SOURCE: An introduction to The Poems of Shemseddin Mohammed Hafiz of Shiraz, E.J. Brill, Leyden, 1901, pp. xi-xxix.

In the following essay, Payne discusses the limitations of various biographies of Hafiz before providing his own sketch of the poet's life which emphasizes his lack of religious belief.

I

There are many so-called lives of the greatest of Persian poets; but they are all, without exception, mere collections of pointless and irrelevant anecdotes, mostly bearing manifest signs of ex post facto fabrication and often treating of matters completely foreign to the nominal subject¹, and carefully refrain from touching upon the essential points of Hafiz's history. For instance, in none of these insipid compilations are we vouchsafed any particulars as to his family and extraction, nor is even the date of his birth stated; and indeed the only real biographical information, such as it is, which is to be gleaned...