Famous men's biography

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Thomas Alva Edison

EDISON

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"
People often say Edison was a genius. He answered, "Genius is hard work, stick-to-it-iveness, and common sense."


Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio (pronounced MY-lan). In 1854, when he was seven, the family moved to Michigan, where Edison spent the rest of his childhood.



"Al," as he was called as a boy, went to school only a short time. He did so poorly that his mother, a former teacher, taught her son at home. Al learned to love reading, a habit he kept for the rest of his life. He also liked to make experiments in the basement.
Al not only played hard, but also worked hard. At the age of 12 he sold fruit, snacks and newspapers on a train as a "news butcher." (Trains were the newest way to travel, cutting through the American wilderness.) He even printed his own newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, on a moving train.



At 15, Al roamed the country as a "tramp telegrapher." Using a kind of alphabet called Morse Code, he sent and received messages over the telegraph.



Even though he was already losing his hearing, he could still hear the clicks of the telegraph. In the next seven years he moved over a dozen times, often working all night, taking messages for trains and even for the Union Army during the Civil War. In his spare time, he took things apart to see how they worked. Finally, he decided to invent things himself.
After the failure of his first invention, the electric vote recorder, Edison moved to New York City. There he improved the way the stock ticker worked. This was his big break. By 1870 his company was manufacturing his stock ticker in Newark, New Jersey. He also improved the telegraph, making it send up to four messages at once.

During this time he married his first wife, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day, 1871. They had three children -- Marion, Thomas, Jr., and William. Wanting a quieter spot to do more inventing, Edison moved from Newark to Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. There he built his most famous laboratory.
He was not alone in Menlo Park. Edison hired "muckers" to help him out. These "muckers" came from all over the world to make their fortune in America. They often stayed up all night working with the "chief mucker," Edison himself. He is sometime called the "Wizard of Menlo Park" because he created two of his three greatest works there.


The phonograph was the first machine that could record the sound of someone's voice and play it back. In 1877, Edison recorded the first words on a piece of tin foil. He recited the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and the phonograph played the words back to him. This was invented by a man whose hearing was so poor that he thought of himself as "deaf"!



Starting in 1878, Edison and the muckers worked on one of his greatest achievements. The electric light system was more than just the incandescent lamp, or "light bulb." Edison also designed a system of power plants that make the electrical power and the wiring that brings it to people's homes. Imagine all the things you "plug in." What would your life be like without them?


In 1885, one year after his first wife died, Edison met a 20-year-old woman named Mina Miller. Her father was an inventor in Edison's home state of Ohio. Edison taught her Morse Code. Even when others were around, the couple could "talk" to each other secretly. One day he tapped a question into her hand: would she marry him? She tapped back the word "yes."



Mina Edison wanted a home in the country, so Edison bought Glenmont, a 29-room home with 13-1/2 acres of land in West Orange, New Jersey. They married on February 24, 1886 and had three children: Madeleine, Charles and Theodore.
A year later, Edison built a laboratory in West Orange that was ten times larger than the one in Menlo Park. In fact, it was one of the largest laboratories in the world, almost as famous as Edison himself. Well into the night, laboratory buildings glowed with electric light while the Wizard and his "muckers" turned Edison's dreams into inventions. Once, the "chief mucker" worked for three days straight, taking only short naps. Edison earned half of his 1,093 patents in West Orange.
But Edison did more than invent. Here Edison could think of ways to make a better phonograph, for example, build it with his muckers, have them test it and make it work, then manufacture it in the factories that surrounded his laboratory. This improved phonograph could then be sold throughout the world.




Not only did Edison improve the phonograph several times, but he also worked on X-rays, storage batteries, and the first talking doll. At West Orange he also worked on one of his greatest ideas: motion pictures, or "movies." The inventions made here changed the way we live even today. He worked here until his death on October 18, 1931, at the age of 84.
By that time, everyone had heard of the "Wizard" and looked up to him. The whole world called him a genius. But he knew that having a good idea was not enough. It takes hard work to make dreams into reality. That is why Edison liked to say,
"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in a village near Umtata in the Transkei on the 18 July 1918. His father was the principal councillor to the Acting Paramount Chief of Thembuland. After his father s death, the young Rolihlahla became the Paramount Chief s ward to be groomed to assume high office. However, influenced by the cases that came before the Chief s court, he determined to become a lawyer. Hearing the elders stories of his ancestors valour during the wars of resistance in defence of their fatherland, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people.



After receiving a primary education at a local mission school, Nelson Mandela was sent to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute where he matriculated. He then enrolled at the University College of Fort Hare for the Bachelor of Arts Degree where he was elected onto the Student's Representative Council. He was suspended from college for joining in a protest boycott. He went to Johannesburg where he completed his BA by correspondence, took articles of clerkship and commenced study for his LLB. He entered politics in earnest while studying in Johannesburg by joining the African National Congress in 1942.

At the height of the Second World War a small group of young Africans, members of the African National Congress, banded together under the leadership of Anton Lembede. Among them were William Nkomo, Walter Sisulu, Oliver R. Tambo, Ashby P. Mda and Nelson Mandela. Starting out with 60 members, all of whom were residing around the Witwatersrand, these young people set themselves the formidable task of transforming the ANC into a mass movement, deriving its strength and motivation from the unlettered millions of working people in the towns and countryside, the peasants in the rural areas and the professionals.

Their chief contention was that the political tactics of the old guard' leadership of the ANC, reared in the tradition of constitutionalism and polite petitioning of the government of the day, were proving inadequate to the tasks of national emancipation. In opposition to the old guard', Lembede and his colleagues espoused a radical African Nationalism grounded in the principle of national self-determination. In September 1944 they came together to found the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL).

Mandela soon impressed his peers by his disciplined work and consistent effort and was elected to the Secretaryship of the Youth League in 1947. By painstaking work, campaigning at the grassroots and through its mouthpiece Inyaniso' (Truth) the ANCYL was able to canvass support for its policies amongst the ANC membership. At the 1945 annual conference of the ANC, two of the League s leaders, Anton Lembede and Ashby Mda, were elected onto the National Executive Committee (NEC). Two years later another Youth League leader, Oliver R Tambo became a member of the NEC.

Spurred on by the victory of the National Party which won the 1948 all-White elections on the platform of Apartheid, at the 1949 annual conference, the Programme of Action, inspired by the Youth League, which advocated the weapons of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-co-operation was accepted as official ANC policy.

The Programme of Action had been drawn up by a sub-committee of the ANCYL composed of David Bopape, Ashby Mda, Nelson Mandela, James Njongwe, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. To ensure its implementation the membership replaced older leaders with a number of younger men. Walter Sisulu, a founding member of the Youth League was elected Secretary-General. The conservative Dr A.B. Xuma lost the presidency to Dr J.S. Moroka, a man with a reputation for greater militancy. The following year, 1950, Mandela himself was elected to the NEC at national conference.

The ANCYL programme aimed at the attainment of full citizenship, direct parliamentary representation for all South Africans. In policy documents of which Mandela was an important co-author, the ANCYL paid special attention to the redistribution of the land, trade union rights, education and culture. The ANCYL aspired to free and compulsory education for all children, as well as mass education for adults.

When the ANC launched its Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws in 1952, Mandela was elected National Volunteer-in-Chief. The Defiance Campaign was conceived as a mass civil disobedience campaign that would snowball from a core of selected volunteers to involved more and more ordinary people, culminating in mass defiance. Fulfilling his responsibility as Volunteer-in-Chief, Mandela travelled the country organising resistance to discriminatory legislation. Charged and brought to trial for his role in the campaign, the court found that Mandela and his co-accused had consistently advised their followers to adopt a peaceful course of action and to avoid all violence.

For his part in the Defiance Campaign, Mandela was convicted of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act and given a suspended prison sentence. Shortly after the campaign ended, he was also prohibited from attending gatherings and confined to Johannesburg for six months.

During this period of restrictions, Mandela wrote the attorneys admission examination and was admitted to the profession. He opened a practice in Johannesburg, in partnership with Oliver Tambo. In recognition of his outstanding contribution during the Defiance Campaign Mandela had been elected to the presidency of both the Youth League and the Transvaal region of the ANC at the end of 1952, he thus became a deputy president of the ANC itself.

Of their law practice, Oliver Tambo, ANC National Chairman at the time of his death in April 1993, has written:

To reach our desks each morning Nelson and I ran the gauntlet of patient queues of people overflowing from the chairs in the waiting room into the corridors... To be landless (in South Africa) can be a crime, and weekly we interviewed the delegations of peasants who came to tell us how many generations their families had worked a little piece of land from which they were now being ejected... To live in the wrong area can be a crime... Our buff office files carried thousands of these stories and if, when we started our law partnership, we had not been rebels against apartheid, our experiences in our offices would have remedied the deficiency. We had risen to professional status in our community, but every case in court, every visit to the prisons to interview clients, reminded us of the humiliation and suffering burning into our people.

Nor did their professional status earn Mandela and Tambo any personal immunity from the brutal apartheid laws. They fell foul of the land segregation legislation, and the authorities demanded that they move their practice from the city to the back of beyond, as Mandela later put it, miles away from where clients could reach us during working hours. This was tantamount to asking us to abandon our legal practice, to give up the legal service of our people... No attorney worth his salt would easily agree to do that, said Mandela and the partnership resolved to defy the law.

Nor was the government alone in trying to frustrate Mandela s legal practice. On the grounds of his conviction under the Suppression of Communism Act, the Transvaal Law Society petitioned the Supreme Court to strike him off the roll of attorneys. The petition was refused with Mr Justice Ramsbottom finding that Mandela had been moved by a desire to serve his black fellow citizens and nothing he had done showed him to be unworthy to remain in the ranks of an honourable profession.

In 1952 Nelson Mandela was given the responsibility to prepare an organisational plan that would enable the leadership of the movement to maintain dynamic contact with its membership without recourse to public meetings. The objective was to prepare for the contingency of proscription by building up powerful local and regional branches to whom power could be devolved. This was the M-Plan, named after him.

During the early fifties Mandela played an important part in leading the resistance to the Western Areas removals and to the introduction of Bantu Education. He also played a significant role in popularising the Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People in 1955.

In the late fifties, Mandela s attention turned to the struggles against the exploitation of labour, the pass laws, the nascent Bantustan policy, and the segregation of the open universities. Mandela arrived at the conclusion very early on that the Bantustan policy was a political swindle and an economic absurdity. He predicted, with dismal prescience, that ahead there lay a grim programme of mass evictions, political persecutions, and police terror. On the segregation of the universities, Mandela observed that the friendship and inter-racial harmony that is forged through the admixture and association of various racial groups at the mixed universities constitute a direct threat to the policy of apartheid and baasskap, and that it was to remove that threat that the open universities were being closed to black students.

During the whole of the fifties, Mandela was the victim of various forms of repression. He was banned, arrested and imprisoned. For much of the latter half of the decade, he was one of the accused in the mammoth Treason Trial, at great cost to his legal practice and his political work. After the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the ANC was outlawed, and Mandela, still on trial, was detained.

The Treason Trial collapsed in 1961 as South Africa was being steered towards the adoption of the republic constitution. With the ANC now illegal the leadership picked up the threads from its underground headquarters. Nelson Mandela emerged at this time as the leading figure in this new phase of struggle. Under the ANC's inspiration, 1,400 delegates came together at an All-in African Conference in Pietermaritzburg during March 1961. Mandela was the keynote speaker. In an electrifying address he challenged the apartheid regime to convene a national convention, representative of all South Africans to thrash out a new constitution based on democratic principles. Failure to comply, he warned, would compel the majority (Blacks) to observe the forthcoming inauguration of the Republic with a mass general strike. He immediately went underground to lead the campaign. Although fewer answered the call than Mandela had hoped, it attracted considerable support throughout the country. The government responded with the largest military mobilisation since the war, and the Republic was born in an atmosphere of fear and apprehension.

Forced to live apart from his family, moving from place to place to evade detection by the government s ubiquitous informers and police spies, Mandela had to adopt a number of disguises. Sometimes dressed as a common labourer, at other times as a chauffeur, his successful evasion of the police earned him the title of the Black Pimpernel. It was during this time that he, together with other leaders of the ANC constituted a new specialised section of the liberation movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe, as an armed nucleus with a view to preparing for armed struggle. At the Rivonia trial, Mandela explained : "At the beginning of June 1961, after long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force.

It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle, and to form Umkhonto we Sizwe...the Government had left us no other choice."

In 1961 Umkhonto we Sizwe was formed, with Mandela as its commander-in-chief. In 1962 Mandela left the country unlawfully and travelled abroad for several months. In Ethiopia he addressed the Conference of the Pan African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa, and was warmly received by senior political leaders in several countries. During this trip Mandela, anticipating an intensification of the armed struggle, began to arrange guerrilla training for members of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Not long after his return to South Africa Mandela was arrested and charged with illegal exit from the country, and incitement to strike.

Since he considered the prosecution a trial of the aspirations of the African people, Mandela decided to conduct his own defence. He applied for the recusal of the magistrate, on the ground that in such a prosecution a judiciary controlled entirely by whites was an interested party and therefore could not be impartial, and on the ground that he owed no duty to obey the laws of a white parliament, in which he was not represented.

Mandela prefaced this challenge with the affirmation: I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

Mandela was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment. While serving his sentence he was charged, in the Rivonia Trial, with sabotage. Mandela s statements in court during these trials are classics in the history of the resistance to apartheid, and they have been an inspiration to all who have opposed it. His statement from the dock in the Rivonia Trial ends with these words:

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment and started his prison years in the notorious Robben Island Prison, a maximum security prison on a small island 7Km off the coast near Cape Town. In April 1984 he was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town and in December 1988 he was moved the Victor Verster Prison near Paarl from where he was eventually released. While in prison, Mandela flatly rejected offers made by his jailers for remission of sentence in exchange for accepting the bantustan policy by recognising the independence of the Transkei and agreeing to settle there. Again in the 'eighties Mandela rejected an offer of release on condition that he renounce violence. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Only free men can negotiate, he said.

Released on 11 February 1990, Mandela plunged wholeheartedly into his life's work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after being banned for decades, Nelson Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organisation's National Chairperson.

Nelson Mandela has never wavered in his devotion to democracy, equality and learning. Despite terrible provocation, he has never answered racism with racism. His life has been an inspiration, in South Africa and throughout the world, to all who are oppressed and deprived, to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation.
In a life that symbolises the triumph of the human spirit over man s inhumanity to man, Nelson Mandela accepted the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all South Africans who suffered and sacrificed so much to bring peace to our land

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Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian: جلال الدین محمد بلخى), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), and popularly known as Mowlānā (Persian: مولانا) but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi[3] (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian[1][4][5][6][7][8][9] poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic.[10] Rūmī is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most of his life in an area called Rūm because it was once ruled by the Byzantine Empire.[11]



Rumi was born in Greater Balkh (Bakhtarzamin), and thus he is called Balkhi, in Wakhsh,[12] a small town located at the river Wakhsh in what is now Tajikistan. Wakhsh belonged to the larger province of Balkh, and in the year Rumi was born, his father was an appointed scholar there.[12] Both these cities were at the time included in the Greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorasan, the easternmost province of historical Persia,[1] and were part of the Khwarezmian Empire.

His birthplace[1] and native language[13] both indicate a Persian heritage. His father decided to migrate westwards due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorasan, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by Bahā ud-Dīn Walad (Rumi's father),[14] or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm.[15] Rumi's family traveled west, first performing the Hajj and eventually settling in the Anatolian city Konya (capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, now located in Turkey). This was where he lived most of his life, and here he composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature which profoundly affected the culture of the area.[16]

He lived most of his life under the Sultanate of Rum, where he produced his works[17] and died in 1273 CE. He was buried in Konya and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage.[18] Following his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mawlawīyah Sufi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for its Sufi dance known as the samāʿ ceremony.

Rumi's works are written in the new Persian language. A Persian literary renaissance (in the 8th/9th century) started in regions of Sistan, Khorāsān and Transoxiana[19] and by the 10th/11th century, it reinforced the Persian language as the preferred literary and cultural language in the Persian Islamic world. Although Rumi's works were written in Persian, Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. His original works are widely read in their original language across the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular in other countries. His poetry has influenced Persian literature as well as Urdu, Punjabi and other Pakistani languages written in Perso/Arabic script e.g. Pashto and Sindhi. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats; He has been described as the "most popular poet in America" in 2007

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Shamsuddin Mohammad Hafiz

"Hafiz was born in Shiraz in south-east Persia (modern Iran) in approximately 1320 A.D., twenty two years before the birth of Chaucer and a year before the death of Dante. He was named Shams-ud-din, which means 'Sun of Faith,' Mohammed. Later when he began to write poetry he selected Hafiz for his pen-name or 'takhallus'. 'Hafiz' is the title given to one who has learnt the whole of the Koran by heart and Hafiz claimed to have done this is fourteen different ways

"Physically Hafiz was small and ugly but even as a young boy he began to show the great gifts that would finally take him to the height of artistic and spiritual achievements. He was loving and helpful to his parents, brothers and friends, and he had a wonderfully ironic sense of humor that caused him to continually see the humorous side of everyday life. Even at this early age he was fascinated by the poetry and prose of Persia's great poets and writers and stories about the spiritually advanced souls and Perfect Masters. He loved the Koran, which his father read to him and he began to memorize it. He discovered he was blessed with a remarkable memory, and before he was a man he had memorized the Koran and many of the poems of the greatts. poe
"As a boy his favorite poet was Saadi, Shiraz's most loved poet of the time, who had died about thirty years previously. All of Shiraz was singing his beautiful songs, his ghazals, and telling his magical stories, and Hafiz was no exception. He dreamed of becoming a great poet like Saadi or like Faridud-din Attar, or Rumi, or Nizami, all of whom he admired.
Then a change occurred in his life. His father died and left his family in difficulttances. Baha-ud-din's business of being a coal merchant had failed because he had suffered from a long illness, and Hafiz's mother could only raise enough money to pay back all the debts. His two older brothers left home to work in another city and young Hafiz and his grief-stricken mother went to live with Hafiz's uncle, Saadi, who fancied himself a poet like his famous namesake. circums
"Because of the poverty that they now experienced, Hafiz's mother had to obtain work and Hafiz had to leave day-school and although only in his early teens, he began work in a drapery shop and later managed to find work in a bakery. Half of his salary he gave to his mother and the other half he used to go to school at night where he learned calligraphy and a wide variety of subjects, while continuing to memorize the Koran.
"Hafiz was twenty one years old in 1341, and was still working in the bakery and studying at night. He had memorized the Koran and had adopted the pen-name for the occasional poem he wrote but until this time had not gained much success as a poet. he had become skilled in jurisprudence and had learnt all the sciences, including mathematics and astronomy. For the past ten years he had constantly been studying all of the great poets and the lives and works of the great Spiritual Masters. He was fluentt Turkish. in Arabic and had also learn
"Then, one day at the bakery, one of the workers who delivered the bread was sick, and Hafiz had to deliver the bread to a certain quarter of Shiraz where the prosperous citizens lived. While taking the bread to a particular mansion, Hafiz's eyes fell upon the form of a young woman who was standing on one of the mansion's balconies. Her name was Shakh-i-Nabat which means 'Branch of Sugarcane'. Her beauty immediately intoxicated Hafiz and he fell hopelessly in love with her. Her beauty had such a profound effect on him that he almost lost consciousness. At night he could not sleep and he no longer felt like eating. He learnt her name and he began to praise her in his poems.
"Hafiz heard that she had been promised in marriage to a prince of Shiraz and realized how hopeless was his quest for her love. Still, the vision of her beauty filled his heart, and his thoughts were constantly with her. Then one day he remembered the famous 'promise of Baba Kuhi'. Baba Kuhi was a Perfect Master-Poet who had died in Shiraz in 1050 A.D., and had been buried about four miles from Shiraz, at a place called 'Pir-i-sabz', meaning 'the green old man', on a hill named after Baba Kuhi. The promise thatthat if anyone could stay awake for forty consecutive nights at his tomb he would be granted the gift of poetry, immortality, and his heart's desire. Hafiz, interested in the third of these three, vowed to keep this vigil that no one had yet been able to keep. Baba Kuhi had given before he died was
"Every day Hafiz would go to work at the bakery, then he would eat, and then walk pastthe house of Shakh-i-Nabat, who had heard some of the poems that he had composed in praise of her. She had noticed him passing her window every afternoon, each day more weary, but with a fire in his eyes that had lit the lamp of her heart for him. By this time Hafiz was in a kind of a trance. Everything that he did was automatic, and the only thing that kept him going was the fire in his heart and his determination to keep the lonely vigil.
"Early the next morning the Angel Gabriel (some say Khizer) appeared to him. Gabriel gave Hafiz a cup to drink which contained the Water of Immortality, and declared thatthe gift of poetry. Then Gabriel asked Hafiz to express his heart's desire. All the time that this was happening, Hafiz could not take his eyes of Gabriel. So great was the beauty of the Angel that Hafiz had forgotten the beauty of Shakh-i-Nabat. After Gabriel had asked the question, Hafiz thought; "If Gabriel the Angel of God is so beautiful, then how much more beautiful God must be." Hafiz answered Gabriel: "I want God!" On hearing this, Gabriel directed Hafiz to a certain street in Shiraz where there was a shop selling fruit and perfumes that was owned by a man named Mohammed Attar. Gabriel said that Attar was a Perfect Master, a God-realized soul, who had sent Gabriel for Hafiz's sake, and that if Hafiz would serve Attar faithfully, then Attar promised that one day Hafiz would attain his heart's desire. Hafiz had also received
"So Hafiz joined the small select circle of Attar's disciples, but it wasn't until many years later, after Attar had dropped his physical form, that Hafiz revealed his Master's identity, and by this time Hafiz had received the mantle of God-realization from Attar. Unlike Attar, Hafiz's fame spread far and wide, and as will be seen further on, it was only Hafiz's quick tongue and sense of humor that constantly saved him from the gallows.
"The story of Hafiz's vigil had made him known throughout Shiraz, and the poetry thatte, in praise of his Beloved and out of longing to gain his heart's new desire became known and sung throughout Shiraz. Shakh-i-Nabat had lost her heart to him, but the difference in their status caused many problems. Also, Hafiz saw and thought of her beauty only as a reflection of God's beauty; the beauty of her Creator. As his love for her increased, it increased his desire for his Beloved (God) Whom he now saw as her higher Self, and it was to this higher Self manifesting through her grace and beauty, that he composed his ghazals. he now wro
"He also saw the wisdom and mercy of God manifesting through his Master Attar, and he composed many poems praising his Master and begging Attar to fulfill the promise of Union of God. When Hafiz went to visit Attar, Attar would ask Hafiz to read his latestthen Attar would spiritually analyze it for the sake of Hafiz and the other disciples, (this practice continued for forty years). Then the disciples would put tunes to the ghazals and the songs would soon be sung throughout Shiraz, with the fame of Hafiz continuing to grow. poem,
"While the poems that he wrote during the time of Abu Ishak could be called 'spiritual romanticism' and those under Muzaffar the dictator: protest poems, the poems of the following period had begun to break new ground, and he was creating an impressionistic way of writing that was completely new, fresh, vibrant and subtle.
"But the period of Shuja's reign was also not without problems for Hafiz. Shuja, who also knew the Koran by heart and considered himself something of a poet, grew jealous of Hafiz although it was because of their common interests that a friendship developed between them in the beginning. Hafiz's enemies, the orthodox clergy and some other poets who were jealous of him, had made Shiraz an unsafe place by constantly slandering him and complaining about him to Shah Shuja, who was now completely under their sway for Haji Kivam was no longer at court to protect him.
"Hafiz was about to go into hiding but this proved unnecessary because early in 1363 Shuja's brother Shah Mahmud who was the ruler of Abarguh and Isfahan took Shiraz. Shuja retaliated by invading Isfahan and this produced a treaty between the two brothers. But this was not to last, for in the next year Mahmud with the help of Uvays the ruler of Baghdad since 1355, attacked Shiraz and after eleven months of fierce fighting he entered the city.
The enemies of Hafiz, wary of the new ruler, refrained from their persecution of him. His popularity with the citizens of Shiraz, who called him 'The Tongue of the Hidden' and 'The Interpreter of Mysteries' had grown, and by now had spread all over Persia.
"By 1368 the danger in the situation became critical and Hafiz and his wife packed some provisions and late one night fled the city, taking the road to Isfahan, 300 miles to the north-east. They were to spend the next four years there, and many of the poems written during this bitter time were full of homesickness for Shiraz, where Hafiz's Master was, and where his friends, including Shakh-i-Nabat, waited his return.
"Back in Shiraz, Shuja had become embroiled in the bitter controversy over whether Hafiz should be allowed to end his exile and return to Shiraz. The people were calling for the return of their favorite poet and champion, and on the other side Hafiz's enemies continued to slander him. Shuja had become wary and weary of the influence of the clergy upon him and decided to deal them a blow by allowing Hafiz to return, and by so doing this, not only would he put them in their place, but again gain the love and respect of the common people. He sent a message to Yazd, asking Hafiz to come back to Shiraz.
"On returning he was once again re-instated to his position at the college and he resumed his old life and his relationship with his Master, Attar. It was late in 1375 and Hafiz had been obeying his Master for 35 years and still he had not gained his heart's desire. When he once again complained to Attar about this, Attar replied: "Patience is the key to Joy".
"One day in 1381 Hafiz went to visit Attar. Hafiz's patience had come to an end. When he was alone with Attar he began to weep and when his Master asked him why he was weeping, Hafiz through desperation cried out: "What have I gained by being your obedient disciple for nearly forty years?" Attar replied: "Be patient and one day you will know." Hafiz cried: "I knew I would get that answer from you," and left the room.
It was exactly forty days before the end of their forty year relationship. Hafiz wenttered a circle that he drew on the ground. Throughlove and desperation he had decided to enter self-imposed 'Chehel-a-Nashini', in which the lover of God sits within a circle for forty days and if the lover of God can succeed in this difficult practice, God will grant whatever he desires. The love and strength and bravery of Hafiz was so great that he succeeded in never leaving the circle, no matter what God had in store for him.



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"On the fortieth night Attar again sent to him the form of the Angel Gabriel as he had done forty years earlier, who asked him what was his heart's desire. Hafiz replied: "My only desire is to wait on the pleasure of my Master's wish."
"Before dawn appeared on the last day Hafiz left his circle and rushed towards the house of his Master, Mohammed Attar. Attar met him at the door and embraced him, gave him a drink of two year old wine and made him God-realized. Hafiz had finally attained his heart's desire after forty long years.
"During the remaining eight years of his life, Hafiz wrote half of the poems that bear his name. He no longer wrote of his desire for the Beloved, for now he was the Beloved. He wrote of the Unity of God, of the temptation of the world and its works and of the stages of the Path to God-realization and he gave advice to others how to best avoid the traps of the Path. The poems written after Realization are written from the Authority of Divine Knowledge and have a Perfect detachment and Merciful involvementthat sets them apart from the other poems that were written from various stages on the road to the Truth.
"Quickly Hafiz gathered his disciples around him and began to teach them, using his poems to illustrate the various Spiritual points that he wanted them to understand. Because his fame had become so widespread and people were traveling from all parts of Persia and other countries to be in his presence, he had to seclude himself to a degree to be able to continue to teach his chosen disciples, and to write his ghazals that were eagerly awaited by his many devotees, and his enemies who continued to plot against him.
"It was early 1388 and in under two short years Hafiz's time to leave his physical form would come. He continued to write, but now at a faster pace for he could see that his old body was preparing to blend with the dust of Shiraz. The poems that he wrote during this period are beautiful for their understanding and their poignant love for the people of Shiraz and the whole world, and because of his knowledge of his impending death.
"By 1389, his body was racked with a sickness that he had been suffering for many years. The small ugly form had served him well for 69 years and this old cloak that his soul wore, had been the vessel that had helped to steer him to the Realization of the Existence that has no beginning or end.
The news rapidly spread through the city that their most loved (and hated) citizen had passed away. Thousands walked towards his home where he lay, surrounded by his closest disciples. However, his lifelong enemies, the hypocritical orthodox clergy had also heard the news of the death of their rival and castigator.
"Later, Hafiz's body was carried towards the Muslim burial ground in the rose-bower of Musalla, on the banks of the Ruknabad, which he loved and praised in his poems, and to where he often walked and sat down to write many of his ghazals.
"The Ulama of Shiraz, with his fellow clergy, refused to allow for Hafiz's body to be buried as a Muslim and claimed that his poetry was impious. The long knives that they had been trying to drive into his back were now fully on show, for he was no longer there to defend himself against them with his sharp wit and sense of irony.
"The followers of Hafiz and the many citizens of Shiraz began to argue with those who followed the orthodox point of view, and in the heat of the argument, someone suggested that they should ask the poet himself for the solution. The clergy, by now afraid of the size and fervor of Hafiz's supporters, reluctantly agreed to the suggestion of tearing up many of his poems into couplets and placing them into a large urn, and to call on a small boy in the crowd to select one couplet from it. The couplet that was selected was couplet no. 7 from ghazal 60:
""Don't you walk away from this graveside of Hafiz, because, Although buried in mistakes, he is traveling to Paradise."
"Even after death, Hafiz had, with tongue in cheek, outwitted his bitter rivals, and this practice of consulting his Divan as an oracle has continued from this incident, shortly after his death, down into the present age. The tomb of Hafiz was surrounded by a garden of roses and his body was laid at the foot of a cypress tree which he had planted.
"Soon after his death Hafiz's popularity had reached such proportions that even the orthodox Muslims claimed him as one of their own.
"It is thought that Hafiz never collected all of his poems together during his lifetime (although some scholars say that he did, and the collection was lost) even though many of his friends constantly asked him to do so. After his death two collections of his ghazals and other poems were assembled. One was an edition by a friend and fellow-student, Muhammad Gulandam, who also wrote a preface to this edition: and another collection was made by one of Hafiz's young disciples Sayyid Kasim-i-Anvar who died in 1431. His collection consisted of 569 ghazals and was called the 'Divan i-Khwaja-iHafiz.'
"The change of consciousness in the world brought about by Hafiz during his lifetime has been great, but his influence on the world, and on art and poetry had only just begun and we are still being greatly affected by it."