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What Is The Theme In The Conference Of The Birds

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Introduction
This essay will attempt to delve into the meaning and thus, deliver a commentary on one of the greatest Sufi poems of all times, “The Conference of the Birds (Manteq at-Tair) written by the “great Persian Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, who was born during the twelfth century in Neishapour in north-west Iran and spent his childhood being educated at the theological school attached to the shrine of Imam Reza at Mashhad.” (Darbandi & Davis 1). The poem written by Attar can be seen as an “allegory of a spiritual pilgrimage, like that of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.” (Davis et al. 401).
However, before moving forward, it is imperative to clarify that since the poem is composed of 4500 lines, only a stanza has …show more content…

“The Conference of the Birds is a poem about Sufism – its principles and doctrines, as it focuses on the spiritual pilgrimage or journey that an individual has to undertake in order to achieve unity with the God.” (Darbandi & Davis 2). Thus, this poem marks the long and arduous journey that an individual – who is none other than a disciple of a Sufi Saint – has to undertake so as to purge himself of the worldly desires and temptations and only in doing so annihilate himself in God (fana). Hence, The Conference of the Birds revolves around this idea of spiritual pilgrimage by making use of hoopoe a wise bird – allegory for the Sufi Saint, who calls all the other birds together in order to search for the Simourg – the True King , who lives in the Kaf mountain peak. Each bird though agreeing to partake in the long and taxing journey eventually backs out at the onset due to the worldly temptations and desires and is therefore, admonished by the hoopoe for being worried about such trivial and ephemeral things. And the hoopoe then attempts to scold and provide a counter argument to that of these birds’ arguments by reiterating historical and religious stories, such as the story of the Alexander the Great, King Solomon, Adam, Ayaz and so on, so as to make his point clear about the ephemeral nature of this world and the importance of …show more content…

The Conference of the Birds is an epic Sufi poem, owing to it long length and the narrative that it attempts to knit together. One of the rhetorical devices used frequently by the poet Attar in his works is that of “anaphora, which is the repetition of a certain word or phrase over and over again within an extended paragraph or few lines.” (Darbandi & Davis 9). Moreover, “Attar also uses the common masnavi metre of Persian narrative poetry; where the rhymes occur within the line and each line has a different rhyme thereby, rendering it almost identical to the English heroic couplet.” (Darbandi & Davis 9). Not only that, “he also makes use of Persian metaphors in his work which are quite different from that of the metaphors found in the English poetry, as the former juxtapose words in such a way so as to deepen the meanings implied by the passage.” (Darbandi & Davis

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