Lesesaal

Musibat-nama (The Book of Affliction)

Attar

A masnavi on the inner restlessness and bewilderment from which only the Sufi path delivers. A wayfarer (*salik*), guided by a master, passes through forty stages that seem to correspond to the forty days of retreat (*chilla*) and consults forty beings (Gabriel and the angels, the Throne, the Tablet and the Pen, paradise and hell, the sky, sun and moon, the elements, mountains, animals, the prophets from Adam to Muhammad, the senses, imagination, reason and heart). All answer that they are in the same state as he, except the Universal Soul, which teaches him to plunge into the ocean of the soul. Here Attar insists on the necessity of a master.