A semiotic and critical study of the existential-unity reading of Hafez's poetry

The open and polyphonic nature of Hafez's poems has made them alive from ancient times to the present day. One of the most popular readings of Hafez's poetry is the mystical reading, which can be divided into various types. Among the mystical readings, one can mention a treatise by Jalal al-Din al-Dawani in the 15th century, in which he recited a verse from Hafez based on the paradigm of the unity of existence. The present study  tries to use the semiotic model based on the three contexts to critique and evaluate the religious reading of Hafez by Dawani and to refer to the history of the evolution of the Iranian-Islamic mysticism to show that such a reading of Hafez's poetry is not appropriate. To explain the evolution of the history of Sufism, the concept of the first and second mystical traditions was used and the major and common concepts of these two traditions, namely, revelation, love, and the unity of witness/the unity of existence, were compared with each other.