1. The Conference of the Birds
Mantiq ut-tayr (Language of the Birds)
Farid ud-Din Attar

2. The birds [of the world] assemble
and the hoopoe tells them of the Simorgh
The world’s birds gathered for their conference
And said: ‘Our constitution makes no sense.
All nations in the world require a king;
How is it we alone have no such thing?
Only a kingdom can be justly run;
We need a king and must inquire for one.’
The hoopoe tells the birds that in fact they
have a King and it is the Simorgh.
Gr. Allegoria: allos (other) + agoria (speaking)
= speaking differently, figuratively, indirectly
The Conference of the Birds is an allegory
Allegory: Elements of a story (characters, actions, plot, setting) representing or symbolizing abstract ideas, concepts, teachings or situations.
Gr. Allegoria: allos (other) + agoria (speaking) = speaking differently, figuratively, indirectly
A style or literary device often used to convey a hidden message that is moral, philosophical or political.
Allegory calls for sustained textual interpretation (the digging up of deeper significations)
Hoopoe
Hüdhüd Kuşu

3. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”
Chained prisoners who cannot move their heads watch the shadows of things passing by a fire behind them. They attribute reality to the shadows due to their lack of knowledge as to their source (what causes them).
Prisoners represent us, ordinary people (non-philosophers). The cave and the shadows represent our body, senses, the phenomenal world surrounding us, world of copies, appearances, deceptive sense perceptions. The outside of the cave and the Sun that the freed prisoner faces represent the world of ideas and forms. (The sun specifically stands for the supreme form of the good, and so on.)

4. (Tawhid or Wahdat al-Wujud)
The Conference of the Birds is a work explaining (teaching)
the Sufi doctrine to its audience
“…only God truly exists, all other things are an emanation
[tazahur] of Him, or are His ‘shadow’ (…)
the awakened soul, guided by God’s grace, can progress
along a ‘Way’ which leads to annihilation in God.”
(Dick Davis, CofB, Penguin. p.12)
The Conference of the Birds allegorizes the Sufi Way (Tasawwuf) . The birds’ quest for the Simorgh represents the Sufi’s quest for selflessness and nothingness.
- The hoopoe functions as the Sufi Sheikh, spiritual leader
- The birds stand for human beings, or more precisely, disciples, pupils, aspiring Sufis
- The Simorgh figures as the Divine, the Real Truth, eternal Oneness of Being (Tawhid or Wahdat al-Wujud)

5. The Seven Valleys the birds cross to find the Simorgh symbolize
the Seven Stages (Doors) leading to the mystic’s
self-annihilation and unity with God
Cover of
Neyzen Tevfik’s
1919 collection
of poems,
Hiç
(Nothing / Nihil)

6. Symbolism of Self-annihilation (Destruction of the Self / Nafs)
Black kaftan (nafs)
White shirt and dress (shroud)
Brown sikke (tomb-stone)

7. Farid ud-Din Attar (1142 – 1221?)
Born in Nishapour in north-east Iran, intellectual capital of
the Khorasan region and one of the main centers of Sufism.
He was an herbalist and doctor.
Said to have studied medicine and theology as a child
with the prominent Sufi sheikh Majd ad-Din al-Baghdadi.
- Also believed to have been initiated to the Way by the spirit
of Mansur al-Hallaj who appeared to him in a dream.
- We know from his own writings that he studied the lives of Sufi martyrs and saints in Iran, Egypt, Arabia, and Asia. (Tadhkirat al-awliya – Memoirs of the Saints)
“From early childhood, seemingly without cause, I was drawn to this particular group (the Sufis) and my heart was tossed in waves of affection for them and their books were a constant source of delight for me.” (from Tadhkirat al-awliya)
After The Conference of the Birds and his later works became highly popular (Attar was probably years old when he wrote CofB), he was tried for heresy. He was purged from Nishapour and his property was confiscated.
Mansur al-Hallaj (Attar’s spiritual leader) was also charged with heresy and executed in Baghdad in 922 by the Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir. He is one of the earliest Sufi martyrs.

8. (I am God / I am the Truth) Sufism is (was) esoteric because:
Mansur al-Hallaj (858 – 922)
Ana al-Haqq
(I am God / I am the Truth)
Sufism is (was) esoteric
because:
It goes counter to the
established understanding
and practice of religion
- Hence its teachings cannot
be conveyed to everyone
Sufism is an esoteric (underground) teaching and practice conveyed from the master to the disciple, from the Shah of the adept to the (would-be) adept.
Only the initiated can set out to cross the Way. The uninitiated sees the Sufis as heretics.
Religious ecstasy for the Sufis is the staple of being diwana (mad). Becoming a mad person is the final act testifying to the annihilation of the self (no longer a person).

9. Sufism Sophos = knowledge, wisdom, philosophy
Suf = a cloak made of coarse material, against display (and acquisition) of wealth and power, rejecting the pompous practices in Islamic communities
After Muhammad: Abu Baqr, Omar, Uthman, Ali
Consolidation of the Islamic State:
Umayyad Caliphate (661 – 750)
Abbasid Caliphate (750 – 1258)  emergence of Sufism as a movement in Baghdad
Sources:
The Kor’an
Hadith Qudsi
Sunnah (Sayings and deeds of the Prophet)
Neoplatonism founded by Plotinus ( CE)
Islam got formalized and turned into a reflex, mostly ritualized and lost its inital political, ethical, revolutionary spirit. Less popular virtues: Humility, devotion to people, self-sacrifice, rejection of worldly blessings, power. Shift from a rigorous existential and ethical project to a lifeless moral doctrine or ideology.
The practice of kalam, the tradition that tries to provide rational proofs of God’s existence and a defense of the Kor’an’s teachings focused on verses that supported the absolute trascendence, severity, grandeur, aloofness and distance of God from humans and all other created beings. However, the Sufis mostly focus on God’s divine names and qualities emphasizing his nearness to humans, sameness or similarity of the divine and humans, similarity, compassion, care and love of God for human beings and humans’ love for him. One among many others Kor’anic passages they take to the center of their work is the verse «He loves them, and they love Him.» (5:54) They also pay attention to the verse that states that God is nearer to human beings than their «jugular vein». (50:16) Another verse they deem extremely important for their doctrine reads «Say [to the people, O Mohammad!]: If you love God, follow me, and God will love you.» (3:31) That is why the Sufis follow the sunnah closely. After all it is Muhammad himself who shows in his deeds and practices the best, the ideal way of loving God and being loved by him, thereby achieving the best form of nearness or intimacy with God.
The Sufis pay special attention to the chronological order of revelation. (nuzul) The first series of verses were sent to challenge the wealthy garden-owners in Mecca acting like a monopolist gang. Collective ownership of those gardens favored in the Kor’an.
Hadith qudsi:
Who among you is Muhammad? (in the first masjid in Medina)
Muhammad serving water to the people gathered in the masjid: «One who serves his companions (sahaba) best is the leader.»
Muhammad’s only will was the Final Khutbah, he died propertyless.
Neoplatonism: Philosopher Plotinus’ rereading and reinterpretation of Plato’s philosophy of ideas and forms (the term is coined in the 19th century). According to Neoplationism, God [or what Plato calls the form of the good and what Plotinus calls the One] is the source, wellspring and goal, returning point of everything. All the existing things come from him and they all return to him eventually. As the soul is what humans share with God, and since it is the counterpart of divine essence in human beings, our souls return to God. Unity with God or erasure in God [or in the One] is what the soul must strive for or desire. Here comes the most striking claim of Neoplatonism adopted by some of the Sufi thinkers: Although the universe comes from God, he did not create it as a distinct, detached creative agent; the universe instead emanates (constantly emanates) from God; it is an unceasing overflow of his infinite power or nature. He is a spring from which the rivers of being, existing things flow but these things never exhaust the infinite spring itself. Likewise, God is like the sun from which light emanates or radiates, but these rays never make the sun lose its ever-generative power. As the soul of a human being gets closer to the source of everything, that is of course God, it acquires all the good qualities that are the nature of God, namely truth, reality, goodness, beauty, ans the like. God is the only reality, the only truth, and the word Haqq has these meanings in the Kor’anic language.

10. First Shahada as method for Sufism:
La ilaha illa Allah (there is no god but God – no [worldly] power [idol] to worship except…)
‘’…as confirmation of their belief that a worshipper must first pursue via negativa…
…one could then set out on the via positiva, leading to the meeting with God, who stands at the end of the journey.’’
Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West. Oneworld, (pp )

11. The quest is arduous; the Way is scary:
The Nightingale’s excuse
My love is for the rose; I bow to her;
From her dear presence I could never stir.
If she should disappear the nightingale
Would lose his reason and his song would fail,
And though my grief is one that no bird knows,
One being understands my heart -- the rose.
I am so drowned in love that I can find
No thought of my existence in my mind.
Her worship is sufficient life for me;
The quest for her is my reality
(And nightingales are not robust or strong;
The path to find the Simorgh is too long).

12. The hoopoe’s answer to the Nightingale:
Dear nightingale,
This superficial love which makes you quail
Is only for the outward show of things.
Renounce delusion and prepare your wings
For our great quest; sharp thorns defend the rose
And beauty such as hers too quickly goes.
True love will see such empty transience
For what it is -- a fleeting turbulence
That fills your sleepless nights with grief and blame --
Forget the rose’s blush and blush for shame!
Each spring she laughs, not for you, as you say,
But at you -- and has faded in a day.

13. The Seven Valleys on the Sufi’s Way
(way of negation and way of affirmation combined)
Seeking, demanding, search (talab)
Love (‘ishq)
Intuitive knowledge, mystic apprehension (ma’rifat)
Detachment, independence (istighna’)
Experiencing union with the Divine, unity (tawhid)
Perplexity, bewilderment, awe (hayrat)
Poverty and nothingness, fulfillment in annihilation
(faqr u fana)
Subsistence in God (baqa)
The purpose of the discipline … is to achieve purification. The aspirant has: to purify his nafs, i.e. his personality-self, from its inclination to shahawat, that is, the thoughts and desires of the natural man, and substitute these with love
(mahabba); then he must be cast into the flames of passion (ishq) to emerge in the state of union (wusla) with transmutation of self (fana) through the gifts of dazzlement and wonder (haira) to everlastingness (baqa).
(J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam. Oxford, p. 14)

14. Allegory of “The moths and the flame” tells the story
of ‘ishq, the flames of passion, thanks to which one
emerges in “the state of union.”
But, the hoopoe warns (Attar’s predicament):
To go beyond all knowledge is to find
That comprehension which eludes the mind,
And you can never gain the longed-for goal
Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul;
But should one part remain, a single hair
will drag you back and plunge you in despair –
No creature’s Self can be admitted here,
Where all identity must disappear.

15. “But should one part remain, a single hair
will drag you back and plunge you in despair”
After the fifth valley (unity with the Divine, tawhid) comes the valley of perplexity and bewilderment (hayrat)
The remaining part here is the intellect, reason or comprehension (‘aql)
Thirty birds (si morgh) at last meet the Simorgh and understand that He is them (and vice versa)
5. Experiencing union with the Divine, unity (tawhid)
6. Perplexity, bewilderment, awe (hayrat)
7. Poverty and nothingness, fulfillment in annihilation (faqr u fana)
Subsistence in God (baqa)

16. There in the Simorgh’s radiant face they saw
Themselves, the Simorgh of the world – with awe
They gazed, and dared at last to comprehend
They were the Simorgh and the journey’s end.
They see the Simorgh – at themselves they stare,
And see a second Simorgh standing there;
They look at both and see the two are one,
That this is that, that this, the goal is won.
In this stage, Multiplicity is undone, unity is achieved BUT it is achieved through comprehension. Comprehension in its turn still implies multiplicity of things and identities, what is not the One in Plotinus and what is the plurality of the two to be reduced to oneness in the allegory of the lover and the beloved in The Conference of the Birds. Comprehension, in other words, suggests the mediation, intervention of the mind. The true immediacy of the sameness or union with God must be intuitive and supra-rational. This perception or comprehension exists ALONGSIDE the claimed experience of immediate oneness with the divine, unity with all the existing things, and finally selflessness. This almost paradoxical situation creates perplexity, bewilderment and awe.

17. End of the poem: Attar expresses his dilemma (or paradox):
(The thirty birds) saw
Their Selves had been restored to them once more,
That after Nothingness they had attained
Eternal Life, and self-hood was regained.
This Nothingness, this Life, are states no tongue
At any time has adequately sung –
Those who can speak still wander far away
From the dark truth they struggle to convey,
And by analogies they try to show
The forms men’s partial knowledge cannot know.
Language is unable to convey the Truth!
Mantiq = Logos = language/speech = reason/intellect
(Mantiq ut-Tayr)
Mantiq = Logos = language/speech = reason/intellect
The Truth (annihilation and subsistence in God) cannot be told for telling this requires the tool of the mind, language (Attar’s poetry).
Authentic experience of fana and baqa requires silence/absence (the third moth doesn’t return from its quest and remains forever silent).
“I have described the Way – / Now, you must act – there is no more to say. / What are you doing? / Burn reason to the ground and become like a madman (diwana)!”