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Thread of beloved passages from the mystical poem, Mantiq al-tair (Language of the Birds), written by twelfth-century Iranian, Farid al-Din 'Attar.
Paired with stunning Persian artwork.

If you're not into poetry, trust me, bookmark & read it when you've got 5, it's absolutely EPIC!

The length of the poem is about 4,500 couplets, roughly 220 pages. Here's a quick Synopsis & a few passages from "The Conference of the Birds"

All the birds of the world gather in restless assembly. They are weary of chaos and longing for a true king. The wise hoopoe, who once served King Solomon, steps forward and tells them of the legendary Simurgh—the radiant, all-knowing sovereign who lives beyond the mountain Qāf, at the edge of existence itself. The Simurgh, says the hoopoe, is the only being worthy to rule them, and the only path to happiness is to set out on the quest to find Him.

At first the birds are filled with enthusiasm, but when they learn that the Way crosses seven perilous valleys (Quest, Love, Understanding, Detachment, Unity, Bewilderment, and Annihilation of the self), terror overtakes them. One by one they offer excuses: the nightingale cannot leave his beloved rose; the peacock is obsessed with paradise; the duck clings to water and ritual purity; the owl hoards ruined treasures; the falcon refuses to abandon pride and courtly rank. Each excuse is answered by the hoopoe with a story—tales of lovers burned alive, kings who became beggars, saints who renounced everything, and ordinary souls who found God in the midst of disgrace.

The longest and most shattering of these stories is that of Sheikh Sanʿān, a renowned Muslim saint who falls hopelessly in love with a Christian girl in Georgia. For her sake he drinks wine, tends pigs, burns his prayer rug, and converts to Christianity—only to be saved at last by divine mercy and the tears of his disciples.

After countless stories and warnings, a small band of birds finally sets out. Thousands perish along the road. The survivors cross the seven valleys, each more devastating than the last. In the Valley of Love they are consumed by longing; in the Valley of Understanding their certainties dissolve; in Detachment they lose even the desire for salvation; in Unity they see that everything is One; in Bewilderment they no longer know who or where they are; and in the final valley of Self-Annihilation nothing remains of the separate “I.”

At last, exhausted and reduced to thirty birds (sī murgh), they reach the court of the Simurgh. They expect to bow before a majestic king. Instead, after a long silence, a voice speaks:

“You who have come through fire and loss, look—you are the Simurgh, and the Simurgh is you.”

A mirror is placed before them. In its surface they see not a glorious sovereign, but their own ragged, travel-worn selves. The thirty birds and the Simurgh are one and the same. The seeker, the sought, and the act of seeking dissolve into a single, radiant reality.

In that instant every question, every pain, every separate identity is annihilated in the boundless ocean of divine unity. The birds who began the journey as a noisy multitude end as a silent, eternal oneness—lost, found, and forever transformed.

ʿAṭṭār closes with a quiet prayer: may we, too, become nothing, so that we may become everything.

- The illustration on this folio depicts a scene from the mystical poem. The birds, which symbolize individual souls in search of the simurgh (a mystical bird representing ultimate spiritual unity), are assembled in an idyllic landscape to begin their pilgrimage under the leadership of a hoopoe. 🧵2/4
The Valley of Love (the most quoted of the Seven Valleys)

The next stage is the Valley of Love’s fire;
Here reason is consumed in fierce desire.
Love has no bounds, no highway and no end;
Here heart and soul in one mad blaze descend.
The lover has no home, no creed, no goal
Except the burning that consumes the soul.
Majnun, who wandered deserts for his Layla,
Was but a child beside the true lover’s fire.
A thousand caravans may pass him by,
He sees no road, no moon, no earth, no sky.

Love’s pain is sweet; its bitterness is wine;
Its wound is joy, its death is life divine.
If you would taste this wine, then cast away
The shame of men, the hope of paradise.
Burn every veil that separates the heart
From its Beloved; let every veil depart.
Here Joseph’s beauty is a common thing,
And Zulaikha’s passion an eternal spring.

When love has grown to its consummate power
It asks no comfort and it knows no hour.
The lover lives a hundred years in one
Brief sigh, and in one sigh a thousand die.
He is the moth that circles round the flame,
candle and the burning are the same.

- Nightingale with Rose from the Qajar Album (Persia, ca. 1800–1850, vibrant Qajar-era miniature)