in his old age and devastated the valley whose charm transferred to literature is unique in history, which lay between the peaks of purple, monstrous Persian mountains, and which he loved so greatly he never wished to go elsewhere. After fall of the Mongolian power, founded by Genghis Khan, the cities of Persia, Shiraz, Jesd, Ispahan, Bagdad, Hormus, became independent cities after the manner of independent cities of Italy, in the Middle Age. And like them, too, centers of art, of dominant thought.