Abstract

The subject of ‘Determinism’ and ‘Free will’ is one of the most debatable and abstruse theological arguments. This argument has very old historical roots and has been appeared in different ways in the sayings and thoughts of philosophers, mystics, poets and others. It can be said that the concept of determinism is one of the key and practical concepts in the poetry of Hafez and Abu Ala Maari. Judging from the form of words, some people assume that these two poets belong to determinism and another group of people assume that they believe in free will by commenting and interpreting theirs verses. This study tries to deal with this matter and do a comparative study of the poetry of these two eminent poets in this ground. Although in the scales of the attitudes of the two poets determinism outweighs free will, a halo of doubt and distraught shadows on the ideologies of these two, so that in Hafez’s attitude it tends towards the specification of free will-oriented thought in many cases, while Maari just suffices to follow a mean manner, and speaks scarcely about determinism. We see, therefore, that in Hafez’s attitude there is a type of spirituality combined with profligacy (rindi) which cannot be elicited from Abu-Al-Ala’s ideology.