Farid al-Din Attar - The Conference of the Birds

INTRODUCTION

Attar wrote that he composed his poems in his daru-khan, a word which in modern Persian means a chemists shop or drug-store, but which has suggestions of a dispensary or even a doctors surgery; and it is probable that he combined the selling of drugs and perfumes with the practice of medicine. His date of birth is given by different authorities at various times between 1120 and 1157; modern writers have inclined towards the earlier date. Two manuscript copies of The Conference of the Birds give the date of its completion as 1177, and on internal evidence one would judge it to be the work of a writer well past his youth; this also suggests that a birth-date closer to 1120 than 1157 is likely. He is said to have spent much of his childhood being educated at the theological school attached to the shrine of Imam Reza at Mashhad (the largest town in northeastern Iran and a major centre of pilgrimage), and later to have travelled to Key (the ancient Raghes, near modern Tehran), Egypt, Damascus, Mecca, Turkestan (southern Russia) and India. Such itineraries are common in the lives of Persian poets of this period, and it was clearly usual for them, like their counterparts in medieval Europe, the troubadours and wandering scholars, to travel from place to place in search of knowledge or patronage or both. Attars travels seem to have been undertaken more in the pursuit of knowledge than patronage; he boasted that he had never sought a kings favour or stooped to writing a panegyric (this alone would make him worthy of note among Persian poets).

Though The Conference of the Birds is about the search for an ideal, spiritual king, Attar obviously had a low opinion of most earthly rulers; he usually presents their behaviour as capricious and cruel, and at one point in the poem he specifically says it is best to have nothing to do with them. The knowledge he particularly sought was concerned with the biographies and sayings of Islamic saints; these he collected together in his prose work Tadhkirat al-Auliya (Memorials of the Saints), which became an important source book for later hagiographers. After his wanderings he settled again in his home town, where he presumably kept his daru-khan. There is some evidence that late in his life he was tried for heresy reading The Conference of the Birds it is not difficult to see why, though the accusation was made against a different poem. The charge was upheld, Attar was banished and his property was looted. Edward G. The Conference of the Birds contains many anecdotes about sufis who suffered for their beliefs; and if Attar was attacked for his writings, the experience cannot have been a surprise to him. The Conference of the Birds contains many anecdotes about sufis who suffered for their beliefs; and if Attar was attacked for his writings, the experience cannot have been a surprise to him.

However, he was back in Neishapour at the time of his death, which is variously given as having occurred between 1193 and 1235. One of the dates most favoured among early writers is 1229, the year of the Mongols sack of Neishapour during their devastating sweep westwards, which took them to Baghdad and beyond. If Attar was born around 1120 he would have been well over a hundred years old at this time, and it seems more likely that his biographers have been seduced by the pathetic picture of the saintly old poet butchered by the barbarian hordes than that he actually did live so long. A date shortly before 1220 is more probable, though even this would mean that he was in his nineties when he died. A memorial stone was erected over Attars tomb in the late fifteenth century, and the site is still maintained as a minor shrine.