Around 1177, a pharmacist in the Persian city of Nishapur wrote a poem about thirty birds who journey to find the Simorgh, a legendary bird said to be the king of all birds. The journey takes them across seven valleys, each representing a stage of spiritual transformation. Many birds drop out along the way. Those who complete the journey discover that the Simorgh, the divine they were seeking, is a reflection of themselves. Si morgh in Persian means thirty birds. The pharmacist's name was Farid ud-Din Attar. The poem is The Conference of the Birds. It is one of the most important works of Sufi literature ever written, and its central insight, that the divine you seek is the seeking itself, has been echoing for eight hundred years.

He Spent His Days Selling Medicine and His Nights Writing Mystical Poetry

Attar was born around 1145 in Nishapur, in what is now northeastern Iran. He inherited his father's pharmacy and spent his professional life dispensing herbal remedies and interviewing the sick. His name, Attar, means perfumer or pharmacist. He met hundreds of people daily, listened to their ailments, and observed the full range of human suffering up close. Persian literature scholars at the University of Tehran have documented that Attar wrote over thirty works, including epic poems, lyric poetry, and a massive biographical anthology of Sufi saints. His output was staggering. He wrote more than Rumi, who considered Attar his spiritual predecessor. Rumi said that Attar traversed the seven cities of love while he himself was still at the turn of a street. The pharmacy was not an obstacle to his spiritual life. It was the source material. Every human body he treated was a soul in disguise, and the ailments they described, pain, fear, longing, confusion, were the same ailments the birds in his poem would carry across seven valleys.

The Seven Valleys Are the Hardest Travel Guide Ever Written

The Conference of the Birds is structured as an allegory. The hoopoe, the wisest of the birds, convinces the others to undertake a journey to find the Simorgh, their king. The journey passes through seven valleys: the Valley of the Quest, the Valley of Love, the Valley of Knowledge, the Valley of Detachment, the Valley of Unity, the Valley of Bewilderment, and the Valley of Poverty and Annihilation. Each valley destroys something the birds thought they needed. The Valley of Love destroys reason. The Valley of Knowledge destroys certainty. The Valley of Detachment destroys desire. By the time the surviving birds reach the Valley of Annihilation, they have nothing left, no identity, no ego, no separateness from the divine they are seeking. Research from the Centre for Persian Studies at the University of Cambridge has analyzed Attar's seven valleys as a complete map of mystical development that predates and influences virtually every subsequent Sufi schema of spiritual stages. He did not invent the concept of spiritual stations, but he gave it the narrative structure that made it accessible to non-specialists. You do not need to understand Islamic theology to understand a flock of terrified birds trying to get somewhere they are not sure exists.

Thirty Birds Found Themselves and the Pun Was the Point

When the thirty surviving birds finally reach the dwelling of the Simorgh, they find a lake. They look in. They see thirty birds. Si morgh. The divine king they sought was themselves, purified by the journey, stripped of everything that separated them from the truth. This is not a twist. Attar telegraphs it from the beginning. The pun is embedded in the title. The reader, like the birds, is told exactly what will happen and still somehow arrives at the ending surprised, because knowing intellectually that the self and the divine are one is entirely different from experiencing it. Attar died around 1221, probably killed during the Mongol invasion of Nishapur. The city was destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people were massacred. The pharmacy, the house, the man himself, all gone in the kind of annihilation that has nothing spiritual about it. But the birds survived. They are still flying. The poem has been translated into every major world language and continues to be read by people who suspect that the thing they are looking for is closer than they think. Attar wrote a mirror disguised as a journey, and eight centuries later, people still look into it and see exactly what the thirty birds saw.