33 pages 1 hour read

Farid ud-Din Attar

The Conference of the Birds

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult

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Symbols & Motifs

The Seven Valleys

The Seven Valleys can be viewed as the physical manifestation of the stages encountered by the Sufi’s Way. The Sufi’s Way is a carefully prescribed method of obtaining enlightenment that occurs in a particular order.

Fire/Burning

A version of the metaphor “the birds were on fire” appears throughout the poem, which is used to indicate religious elevation or intensity. Though the poet repeats many metaphors to create a narrative cohesiveness to disjointed stories, Attar’s decision to use fire as a metaphor for religious fervor is especially noteworthy for its subversiveness. The Zoroastrians, a religious group that occupied Iran prior to Islam, worshipped fire. This would have been considered idol worship, which is not allowed in Islam. Attar’s constant reference to fire as a symbol of religious fervor would have been scandalous to Islamic orthodoxy, and underscores Sufism as a religious sect in conflict with this orthodoxy.

Wine/Drunkenness

In Islam, it is forbidden to drink alcohol, but figurative language containing wine or stories about drunkenness appear often throughout the poem. Attar usually portrays these things positively as a method to question the validity of common religious and social conventions. They are also used, in terms of the religious persecution of Sufis, as a