The Language of Sufi Poetry

No language is more closely identified with Sufi devotion than Classical Persian. The mystical tradition adopted Persian verse as its principal vehicle, developing a symbolic vocabulary in which the beloved, the wine, the tavern and the nightingale speak simultaneously of human and divine love. Sanai and Attar established the mystical masnavi, the long rhyming couplet poem, and Attar's Conference of the Birds remains among the most read Sufi allegories. Rumi's Masnavi, six books of teaching poetry composed in thirteenth century Konya, earned from later admirers the extraordinary title of the Quran in the Persian tongue, and his lyric Divan-e Shams pours the same devotion into ghazals.

Hafez of Shiraz perfected the ghazal itself, and his divan is used for bibliomancy across the Persianate world, opened at random for guidance the way others open scripture. This poetry is not only read but performed. Persian verse supplies the texts of sama gatherings, of the Mevlevi ceremonies descended from Rumi's circle, and of qawwali in South Asia, where Persian couplets still open performances beside Urdu and Hindi ones. Sikh scripture too contains Persian lines, and the Zoroastrian and Baha'i communities of Iran produced devotional literature in the same classical register.