The sixteenth century witnessed a huge blossoming of Persian literary production, with Persian poets traveling among and between the Safavid and Mughal courts in search of success and patronage. Among the poets of the period, Muhtasham Kashani, Vahshi Bafqi, and ‘Urfi Shirazi are some of the most well-known. The well-documented social and professional interactions between these three poets were often colorful; Muhtasham and Vahshi engaged in a very public rivalry, and not always a friendly one. ‘Urfi, younger than the other two, enjoyed the good opinions of both but alienated many others with his extreme conceit in his own abilities before dying prematurely in India.
Despite, or possibly because of, the different attitudes toward each other, all three of these poets wrote responses to the same ghazal by Hafiz. Through studying the three poets’ interpretations and manipulations of the same model text, one can better understand the dynamics between poetic style and social affinities, as well as explore the role of imitation in differentiating one “school” from another. While Muhtasham and Vahshi were personally at odds, they were both practitioners of the “maktab-i vuqu‘” style of poetry, while ‘Urfi is considered one of the earliest examples of the “fresh style” or “sabk-i hindi.” While recent scholarship has increasingly focused on the fresh style, the “maktab-i vuqu‘” is still relatively unexplored. This paper examines the imitative strategies each poet uses in order to align his abilities with those of the great Hafiz while simultaneously distance himself from his contemporaries.
