Reading room

Mantiq al-tayr (The Conference of the Birds)

Attar

A masnavi of several thousand couplets and Attar's masterpiece. The birds of the world gather to choose a king; the hoopoe, Solomon's messenger, proposes that they seek the Simorgh. Each bird excuses itself with a human weakness (the nightingale's love for the rose, the parrot's longing for immortality, the peacock's paradise) and the hoopoe answers with stories, among them that of Shaykh San'an in love with a Christian girl. Those who set out cross seven valleys: quest, love, knowledge, detachment, unity, bewilderment, and poverty and annihilation. Only thirty arrive, and they discover that the Simorgh is their own reflection: *si morgh*, 'thirty birds'. The frame story comes from the Ghazalis' *Risalat al-tayr*.