However, Julie Meisami argues that the intention of the poem is not mystical, but literary, and that Hafez by alluding to the love poetry of both Arabic and Persian of the past is laying claim to his position in that tradition.
The poem opens with a line of Arabic, which according to the commentary of the Bosnian-Turkish scholar Ahmed Sudi (d. 1598), is adapted from a quatrain written by the 7th-century Caliph Yazid I.
[5] The original quatrain, according to Sudi, was as follows: Sudi also quotes from poems of two Persian poets, Kātibī of Nishabur (d. 1434-5)[6] and Ahli Shirazi (d. 1535), in which they express surprise that Hafez had borrowed a line from such a hated figure as Yazid, who was notorious among other things for causing the death of the Prophet's grandson Husayn at the Battle of Karbala in 680.
A similar internal rhyme is used in Hafez's Shirazi Turk ghazal (bedeh sāqī mey-ē baqī...), which uses the same metre.
[14] The combination of the morning breeze (sabā) and the scent of musk is common in Persian poetry, and is even found in the famous mu'allaqa of the 6th-century Arabian poet Imru' al-Qais (verse 8): The word تاب tāb has a range of meanings: "heat, burning, radiance, lustre, twist, curl".
Dehkhoda's dictionary defines xūn dar del oftādan (literally, "blood falls in the heart") as to become troubled or grieved.
[22] Some translators interpret the phrase manzel-ē jānān as referring to "this world" (Clarke), "life's caravanserai" (Arberry).
"[23] The following well-known verse by Rumi expresses a similar idea in which the mystical journey towards union with God is compared to setting off from a caravanserai:[24][25] Meisami, however, sees Hafez here not so much referring to "this world" as making a literary allusion to the image commonly found in Arabic poetry of the departing tribe abandoning their halting-place and taking the women with them, carried in litters on the camels' backs.
[26] She suggests that the word rasm, usually translated as "customs", might in this context have the same meaning it has in Imru' al-Qais's mu'allaqa (verses 2 and 6), namely "traces" of the encampment.
The Magian Elder (or Zoroastrian wine-seller) is frequently mentioned in Hafez's poetry, and is often used symbolically for the spiritual adviser or Pir, "dispensing wine and true wisdom".
Annemarie Schimmel writes: "The mystical path has sometimes been described as a ladder, a staircase that leads to heaven, on which the salik slowly and patiently climbs toward higher levels of experience.
"[28] This mystical interpretation of the verse is followed by Arberry: the wine-seller "knows by experience that reason is powerless to solve the ultimate riddle of the universe ... and that it is only the wine of unreason that makes life in this world a tolerable burden.
The early 12th-century mystic poet Sana'i wrote:[32] Seif explains: "Here Hafez is referring to his libertine way of life.
"[33] According to Clarke, the -ī on the word hozūrī "presence" is a redundant suffix found also in other abstract nouns such as salāmatī "safety" and ziyādatī "abundance".