Hafiz of Shiraz, who died around 1390, is the most loved lyric poet the Persian language has produced — a master of the ghazal whose verses on wine, love, and the beloved have been recited, sung, and used for divination for six centuries. To criticise Hafiz, in the Persian-reading world, is close to criticising poetry itself.
Iqbal did exactly that. In the first edition of Asrar-e-Khudi (1915) he included verses that took aim at Hafiz directly. His objection was philosophical, not personal: in Iqbal's reading, the Hafiz tradition — with its imagery of intoxication, surrender, and sweet world-weariness — bred a mood of softness and inaction. For a poet whose entire mission was to wake a sleeping people into striving, that mood looked like a beautiful poison.
The reaction was fierce. Many readers revered Hafiz as a saint as much as a poet, and writers rose to his defence; the religious scholar Khwaja Hasan Nizami was among those who pressed the case against Iqbal's poem hard. A genuine literary controversy followed the book's appearance.
Iqbal's response was characteristically honest and not a simple surrender. In the second edition of 1918 he removed the verses naming Hafiz — but he was candid that he did so out of regard for the feelings of friends, not because his philosophical view had changed. He still believed what he believed; he simply chose not to wound a beloved figure to say it.
The episode is worth knowing for two reasons. It shows that Iqbal's criticism was always argued, never careless — he attacked Hafiz the way he attacked Plato, because of a clash of life-philosophies, not out of disrespect. And it shows a thinker capable of revising the form of his words while standing by their substance. The relationship was complex to the end: Iqbal could honour the beauty of the Persian lyric tradition and still refuse the resignation he heard inside it.