Hafiz Aur Iqbal by Dr Yusuf Husain Khan

Hāfiz Aur Iqbāl by Dr

Yūsuf Husain Khan is a scholarly treatise dealing with a comparative study of Hāfiz and Iqbāl. Khwājah Hafiz Shirāzī and Muhammad Iqbāl are two great lyricists of Persian. In so far as the diction of their poetry is concerned, there is a lot common in both. But Iqbāl’s adverse criticism of Khwājah Hāfiz in his mathnavī entitled .Asrār -i Khudī, that appeared in 1914, led his readers including Akbar Allahābādī and Khwājah Hasan Nizāmī to misconstrue—and the impression still persists in some literary quarters in India and Pakistan —that the views of Khwājah Hāfiz on “Love” and “Ecstasy” are not accept-able to Iqbāl and Hāfiz’s poetry being on the whole a specimen of “art for art’s sake” does not come up to the purposeful standard which Iqbāl has set forth while pro-pounding his concept of literature. This was a myth t hat has been gaining ground in the Indo-Pak subcontinent since 1914. During the past three or four decades some writers on Iqbāl including Dr Sayyid `Abdullah, Professor Yūsuf Salim Chishtī and the present writer have made pointed references to this myth in their writings. It has, however, been vehemently and most successfully exploded by Dr. Yūsuf Husain Khan in his book under review.

Dr Yūsuf Husain Khan’s analytical study of the points of similarities and dissimilari­ties between Hāfiz and -Iqbāl is thought provoking. He has undertaken this remarkable study under various heads including Knowledge, Faith, Intuition, Greatness of Man, Predestination and Free Will, Renunciation, Sermons, Asceticism, Mysticism, Theory of Action, Mortality and Im­mortality, Feeling of Loneliness, Tulip as a symbol, and Mansūr Hallāj. He has also dealt with at length the impact of the style of Khwājah Haft’s lyrics on Iqbāl’s lyrics. That Iqbāl was impressed by the style of Hāfiz and has tried to imbibe his diction is clear froth a statement which Iqbāl gave to Miss Attiya Fyzee in London in 1907 and, later, to Khalīfah Abdul Hakīm in Lahore saying : “When I am in the mood for Hāfiz, his spirit enters into my soul and my personality merges into the poet and I myself become Hāfiz.” It is not difficult to understand and appreciate Iqbāl’s approach to Hāfiz having two aspects which outwardly look contradictory to each other. Iqbāl who believes in Action lashed out at Hāfiz for inaction and the state of drunkenness “preached” through his poetry. In spite of this ‘Iqbāl could not remain unimpressed and uninspired by the charm and bewitching influence of Khwājah’s poetry and the magical impact it makes on his reader.

Iqbāl was impressed by Hāfiz both consciously and unconsciously, and this factis clearly revealed by those of Iqbāl’s Persian ghazals in which Iqbāl has followed the pattern set by Khwājah Hāfiz. Actually in a number of issues including “Love with all its sweep” both the poets have a common outlook in spite of their minor differences here and there. An in-depth study of both Iqbāl and Hāfiz divulges the secret that both differ on vital points only to agree. Love is the source of inspiration for both Hāfiz and Iqbāl with the only difference that in Hāfiz Love either relates to Reality or is a trope, while for Iqbāl Love has a set purpose before it. But, again, for both Love is a moving force to bring about a revolution with-in the Self and outside the Self.

Dr Yūsuf Husain, while dealing with Iqbāl’s scathing criticism of Khwājah Haft’s poetry and also Iqbāl’s indebtedness to Khwājah Hāfiz, thoroughly discusses the two periods in which Hāfiz and Iqbāl lived, their approach towards politics of their periods, their concepts of love both individual and universal, art of symbolism as handled by each and their concepts of Self. In the course of this discussion the learned author has brought out for the first time the differences between the poetic imagination of Hāfiz and that of Iqbāl and the role their imagination has played in the growth and development of the poetry of each which is, in both cases, a happy blend of thought-content and emotion.

Dr Yūsuf Husain Khān does not agree with `Allāmah Shiblī Nu`mānī who says that wine in the poetry of Hāfiz cannot be interpreted as spiri­tual wine. The present writer is inclined to accept Yūsuf Husain Khān’s view in spite of what Shiblī and Iqbāl have said about Hāfiz, for the obvious reason that the high spiritual status enjoyed by Hāfiz is a fact established by history. He was equally interested in what was happening in his country and the Middle East before his eyes and also in the restlessness of the human spirit for the search ofsomething higher, subtler and more real.

In the realm of inner experiences the line of demarca­tion between transcendental-ism and objectivity almost disappears. But objectivity does not necessarily mean in-carnation of the Absolute in an individual being. It is quite plausible that in the case of a genuine mystic, experiences beyond his inner self can take the shape of objective reality. The author has scholarly dis­cussed this issue in the light of the poetry of Hāfiz and made it a culminating point for a comparative study of the two poets.

Hāfiz Aur Iqbāl is a valu­able addition to the literature already in existence on Hāfiz or Iqbāl. The present writer agrees with Professor Nazeer Ahmad of the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, that, in view of its literary merit, the book deserves to be translated in English.