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Home , Avicenna, Hellmut Ritter, Lists of Persian poets, Sanai, Shahnameh

OUDCE: Conference of the Birds Michaelmas 2018

Week 1

I Overview ʿAttar is one of the great poets of the Islamic mystical tradition, who has been called ‘The Poet of the Men of ’. Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-ṭayr) is one of the most famous and influential poems in the whole Islamic poetic tradition – capturing the imagination not only of the artists of his time, but the novelty and vividness of the story of the group birds who set out to find their King has also drawn the attention of many western artists, as we shall see. He was born and lived for his whole life in , in eastern , and he wrote only in Persian. He was prolific poet who wrote four long mathanawī’s, including Conference, as well as a fine collection of qasīdas – or love poems dedicated to a divine or human beloved – and a collection of rubāʿāt – four line poems. He wrote one prose work for which he was perhaps even better known than for his : The Memorials of the Saints (Tadhkirāt al-ʿawliyā’), which is an account of the life and sayings of previous Sufi masters.

The name ʿAṭṭār is a pen-name; it means , and it indicates that he was an and a doctor, running a business with a shop-front on one of the main streets in Nishapūr, which he had inherited from his father. He makes some references to his work, for instance, that he wrote two of his major poetic works whilst simultaneously treating 500 patients a day.

We don’t know much about ʿAṭṭār’s spiritual life, and some people, such as the pioneering scholar of his work, Hellmut Ritter,1 have claimed that he was not even a Sufi in any formal sense. But more recent scholarship tends towards thinking that this cannot possibly be true, as it is felt that the poems could not have been written by someone who had not personally experienced the states they describe. It is now thought that he was intimately connected to the spiritual life of Nishapūr, which was a an important Sufi centre for seekers and adepts, to whose experience and aspiration ʿAṭṭār gave voice. One of the few statements he makes about his involvement is in the introduction to The Memorials of the Saints where he says;

1 Hellmut Ritter, Das Meer der Seele; Mensch, Welt und Gott in den Geschichten des Farīduddin ʿAṭṭār. Leiden, 1955. See also his entry in Encyclopaedia of , II.

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“From early childhood, seemingly without cause, I was drawn to this particular group (i.e. the Sufis), and my heart was tossed in waves of affection for them and their books were a constant source of delight for me”.2

The tradition is that he was converted to when one day a wandering came into his shop and questioned him about his preparedness for the . The dervish then died suddenly in front of him; he was so disturbed by this that he abandoned his shop and went into retreat for several years at one of the many Sufi lodges in Nishapūr.3

However, ʿAttar is never presented as a Sufi master; as far as I know, there is no tradition of he himself doing wondrous deeds and uttering wise sayings to students. He was above all an extremely gifted poet. He was not on the whole a great structural innovator; his fame rests upon the beauty of his language, the power of his imagery and the depth of his perception.

He wrote in Persian, not . This was a transitional time within the Islamic world as far as language was concerned. Arabic was the official language of the whole Empire; it was the language of the and of religious law, and it was not allowed to translate these, as Arabic is regarded as a sacred a language. In the early centuries of the Islamic conquest, Arabic was also the main cultural language, and there was a conscious attempt to downgrade Persian, which was the language of the conquered Sassanid Empire, and had a threateningly long and sophisticated culture of its own which was very different from the Bedouin origins of the ruling .

But by the 10th–, Persian began to re-emerge in a new form – written in Arabic script – and specific forms of and literature began to develop, particularly poetry. The seminal work here was Firdowsi’s Shah Nameh (Book of Kings) which not only celebrated the unique history of the Persian-speaking peoples, but also revived the language rather, perhaps, in the way that we regard Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as seminal to the development of the English language.

2 See Lewisohn and Shackle ʿAṭṭār and the Persian Sufi Tradition, p. xviii 3 See Avery and Alizadeh Fifty Poems of Attar, re-press, Melbourne, 2007.

2 Important to the development was the specifically Persian poetic form of the rhyming couplet. Arabic verse is all mono-rhyme, meaning that every line of a poem ends with the same sound. This puts a severe limit upon the number of verses, such that Ibn al- Fāriḍ’s great mystical work Poem of the Way is regarded as an extraordinary achievement at about 700 lines. The rhyming couplet style – called – released the poet from these constrictions and from this point onwards the Persian tradition started to produced epics. is nearly 50,000 couplets; Rūmi’s Mathnawi something like 24,000 altogether in six books. Conference of the Birds at about 4,500 verses is therefore a relatively modest length.

By ʿAttar’s time, there was existing tradition of mystical poetry in Persian. Of particular importance was Ghaznavi (d. 1141) from the very far East, bordering onto , whose The Walled Garden of is regarded as the first Persian work of mystical poetry and Niẓāmī Ganjvi (d.1209) from the area which is now , who really established the mathnawi form, with five epic poems usually referred to as the Khamsa.

The trend towards Persian trend was very much reinforced by the emergence of political regimes for whom Persian was the language of the court and administration. The , who ruled in the far Eastern regions, moving into , in the 10th/11th centuries; the Seljuks who, in various guises, took over the rulership of the whole of the central regions from 11th century until the Mongols displaced them. The trend continued after the Mongol conquests; all the Empires which emerged post conquest spoke Persian rather than Arabic – the Timurids, the Moghuls in India, the Safavids in central Iran. It was only later – 14th century – that these people began to develop culturally in their vernacular languages, that is, in Turkish or Urdu or Bengali. Up until that point they shared a common Persian heritage which included poems like Conference of the Birds, and it for this , as well of course its great accessibility, that this poem became extremely influential.

Cultural Background Nishapur is about 1000 miles from , which at that time was the centre of the Islamic world; there was still a Caliph there, with some remaining nominal power but enormous symbolic significance. But the distance did not mean that places like Nishapur were isolated or out on a limb. It was a huge Empire, containing many different political units, cultures, races and even religions, but there was nevertheless

3 a high degree of coherence across the whole region based on religious practice and universal knowledge of the Arabic language. People and information – news, but also ideas and books – travelled pretty fluently across the whole area. Not everyone travelled as much as the famous 14th century writer Ibn Batuta, who travelled from North African to China, but a great many people – particularly scholars – made the pilgrimage to at least once in their lifetimes, and often took several years to do it, taking the opportunity to visit people and places at the same time. Reading accounts of people’s lives, you could get the impression that Baghdad to Nishapur or was just a short hop.

Islamic intellectual life was in a state of brilliance during this time – one of its many phases of brilliance – and Nishapur, Damascus, Cairo and Baghdād, and also in the West, Seville/Cordaba, were important centres where philosophers, poets and writers, Quranic scholars and would be meeting together in the city and in the courts. I mention this was a great age when Islamic scientists were forging ahead with discoveries in and in particular. So at the level of the intellegensia, it was a very sophisticated and literate culture; a recent piece of research into a private library in Damascus in this Ayyubid period showed that the collection owned by one minor aristocrat was larger and more comprehensive than any library at any of the in or Rome at the time.

Most important for our purposes, though, is the that Nishapur was a very important spiritual centre. It had been the home of some of the most famous Sufi masters: al-Sulamī (d. 1022), al-Qushayrī (d.1072) and Aḥmad al-Ghazālī (d. c1020) – regarded as the founder of the school of love , and in the previous generation Abu Saʿīd al-Khayr (d.1049) one of the earliest mystical poets to write in Persian. It was a place where there were many Sufi orders – many ‘lodges’ with numerous disciples studying and practicing.

ʿAttar lived at a time of considerable upheaval and also transformation. Muhammad died in 632, so by this time the culture had been developing for 5-600 years and it had been a time of almost continual territorial expansion. But at this time it was under attack; in the West, the Christians – the Franks – were invading Spain and Seville, whilst in the central region, this was the height of the Crusades and the great battles of al-dīn and Richard Coeur de Lion. Jerusalem changed hand three times during his life-time. But the most important threat was coming from the East, where the

4 Mongol hoardes were sweeping down upon Islamic lands and creating terror and turmoil. ʿAttar himself is said to have been killed in the massacre when they took Nishapur when he was a very old man – in his 90s. There was widespread fear that the whole culture would be destroyed.

People’s worst fears were realised when in 1258 the Mongols under Genghis Khan reached the very heart of the Empire in Baghdad, the seat of the Caliphate, and destroyed not only the ruling but also the great library there. But they did not succeed in destroyed Islam – quite the opposite; they become assimilated into it, many of them converting and becoming active cultural patrons. The cohesive of the religion and culture held firm, and in the great mixing of people, cultures and knowledge that happened during the population movements of the 12th and 13th centuries, led in places like and Delhi led to a magnificent flowering in the arts and , as well in mysticism and , in the following centuries.

One of the art forms to really flourish in the great empires which succeeded the Mongols – the Timurids, the Ottomans, the Mughals in India – was book illustration and miniature painting. This was brought to the Islamic world by the Mongols, who were of course originally from China, and in the following centuries it flourished right across the Islamic world; , and Bukhara in the Timurid period; under the Ottomans: Delhi and Bijapūr in the Moghul period.

The Manṭiq al-ṭayr became a favourite text for this, as did many of the stories that we find featured in it. So we going to try and give a kind of pictorial commentary alongside our reading by using images from this very rich and beautiful tradition. We be drawing heavily upon the compilation made by Michael Barry in The Canticle of the Birds, in a beautiful edition produced by Diane de Selliers.4

II) The Imaginative World of Islamic Mysticism

The first thing you will notice immediately is that the imaginative world of Islamic mysticism is very densely PEOPLED. In Conference, you might also say that it is BIRDED, but actually, there are far more people than birds, and from the very first

4 Farid-od-Dīn ʿAttar The Canticle of the Birds: Illustrated through Persian and Eastern . Diane de Selliers, (Ed), Paris, 2013.

5 page of the prologue we are plunged into a world of associations and references to figures and events which we are just expected to know. In this, it is a very similar world to Dante’s, where his descent and ascent through the realms of hell, purgatory and paradise is also very full of people and encounters with them.

Unfamiliarity with all these people is probably the greatest stumbling block to understanding the poem, and I hope that this is where I, and the commentators, can give you a lift up. We will also be pointing out some of the metaphysical underpinnings of the work or one might say, rather, the Sufi principles – because there is in fact quite a definite intellectual framework which is invisibly holding up the work.

Six main sources of people

1) Qurʿān. As you probably know – but I mention it because not everyone does – the Quran does not just recognise Muhammad as a prophet, but regards him as the final figure in a chain of prophecy going back to the first human , Adam. This chain includes many of the prophets that also appear in the Hebrew and Christian holy books – Noah, Idris, Moses, Aaron, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, Jonah, Job, Lot, David, Solomon, Loqman, Elijah, Zachariah, John, Jesus – and also some which are not, but are regarded as specifically ‘Arab’ prophets, such Sāliḥ, Hūd and Shuʿayb. Plus and the mysterious figure of al-Khidr are often included in the list. (Q 18 82-98)

The stories that are recounted in the Qurʿān are in some cases very similar to those in the Bible, but in some cases they are very different. Perhaps the most famous example is that whilst Islam recognises Jesus as a healer and giver of life, and the virgin birth is a central topos, it seems to refute the fact of the crucifixion.

The prophets are seen not just as the bringers of a religious law, but as cosmic realities. In contemporary terminology we could say that they are like cosmic archetypes of the human spirituality. Within Sufism, they are seen as embodiments of divine wisdom and exemplars of human spiritual perfectibility. That is, they are understood as aspects of our own realised . Thus in Birds we are confronted immediately in the Prologue with stories of the prophets, and they are introduced as

6 each having a particular relationship with a prophet. This is part of whole typology of spirituality which is found within Sufism, most notably within the work of Ibn ʿArabī but clearly present previously within the tradition, because there is no evidence of Ibn ʿArabī influence upon ʿAttar. That is, that there are spiritual ‘types’ which form a kind of umbrella category. So for example, for Ibn ʿArabī Jesus is seen as an ascetic, so if you have that tendency you would be regarded as being under his prophetic wisdom. Idris is associated with knowledge and studying etc.

Also included as cosmic archetypes are , such as Gabriel and Israfil, and there are villains such as Iblīs – the Satan, who is Islam as in Christianity is a fallen – Pharaoh, who locked swords with Moses, and Nimrod who threw Abraham into the burning furnace.

2) Stories of the Prophets This is an oral tradition embedded eventually in Qisas al-anbiya (Tales of the Prophets). These have a very folksy , which is typical of Sufi narrative in general, ʿAttar in particular

3) Stories from the life of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. The companions were well-known because they were the main transmitters of prophetic traditions and saying, and so appear in the great legal collections. In addition, the first four caliphs – Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthmān and ʿAlī – are regarded as saintly or prophetic figures.

4) Saints and stories of Sufi masters. One of the major ways in which the Sufi tradition was disseminated across these huge geographical areas was through stories, which were always didactic, i.e. designed to get over some point about Sufi practice or understanding. As we shall see, Conference draws heavily upon this tradition, and there are 177 pithy tales woven into the narrative. Some Sufi masters became well-known as ‘heroes’ of these stories; they include figures such as Rabiʿa al-Adawiyya (d. ~801); Abū Yazid al-Bastāmī (d.~874); Junayd (d.909); Mansūr al-Hallāj (d. 922); Abū Saʿīd al-Khayr (d. 1049), and also local figure who were famous in ʿAttar’s particular locality. Some of these latter we have not yet identified, and perhaps never will.

5) Figures from general culture

7 As in other traditions, some rulers became legendary figures, exemplars of good managements and moral virtue. In Birds we will meet people like Mahmud of Ghaznavi and Sultan Sanjaym who were rulers in the Eastern empire, and Khosroe, a legendary Persian king. We will also meet famous lovers from the poetic tradition, such as Layla and Majnūn.

6) Figures from the /philosophy As you might be aware; when the early followers of Islām burst out of the desert in the early to mid 600’s; they were a Bedouin culture with no written culture. They had a very strong oral culture, and a poetic culture, but they had no written language. But within half a century they had conquered huge swathes of territory from the Byzantine Greeks in the East and the Sasanid in the West. So they had to rapidly develop all the political and intellectual tools that they needed. Intellectually, this meant that it absorbed into itself the Greek culture which was the foundation of both the Byzantine and the Persian Empires. The translation movement – 750-1000 in Baghdad – was a huge cultural enterprise, supported by the early Caliphs and involving a highly skilled group of translators who were predominantly Christians. Through it, figures such as , , , , , became well-know within Islamic culture.

So don’t be amazed if you find these figures amongst the people who inhabit ʿAttar’s wonderful poetic world. Sometimes they appear as wise men, and sometimes they appear as people of intellect as opposed to heart, reflecting an ongoing debate within Islam and in Sufism in particular about the relative roles of the intellect and what is called ‘the heart’ – by which is meant or the capacity for direct vision of the divine.

III The Conference of the Birds

Antecedents The symbol of the bird to represent the spirit and spiritual aspiration, and the possibility of flight to the Divine, has a long history in Islamic culture. As with all Islamic poets, ʿAttar did not invent his story from scratch, but took an existing form and adapted it to his own ends. The earliest possible source was a work by the Islamic philosopher, Ibn Sīnā () (d. 1035), called the R. al-Tayr or Treatise of the Bird, which portrays the rational soul as a bird which is caught in the net of this

8 world, and must free itself to fly to the Pure Intellect. This it does by making an epic journey over eight mountain peaks. This work was translated into Persian by Suhrawardī, in which form it may well have been known by ʿAttar.

In addition, there were imitative works by both Muhammad and Ahmad al-Ghazāli; Muhammad al-Ghazālī (d.1111) introduces the idea of a gathering of birds who desire to find a king to rule over them and make a journey to find him. But in this tale, their leader is the phoenix and the eventual meeting does not have the same mystical denouement that ʿAttar introduces.

An immediate source was probably Sanai’s long qasīda Rosary of the Birds which is based upon the Qurʿānic verse 27:16

“And Solomon was David’s heir/ He said: “Oh ye people/ We have been taught the speech of the birds”.

Thus Sanai shows how each bird praises God in its own particular way; the sound made by the dove, for instance, which is “ku ku” means in Persian “where” and so is taken to mean that the seeking of the beloved; where is He? Where is He? The sound made by the stork “lak lak” is interpreted as “al mulk lak, al-amr lak” (Everything belongs to Him, the order belongs to Him). etc. ʿAttar picks up this idea and develops it in a different way, making each bird represent a specific spiritual quality and exploring in what ways these are helpful on the spiritual path, and in what ways they can be hindrances or obstacles. Similarly, he picks up the idea of the journey from Ibn Sīnā, but adapts it in a completely innovative way to expound the Sufi vision – as opposed to the philosophical vision – of the path to perfection and realisation.

Title It is taken from Q 27:16:

“Solomon was David’s heir: he said “Oh mankind; I have been taught the speech of the birds (manṭiq al-tayr) and we have given some of everything. This is a clear preference.”

Manṭiq from the root naṭaqa = to speak, to articulate, to utter, pronounce

9 Ref: the al-nātiqa = the translation of in the philosophical tradition. So the ability to speak seen as indication of intellect and rationality, unique to human and angels – or the movement of the spirit.

Manṭiq = speech, eloquence, manner of speaking, and .

Therefore ‘conference’ is not necessarily the best translation. Avery uses ‘speech’ and Davies also uses ‘canticle’, which is perhaps the best rendering, as it includes the idea of praising God, which is definitely implied by the Quranic quote.

Jane Clark 3/10/2018

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