Fal-e Hafez: Asking Hafez on Yalda Night

A fal is an omen or a reading. Fal-e Hafez is a form of bibliomancy: you hold a question or wish in your mind, open the Divan of the fourteenth-century Shirazi poet Hafez at random, and treat the ghazal you find as his reply. Hafez is called Lisan al-Ghayb, 'the Tongue of the Unseen', because his verses seem to speak to every situation.

The fal is taken all year round, but it is the central ritual of Yalda night and is also common at Nowruz. Almost every Iranian home owns a Divan, and many families keep one copy just for fal.

Families differ in the details, but most follow this order:

• Hold the Divan with both hands and form a single clear wish or question in your mind. Do not say it aloud.
• Recite the customary invocation to Hafez (see below), or simply ask him silently for guidance.
• Open the book at random, often by sliding a finger between the pages with your eyes closed.
• Read the first ghazal that begins on the right-hand page, or continue the poem that is already under way there.
• Many readers also read the following ghazal, called the shahed or 'witness', to confirm the answer.
• Interpret the poem's mood: hope, patience, warning or joy. The wish itself stays secret.

Hafez rarely gives a plain yes or no. His ghazals move between wine and prayer, separation and union, despair and patience, so the reader looks at the overall tone. A poem that speaks of the dawn, the return of a beloved or the end of sorrow is read as a good omen. A poem about patience suggests waiting; one about deceit or hypocrisy can be read as a warning.

One of the best-loved answers is the ghazal that begins 'Yusuf-e gomgashte baz ayad be Kan'an, gham makhor': 'Lost Joseph will return to Canaan; do not grieve. The house of sorrow will one day become a rose garden; do not grieve.'

"Lost Joseph will return to Canaan; do not grieve. The house of sorrow will one day become a rose garden; do not grieve."

Hafez lived in Shiraz in the fourteenth century, and his Divan was collected after his death, traditionally dated to 1390. A well-known legend says that when some clerics objected to his burial, the matter was settled by opening his own Divan at random, and the verse that appeared supported a proper funeral.

The practice is well attested by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Mughal emperor Jahangir recorded in his memoirs that he consulted the Divan of Hafez for omens. In Europe, Goethe's West–Eastern Divan (1819) was inspired by Hafez in Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall's German translation.

At the Hafezieh, the poet's tomb garden in Shiraz, visitors lay a hand on the tombstone and take a fal. Street sellers outside offer printed fal cards, sometimes picked out of a box by a trained canary or parakeet. Online, the Ganjoor poetry library offers a random-ghazal fal, and many Persian apps do the same. On Yalda night the tomb is open late and crowded with families.

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