Tomb of Hafez (Hafezieh)

🕰️When was it built?

The first building over his grave was made in 856 AH (1452), about sixty-five years after Hafez died, on the order of the Timurid governor of Fars. Later the Safavid, Afsharid and Zand rulers rebuilt it several times. Today's building was begun in 1935 to a design by André Godard, the French archaeologist, and the work went on until 1938.

🏛️What was it built for?

It is the tomb of Hafez. The people of Shiraz had long held this place, known as the Mosalla, in respect; they said the Eid prayers here, and some also buried their dead here.

👀What you will see

• Hafez's gravestone, raised a metre above the ground with five round steps around it.
• The copper dome over the grave, shaped like a dervish's hat, on eight ten-metre columns.
• The colourful tilework under the dome.
• The twenty-column portico, 56 metres long, which divides the garden into a northern and a southern part.
• Bitter orange trees and two large rectangular pools.
• Ghazals by Hafez carved on the stones and written on the tiles.

💡Something interesting

The four columns in the middle of the portico survive from a hall built by Karim Khan Zand; in the new design sixteen stone columns like them were added. The complex's library holds about ten thousand books and is a centre for Hafez studies.

Good to know before you go