Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār

Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār lived in Nishapur, in Khorasan in north-eastern Iran, in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. His name means “the druggist” or “perfumer”, and he seems to have earned his living as a pharmacist, seeing many patients a day. Little else is known for certain of his life. Tradition says that he died in the Mongol sack of Nishapur around 1221.

His best-known work is The Conference of the Birds (Manṭiq al-ṭayr), an allegorical poem in rhyming couplets. The birds of the world, led by the hoopoe, set out to find their king, the Sīmurgh. Most give up on the way, with excuses that the hoopoe answers with stories. The thirty who survive the seven valleys, of quest, love, knowledge, detachment, unity, bewilderment, and poverty and annihilation, find that the Sīmurgh is themselves: in Persian, sī murgh means “thirty birds”.

He also wrote other mystical epics, among them the Book of Secrets and the Book of Affliction, many lyric poems, and the Memorial of the Saints, prose lives of the early Sufis, including Rābiʿa and al-Ḥallāj. Rūmī revered him; a legend tells that ʿAṭṭār met the young Rūmī and foresaw his greatness.