Mazar-i Sharif in Afghanistan (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
Mystics are not themselves. They do not exist
in selves. They move as they are moved,
talk as words come, see with sight
that enters their eyes…
― Farid al-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds
In my ten year journey to visit as many Sufi shrines and sheikhs as possible from Afghanistan to Mali, one text which keeps coming up along the road is the Sufi masterpiece “Conference of the Birds” by Farid ud-Din Attar (فرید الدین), a 12th century Persian poet from Nishapur. This legendary poetic allegory explains Sufi philosophy through a mystic journey made by a group of birds (led by a hoopoe as their guide) to find the mythical phoenix-like Simorgh–the ideal king.
Exploring valleys in Afghanistan (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
On their spiritual pilgrimage, these birds pass through seven distinct valleys (explained by Imam Jamal Rahman in the video below):
The Valley of Yearning (Talab)
The Valley of Love (Ishq)
The Valley of Knowledge (Marifa)
The Valley of Detachment (Istighna)
The Valley of Unity (Tawhid)
The Valley of Bewilderment (Hayra)
The Valley of Annihilation/Nothinginess (Fana)
This March, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be offering a ticketed talk on “Conference of the Birds” which will focus on a Persian manuscript from Afghanistan on display at the MET. Details for this talk are below.
“The Canticle of the Birds” of the Poet Attar
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Tuesday, March 4th, 11:00 a.m.
Michael Barry, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
This talk illuminates some of the prodigiously rich mystical symbolism of the manuscript’s art—the flight and fusion of all the world’s soul-birds into the radiance of the Divine Sun-Bird—in light of some of the most glorious Islamic paintings from the Persian and Indian regions in the Metropolitan’s collection. Tickets to this event include Museum admission.
In the path of nonbeing, we have fallen in love with being.
— Attar
