Azizan

Fal-e Hafez for kids: how to share the Yalda Hafez tradition with children

Fal-e Hafez is an old Iranian family custom: you make a quiet wish or hold a question in your heart, open the Divan, the collected poems of the 14th-century Shiraz poet Hafez, at random, and read the poem you land on as a gentle answer. Families do it most of all on Yalda night, the last and longest night of autumn, and many also keep the Divan close at Nowruz. With children it works best as a game of listening and talking, not a prediction: the child makes a wish, an adult opens the book and reads two lines aloud, and the family wonders together what the lines might mean. Below are seven short, well-known couplets that suit a child, with the Persian, a transliteration and a plain English gloss. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated Persian children's stories page by page. This page is a free guide for parents raising Persian-speaking children abroad, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

What fal-e Hafez is

Fal-e Hafez (فال حافظ) is a kind of bibliomancy, the very old practice of opening a book at random and reading the passage you land on as an answer. In Iran the book is almost always the Divan of Hafez; the Encyclopaedia Iranica calls it the most popular book for this kind of fal, though the Quran and Rumi's Masnavi are used too. Hafez has long been called lesan al-gheyb, "the tongue of the unseen", a title early writers gave to both the poet and his book.

The custom has a gentle shape. The person whose fal it is makes a niyyat, an intention, a wish or a question held quietly in the heart, without saying it aloud. Someone opens the Divan, often an elder of the family, and reads the ghazal on that page. Then everyone listens for what the poem might be saying to that person. When a group does it together, the old way is to read one ghazal in the name of each person in turn, and some families then read one or three verses from the following poem, called the shahed (witness). A playful belief comes with it: you should not ask Hafez more than three times in one sitting, or the poet may lose patience with you.

Who was Hafez?

Hafez (Khwaja Shams al-Din Mohammad Hafez-e Shirazi) was a 14th-century poet who was born in Shiraz, in southern Iran, and died there. Scholars do not agree on the year of his birth, with estimates from about 1315 to the mid-1320s, but the early sources give his death as 1390. He wrote mostly ghazals, short lyric poems of a handful of couplets, and his collected poems, the Divan, has been copied, illustrated, memorised and quoted in Iran ever since. Many Iranian homes have a copy, and lines of his have passed into everyday speech.

His tomb, the Hafezieh, stands in a garden on the northern edge of Shiraz, on the very pleasure ground he mentions in his poems. It is still one of the most visited places in the city, and people go there to read his poems aloud and take a fal. The fal is woven into the tomb's own history: Iranica records that the building was restored more than once, and in 1899 work began on a shrine over the grave, each time after an omen taken from the Divan.

Why families do it on Yalda night, and at Nowruz

Yalda, also called Shab-e Chelleh, is the last night of autumn and the longest night of the year, the night between the last day of Azar and the first day of Dey, which falls on 20 or 21 December. The extended family gathers, often at the grandparents' house, around fruit, nuts and sweets, with pomegranates and watermelon on the table. The older people tell stories, and after dinner comes the Divan. The Encyclopaedia Iranica names fal-e Hafez as one of the favourite pastimes of the night. In 2022 UNESCO inscribed Yalda/Chella, a shared element of Iran and Afghanistan, on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, describing a night when families gather at the homes of elders for poetry, storytelling, games and food.

Hafez belongs to Nowruz too. On many haft-sin tables the Divan sits where other families place the Quran or the Shahnameh, and some families open it as the new year comes in. For a child, the two nights make a nice pair: one at the darkest point of winter, one at the first day of spring, each with a book of poems on the table. For the rest of the Yalda night, from the foods to the stories, see our guide to Yalda Night for kids.

A child-friendly fal, step by step

1. Explain it as a game of listening. Something like: "Hafez was a poet who lived a long time ago in Shiraz. On Yalda we open his book and see which poem comes to us. It doesn't tell the future. It's a poem for us to talk about."
2. The child makes a quiet wish. Ask them to close their eyes and think of a wish, or something they are hoping for, without saying it out loud. That is their niyyat. If they want to tell you afterwards, they can; if not, it stays theirs.
3. An adult opens the book. Many families let the child touch or hold the closed book first. Then a grandparent or parent opens it at random.
4. Read just two lines. A whole ghazal is long for a small child. Pick one couplet, ideally a clear, kind one, and read it slowly, twice, in the old reading voice. Children love the sound of it even before they understand it.
5. Wonder about it together. Ask what pictures they heard: a tree, a star, a nightingale, a dark sea. Then ask what they think the lines are saying to them. There is no wrong answer.
6. Keep it light, and keep it kind. If the page you land on is sad or hard to explain, turn to another, or use one of the couplets below. A fal for a child should never frighten or worry them, and it should never be used to decide anything that matters.

Hafez's ghazals were written for adults and are full of wine, longing and grown-up love, so it helps for the adult to glance at the page before reading it out, and to choose the couplet. That is not cheating. It is simply what a grandparent does when telling an old story to a small child.

Seven short Hafez couplets that suit a child

Each couplet below was checked word for word in Ganjoor (ganjoor.net) and at least one other edition. The ghazal numbers follow Ganjoor's numbering, which is that of the Qazvini-Ghani edition. The English lines are our own plain glosses, written to show the sense to a parent, not literary translations.

A few notes for the grown-up reading them. The Joseph of the fifth couplet is the Joseph of the old story, who was lost to his father and found again; the "house of sorrow" is where his father grieved. The "cup of Jamshid" in the sixth is the legendary cup of an ancient king of Persian stories, and the couplet's idea, that what you are searching for may already be inside you, is one children grasp easily. The last couplet, from the very first ghazal of the Divan, fits the longest night of the year; with a child it can open a talk about how it feels to be scared, and how good it is when someone understands.

The meaning is yours to find

Hafez is famously open to more than one reading, and Iranians have argued happily over his lines for six hundred years. In a family fal there is no official answer: the meaning is the one your family finds in it that night. Let the child's reading stand next to the grown-ups', even when it is funny or completely their own. If a child asks whether the book really knows their wish, an honest answer is that a poem is something we hold up to our hearts to look at our wishes more closely, and that it is an old, loved custom, not magic that decides what will happen. Treat the book gently too: in many homes the Divan is kept in a special place and handled with care, and children notice that.

For a child growing up abroad, half the gift is simply hearing these lines in the voice of someone who loves them. If the grandparents live far away, on Azizan a grandparent can record themselves on video reading a couple of Hafez's lines for the child, so that on Yalda night the voice opening the Divan is still theirs. For more short classical poems to read with children, see short classic Persian poems for kids, and for the everyday sayings that grew out of lines like these, Persian proverbs for kids.

Related guides

• Yalda Night for kids: explain and celebrate Shab-e Yalda
• Short classic Persian poems for kids, with meaning
• Persian proverbs for kids: 8 easy ones with meanings

Questions

What is fal-e Hafez?

Fal-e Hafez is an Iranian custom of bibliomancy: a person makes a silent wish or holds a question in their heart (a niyyat), the Divan of the 14th-century Shiraz poet Hafez is opened at random, and the poem on that page is read as a gentle answer. It is most popular on Yalda night, and the Divan also appears on many Nowruz haft-sin tables.

Is fal-e Hafez fortune-telling? Is it okay for children?

For most families it is a loved cultural custom and a reason to read poetry together rather than a real prediction, and that is the best way to share it with a child. Present it as a game of listening and wondering, let the adult choose a kind couplet, and never let it frighten a child or decide anything important.

When is Yalda night?

Yalda, also called Shab-e Chelleh, is the last night of autumn and the longest night of the year, the night between the last day of Azar and the first day of Dey, which falls on 20 or 21 December. UNESCO inscribed Yalda/Chella, shared by Iran and Afghanistan, on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2022.

Who was Hafez and when did he live?

Hafez was a Persian lyric poet of the 14th century, born in Shiraz and buried there, in the garden tomb known as the Hafezieh. His year of birth is uncertain, with scholars suggesting dates from about 1315 to the mid-1320s, and the early sources give his death as 1390. His collected poems, the Divan, are mostly ghazals.

How many times can you take a fal from Hafez?

There is a playful old belief, recorded in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, that you should not ask Hafez more than three times in one sitting, or the poet may get annoyed. With children it is a nice rule to keep: one fal each, read slowly and talked about, is plenty for one night.

Open Azizan — record a story for your child

Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

Hear when azizan is ready

azizan works now in your browser. If you like, leave your email and we will tell you when the full app and the app-store version are ready. Giving your email is optional. Privacy

Your email Notify me