Zolf-'āšofte

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Zolf-'āšofte is a ghazal, or love-song, by the 14th‑century Persian poet Hafez of Shiraz. In the poem, a former beloved visits the speaker at night, and the verses make clear through metaphor that the encounter is successful. There is no strong Sufi or esoteric reading intended in this poem.

The poem appears as no. 26 in the 1941 edition by Muhammad Qazvini and Qasem Ghani, and no. 22 in the second edition (1983) of Parviz Natel‑Khanlari.

In standard editions the text uses common Persian transliteration conventions (for example, x = kh, ' = glottal stop). Some editions mark long syllables or overlong moments to show the metre. The metre is called ramal-e maxbūn (hemmed ramal): most feet are shortened, so the rhythm is distinctive, and the line is commonly treated as catalectic, ending without a final syllable.

The metre itself is well known in classical Persian lyric poetry, and it occurs in many of Hafez’s ghazals. The gender of the beloved is not stated explicitly in the Persian; it could be a man or a woman. However, because of the long tradition of homoerotic imagery in Persian poetry before and during Hafez’s time, many scholars think the beloved is likely male. The opening of this ghazal echoes the opening of a famous 13th‑century mystic Iraqi poem, and Hafez’s ghazal 27 imitates that opening.

Some lines contain playful or teasing undertones; for example, narges can mean narcissus or eye, and afsūs-konān suggests banter or joking. The phrase rūz-e alast, “the day of alast,” refers to the Biblical‑Qur’anic moment when God asked all souls, “Am I not your Lord?” (Qur’an 7:172), a day often called the Primordial Covenant. The word towbe means repentance or vowing not to sin again; here it signals that the speaker knows the act was a sin but does it anyway.

There are other Hafez poems with similar themes, and edition numbers above indicate different scholarly arrangements of the text.