Who they were
His dates, c. 1325–c. 1390, are approximate. His pen name means one who has memorized the Quran. He lived under Shiraz’s local dynasties — the Inju, then the Muzaffarids — in the turbulent century after the Ilkhanate, and little of his life is securely documented; much of what is told is legend.
What they did
His ghazals sing of wine, of love, and of the hypocrisy of false piety, with a mystical shimmer that lets the verses read as both earthly and Sufi. That double reading is the point — such is the classic critical view.
Legacy
His Divan is used for fal-e Hafez — consulting the book as an oracle — in Iranian homes to this day. The famous anecdote of a meeting with Timur, turning on a verse and the price of Samarkand, is legend. Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan (1819) was inspired by translations of Hafez. His garden tomb in Shiraz, the Hafezieh, rebuilt in the 1930s, is among Iran’s most visited monuments.