Attar's Conference of the Birds, Part 1

Leyla: salām, Omid jān. Hello. Welcome.

Omid: salām, Leyla jān. Thank you, merci.

Leyla: Thank you for joining us. I think this is our, is this the third, third story that we're doing together?

Omid: Indeed.

Leyla: Okay, wonderful. So, if you haven't heard before, we've done two other culture series together. One was the Shahnameh Story of the Beginning of the Earth, and the other was another story from Attar’s Conference of the Birds, which we're going to talk about today. But if you haven't heard those, we're going to today talk about a little bit of an overview of who Attar was, what the Conference of the Birds was and what this selection is. So Omid jān, if you can first introduce yourself.

Omid: Sure, sure. I’m Omid Arabian. I’m so happy to be with you once again. I am the founder and director of YOUniversal Center, and we offer courses and workshops on primarily the work of the Iranian mystics like Rumi, Hafez, Attar, Ferdowsi, all of those, as well as other philosophers and like-minded kind of thinkers. And we're just here to basically invite more of our fellow human beings into the wisdom that Iran has gifted to the world, for all of these centuries and millennia. And I've also created several books of Rumi's poetry and translation and also children's books based on Rumi's poetry that I'm very, very proud of and happy to also share with the world.

Leyla: Absolutely. And we've done more introductions on Omid’s work in the other episodes. But what are you and what are you working on right now? Omid has read the entirety of the Shahnameh several times, and he has a group that he's going through the Shahnameh with. Are you doing that currently?

Omid: Yes. We have a class that has been, as you said, working on Shahnameh now for three years, we’re getting into our fourth year and working on Rostam and Sohrab. I also have ongoing classes on Rumi's poetry, on Rumi's Masnavi and also we do workshops, summer workshops on Hafez which we’re in the middle of one right now. And then lastly, I'm working on a book of Hafez translations, and I'm very, very excited about that, hopefully out soon.

Leyla: Yeah. Wonderful. You're in the middle of Rostam and Sohrab. Okay. That's interesting. And I've noticed that the Shahnameh, the bulk of it is the story of Rostam. And so, like a large, large chunk of it covers Rostam, so that’s an interesting.

Omid: Rostam shows up for a good, good, good, large chunk of Shahnameh, as you said. And there's different stories that involve him, sometimes he’s in the foreground, sometimes a little bit in the background. But he does stick around for a big part, and he's really one of the main central characters with a lot of different facets. So hopefully one day we'll do something on Rostam as well together.

Leyla: I would love to do that. I did a, I gave away a copy of Hamid Rahmanian’s Rostam, the Seven Trials of Rostam, Shahnameh. And I asked people, actually, his pop-up of just Rostam. But I asked everyone in my email list to tell me what they know about Rostam, and I have over 400 responses. I think half of them were, I don't know anything about Rostam, so that's definitely something that we need to cover.

Omid: Yeah, but even answers like I don't know is great because it means there's some curiosity. I love that.

Leyla: Oh, there's a lot of curiosity right now. But now let's get to Attar. That's who we're focusing on right now. And I think that, like the Shahnameh, or maybe even more people have heard of Attar’s Conference of the Birds. It has been translated into English and I think it's a pretty popular text. So who is Attar and what is Conference of the Birds?

Omid: Sure, sure. Absolutely. Attar is not in the Iranian kind of circles. And in Iran itself, Attar is not as well regarded, well as well known, let's say, as Hafez and Rumi. He's kind of that third tier, but still, very much loved and respected and highly, highly read. His most famous book is Conference of the Birds. But who he was is not really known to us in a lot of detail. We know that his full name was Abū Ḥamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm. That's not going to be on the test. You don’t have to memorise that. But his pen name is Farīd ud-Dīn Attar. And in short just Attar, and he lived from about 1145 to 1221 on the Christian calendar in Nishapur. Nishapur was a major city, kind of, at the time it was in Khorasan in the northeast of Iran. And he lived during the time where the Seljuk dynasty ruled. And so if we want to kind of locate him in relation to, let's say, Rumi is about 50 years before Rumi and about 170 years before Hafez. And, like I said, there's not a lot of details, about his life. He was apparently not very well known as a poet in his own lifetime. Except in his own hometown of Nishapur. But luckily, his greatness was discovered around the 15th century, and people really started to kind of understand what a treasure he was and what a gift he kind of gave to us in his different works. So, and as I say, right now he is very well read. He's very well known and greatly respected and, like I said, not a lot of details. There's one fun story that I just want to share, which is that, they say that's when Rumi left Iran, because of the Mongols that invaded, his family was traveling to Turkey. Along the way, they stopped in Nishapur to pay their respects to Attar. Apparently, they didn't know of Attar. And so they say that Rumi, as a child, was sat on Attar’s lap and Attar looked at him and he said, this child is going to be a great man one day. So, whether it's true or not, I don't know, but it's a really fun story to think about and imagine. So that's a fun one. Other than that, yeah, other than that, like I say, he's gifted us several amazing works, but his most well known, and, as you said, most translated one is mantegh-ot-teyr. And mantegh-ot-teyr, the title itself comes from Arabic, and it comes from two words, teyr, which means bird or anything that flies and “mantegh” literally means ‘speech,’ from the root, “notgh,” which we have in Persian also ‘to give a speech,’ “notgh.” So and between the two words we have “al” or “ol,” which is ‘of.’ So it's really the speech of the birds is the literal translation. But most of the time in English, it’s translated as Conference of the Birds. And that's not a bad translation, because it does start with a conference, as we'll find out together. And it is an epic poem, roughly 4,500 verses, written in Persian, all of it when Attar was in his early 30s and has a really interesting structure, mantegh-ot-teyr. There's a main thread, which is the story of the birds and their conference and their journey. But in between chapters of that story, there is lots and lots of other stories which we call parables. They're shorter stories that are meant to kind of illustrate the point that Attar arrives at in The Story of the Birds. Whenever he arrives at a point that he wants to kind of explain or open up more, he tells one or more parables. Each of those can be freestanding, but they're also connected to the main kind of thread of the story. So one of those parables was the Parable of the Moths that we shared together a while ago. And it's in the culture sector, as you said, of Chai and Conversation. But in this lesson, what we want to do is we want to focus on that main story of the birds, to kind of see, get an overview of how that whole story starts and plays out. And we've selected several verses out of those 4,500, we're going to do, I think about between 40 and 50 verses or so, just to kind of bring out the main line and thread and arc of the story. But, just to remember, that's just the tip of the iceberg and by no means is the whole of mantegh-ot-teyr, and I always recommend and encourage everybody to go and read the full story on their own.

Leyla: Right. And where was this in relation to the Shahnameh? When was it written?

Omid: So Shahnameh comes way before this. Ferdowsi finished the Shahnameh about year 1000 or so AD. So, and as I said, Attar lived, he was born in 1145. So about 150 years after that, and then he wrote this in his 30s, so about 180 years after the Shahnameh.

Leyla: And we do still read this in the original language. Is that right?

Omid: Absolutely. And what we're going to do today is we're going to read the original verses and then translate as we go and then talk about the meanings, both of the words and the phrases. We're going to focus primarily on the language. But also I think it's good to just talk about the story itself and the symbology, because this is ultimately a symbolic story, as a lot of the mystic poets use symbolism in their poetry to put across their main points, the main philosophical or kind of spiritual points. And so it's nice to kind of try to understand a little bit beyond just the language, what is really Attar trying to say and how he can help us understand ourselves better through the story of these birds. So that’s the plan.

Leyla: And I love these collaborations with Omid because we do focus more on language, you know, words and phrases in Chai and Conversation. But in this lesson, the focus, like you said, is more on the meaning of the poem, which helps to understand some words and phrases because they're not necessarily translatable, but we're not going to go over every single word like we do in our other lessons. What I want people to do as they're listening is to kind of let the words come to you with osmosis. Even if you don't understand every single one, Omid will translate them in general, and then we will have a guide that will have each of those individual words and phrases in there so that you can, if you want, go deep into the language. But even if you don't understand every word, even if you're a complete beginner to the Persian language, it's still very valuable to listen to this and understand. And in your own lessons that you have that we’ll link to, people are not necessarily Persian speakers, right. And that's not their focus.

Omid: Absolutely. We have people from all over and some of them do speak Persian, some of them better, some of them worse, and some people don't speak Persian at all. And what we do is we read, as we’re going to do here, we read the original text just to get a sense of the sound and the music. And if people do know the words, fantastic. And then we kind of translate and then we understand the deeper meaning and kind of the symbology through the translation. Yeah.

Leyla: Wonderful. Okay, well, let's get into it.

Omid: Okay. So we're going to start pretty much at the beginning. There's several kind of verses that come before where we're going to start. It's more of a preface. And Attar kind of sets up the story before he gets to the kind of main plots of the story. That's a good word. But the plot really begins with a verse that describes the birds coming together. So we're going to start there. And as I said, we'll read each verse in Farsi and then a translation and then whatever the first brings up, we'll talk about that as well. So it starts like this, Attar says majma'ee kardand morghāné jahān ānché boodand āshkārā ō nahān He says all the birds of the world gathered together, those who were visible and those who were hidden. So right off the bat, Attar refers to these two concepts “āshkār” and “nahān.” “āshkār” means visible, and “nahān” means something that is hidden, hard to see or invisible in a sense. And so this is a very key point in Iranian mysticism, the idea that “jahān” or ‘the world’ consists of two realms. The “āshkār,” the visible or tangible, and the “nahān,” the hidden, intangible, invisible world. And that world, the nahān world, can only be accessed through kind of an inward perception. Right? So as we go through the story, Attar has already set the stage that perhaps this journey does involve these two realms, right. The realm of the visible and the realm of the hidden, and maybe that the real, the true journey, is going from one to the other, going from the visible world into the hidden world. He may not say this outwardly or directly, right, or explicitly, but I think that is the implied idea from the very first verse, the hidden and the visible. And so all the birds of the world, from both of these realms, they gather together, and they form a “majma'ee.” “majma'ee,” meaning a get together, a coming together, or as it’s usually translated, a conference.

Leyla: Nice.

Omid: Great. And then he says jomlé goftand een zamān dar dowré kār neest khālee heech shahr az shahreeyār Attar says they all said, all the birds said: “In this day and age, there is no city that is without a king. That is devoid of a king. The word “jomlé” in this verse means, we use jomlé in a couple of ways, jomlé means sentence, usually in grammar. But jomlé also means the entirety of something. So he's saying that all the birds have a consensus that they want a ruler, they need a ruler, and they'll explain why in the verses that come. But for the moment, they have this agreement that they need a ruler. And the ruler, the word he uses for that here is “shahreeyār”. And I think it's really nice to think about this word, because when we break it down, it contains these two parts, “shahr” and “yār.” “shahr” meaning a city and “yār” meaning like an ally, a friend, a companion, a supporter. So our word for ruler here already implies that a true ruler is not somebody that kind of enforces themselves upon people. Right? But really, they're a friend and ally, a guardian of the city rather than its master, which is a beautiful concept.

Leyla: That is really nice. Yeah, “yār” is such a beautiful word that shows up in so many different things.

Omid: Exactly. And he'll use the word “shāh,” which is the more common word for king elsewhere in the book. But he starts with this word “shahreeyār,” perhaps to give us the idea that they're not looking for someone to sit there and master them and tell them what to do basically. Yeah. So they continue it. This is now the birds talking. They say chon bovad k'eghleem mā-rā shāh neest? beesh az een bee shāh boodan rāh neest They say how is it that our realm has no king, has no ruler, has no shāh? And they say it's no longer possible for us to live without one. So there's an urgency to this, right? And the word “eghleem” originally, it refers to kind of a climate or a geographical kind of region. But in older classical Persian, it also often is used to mean a realm or a territory. So they're saying in our realm of the birds, how is it possible that we don't have a king yet? We need one urgently. And they explain again why in the next verse. zānké chon keshvar bovad beepādshāh nazm ō tarteebee namānad dar sepāh They say, because when a country or a realm is without a king, without a ruler, there remains no order and no alignment among its populace. So, what they're saying really is that the reason they want this ruler is so that among the birds there can be a sense of order, there can be a sense of alignment. And the words that Attar uses are interesting here as well. “nazm” which is ‘order’ or some sort of an organization something, an organizational system. And “tarteeb,” like an arrangement or an alignment. Together, they strengthen this idea that everything will fall into disorder without this, kind of a ruler that the birds are seeking, right. And, he also uses the word “sepāh.” “sepāh” originally means ‘army.’ We use that very commonly. And he says nazm ō tarteebee namānad dar sepāh. So we could read it as the army won’t have order or alignment. But “sepāh” much more generally, more broadly can also refer to the inhabitants or the general population within a kingdom. So I think that's what he means in this case, that the general population will fall out of order, there will be chaos among them. Yeah. So when we hear this verse, we understand that even though on the surface the birds are seeking a “king,” quote unquote, what Attar is really looking to ask us is a very timeless question, which is, who should rule over us? What should rule over us? Right? Who or what can ultimately give us, as human beings and societies, a sense of order, a sense of direction, and perhaps even a sense of meaning to our lives. And so it's much more than just a bunch of birds looking for someone to rule over them basically. So then they say again, yek degar-rā shāyad ar yāree koneem pādshāhee-rā talab kāree koneem They say it's only right that if we help each other, we should go together and search for a king, right? And the word “shāyad” here that he uses is not ‘maybe’ as we use usually in Persian, but it's a form of “shāyesté.” “shāyesté” meaning something that is proper, something that is fitting. So they say it's only proper for us to help each other and go search.

Leyla: shāyesté, I had taken to mean like, worthy or -

Omid: Worthy can also, yes, yes, that could be also. But we sometimes also use it as, it has the sense of something that is proper or fitting as well. Yeah.

Leyla: And let's just throw back to the word, yāree, that we had, shahreeyār. So we’re seeing this come back again.

Omid: Yeah. Sure. So they also use the word “yāree” here, which we had with “shahreeyār.” So in this sense, “yāree” here means to help or to support each other. So now they're functioning as each other’s support to go find this entity that is going to be their ultimate friend, their ultimate support in that sense. And he also uses the word “talab” in this verse. “talab” here and in mysticism means to seek or to pursue something or to go on a quest. It's a very, very kind of important and crucial word in Iranian mysticism. And it's not about looking for something that you have misplaced or getting money that you're owed, but really it’s like a deep longing, a deep kind of, wanting to go in search of something, to go on a journey of a quest, basically. So the whole phrase “talab kāree koneem” is like, let us go undertake this task of seeking. And it's beautiful that they don't set out individually that this is going to be a collective endeavor, which I think is Attar telling us that also in our seeking, we do have support and we can have companions along the journey of our own quest of our lives. And so once they kind of set their mission, once they identify that this is what they want to do. Now, one of the birds comes forward to speak to them. And that bird is called hodhod. hodhod in English is a Hoopoe, which is a really beautiful bird with like a crest on its head. And, Attar here says, hodhodé āshofté del, porentezār dar meeyāné jam' āmad beegharār. The Hoopoe comes restlessly into the midst of the gathering and the Hoopoe is anxious and her heart is in a frenzy, full of longing. “entezār” here, we use in modern Persian more as expectation, “entezār dāram,” but rather here it has the meaning of longing, a yearning. And so the Hoopoe speaks with the sense of yearning and longing to the other birds. Sort of sets herself apart a little bit already. Maybe she's already been feeling this longing for a long time. And the Hoopoe is an important choice here, because in Islamic tradition, which is where Attar comes from, the Hoopoe is known as a trusted messenger of King Solomon. King Solomon was in love with a queen called the Queen of Sheba. And they exchanged messages that was carried by a bird named hodhod or the Hoopoe. So for that association, Persian literature often portrays the Hoopoe as a bird of spiritual kind of significance and wisdom and insights and one that kind of lead and carry people from one place to another. So, perhaps that's why Attar has also chosen the Hoopoe as the one who now comes and tells the birds that, we'll see what the Hoopoe says, but we'll eventually see the Hoopoe becomes kind of the leader on this journey. So now the Hoopoe speaks and she says goft: ey morghān! man-am bee heech reyb ham bareedé hazrat ō ham peyké gheyb The Hoopoe addresses the birds. She says, “O birds! Without a doubt, I am a messenger of the Divine Presence, and an envoy of the Unseen.” So again, the folklore is very thick about the Hoopoe in Persian culture. Another belief about the Hoopoe is that it can locate hidden underground water. So it makes a bird, it makes the Hoopoe a bird that can perceive what's concealed beneath the surface. It has access to the penhān or nahān. Right. So that makes her another kind of, that's another reason that she would be an ideal guide for the birds, as she eventually becomes, because the journey is towards that unseen world, towards the penhān. And so the Hoopoe kind of works as a bridge between these two realms. And one other word that's really fun to look at in this verse is the word “reyb,” which means without a doubt. So “bee reyb.” “bee reyb” means ‘without a doubt.’ “reyb” itself, is ‘doubt’ or ‘uncertainty.’ “bee reyb” means ‘without a doubt.’ Again, from Arabic. Yeah. Good. So, the Hoopoe continues. sālhā dar bahr ō bar meegashté-am pāy andar rah bé sar meegashté-am She says for years I have circled and traveled over sea and land and I've walked or I traveled headlong along this path. What's fun in this verse to note is that there's a lot of pairs in this verse. And generally, in mantegh-ot-teyr. Attar likes to use pairs of words to kind of either explain contrasting opposites or to emphasize the same idea with two words that are related. In this verse, we have “bahr ō bar.” “bahr” means ‘sea’ and “bar” means ‘dry land.’ So we have “bahr ō bar.” A lot of examples in Persian poetry show up in this way. We have “shab ō rooz,” “kam ō beesh,” “peer ō javān,” “door ō nazdeek.” All of these pairs of words that show up in the language and especially in the poetry. There's another one in this verse which is “sar ō pā,” ‘head and foot.’ Yeah. It's a little harder to catch here because it's separated. It says “pāy andar rah bé sar meegashté-am.” So it's not exactly together, those two words, but they do show up in the same half of the verse. Yeah. And so we see that the Hoopoe’s authority comes from experience. She has walked the path, traveled the path herself. And she's already been searching on this quest, and the birds also want to go on. The next verse, the Hoopoe continues. She says, pādshāhé kheesh-rā dānesté-am This becomes really important. pādshāhé kheesh-rā dānesté-am chon ravam tanhā ké natvānesté-am The Hoopoe says I have recognized who my king is, right? In other words, I know who the king of the birds is. But how could I go to this king alone? I have been unable to do that. So it stresses that the journey again has to be undertaken not alone, but really kind of all together. And that's perhaps why the Hoopoe has not been able to reach the king, because she has been traveling by herself. And then the word dānestan here is very, very, crucial. It's not just to know something, but it's also to recognize or to realize. So she knows. She has recognized, she has realized who the king is. And she explains in the next verse who this king might be, she says, hast mā-rā pādshāhee bee khelāf dar pasé koohee ké hast ān kooh Ghāf She says, without a doubt or without question, we do have a king, and this king is located beyond a mountain called Mount Qaf. And I'll explain in a moment. Mount Qaf is a legendary mountain that in Persian tradition, stands at the edge of the known world. Sometimes we call it Alborz, but it's not literally the same as Alborz, because Alborz mountains are a real mountain range in the northern part of Iran. But Qaf is kind of the more mythological name for this mountain range. And again, the idea that this king lives beyond this mountain range means that we have to go to the edge of the known world and eventually transition to the unknown, to the unseen world, to find this king. But the Hoopoe is very, very sure that this king is there because she uses the word “bee khelāf,” the expression “bee khelāf,” which means without opposition, without doubt, without a question. There can be no questioning of this existence of this king.

Leyla: Wow.

Omid: Isn't it amazing? The setup of the journey, basically.

Leyla: Yes. I think that's a good stopping point for the beginning. We have a cliffhanger right there. Who can this be? And then it goes on. The Hoopoe is still going to be talking when we rejoin this in the next part of the lesson. Exactly. Yeah. Is there anything else that you want the students to be thinking about before we keep listening to the speech of the Hoopoe bird?

Omid: Sure. I think just to again underline the idea that, because this is a book that is ultimately an allegory, to understand that as beautiful as it is to think about the visuals and the birds and all of these lovely characters talking, it's also very, very key to kind of go deeper and understand that this is a journey that Attar is really modeling after our own human journey. Something that he wants us to also understand and hopefully be excited to take on in our own lives.

Leyla: Wonderful, I love it. Thank you so much. So, so yes, we'll have the guide. Omid has put together a very detailed guide that we’ll present on this lesson. And then we'll also have all of these lines, you can listen to them individually in Persian. You can listen to them over and over again. And so take a look at that and then we'll join for part two, where we will continue the Hoopoe speech. Thank you so much, Omid jān. Thank you for joining me.

Omid: Thank you, Leyla jān. My pleasure. Looking forward to the next segment.

Leyla: Alright! And until next time.