The Conference of the Birds

A Persian narrative poem in which the birds of the world gather and resolve to seek a king. The hoopoe, who served Solomon, tells them their king is the Simorgh, who lives beyond the mountain of Qāf. One by one the birds make excuses, the nightingale is too attached to the rose, the duck to water, the hawk to its royal master, and the hoopoe answers each with stories. Dozens of short tales are framed within the journey, including the famous one of Shaykh Ṣanʿān, who abandons everything for love of a Christian girl. The way leads through seven valleys: the quest, love, understanding, detachment, unity, bewilderment, and poverty and annihilation. Of the multitude who set out, only thirty birds arrive, and in the presence of the Simorgh they find themselves, for in Persian sī murgh means 'thirty birds'.

It turns the Sufi path into one of the great stories of world literature, and its ending is a philosophical riddle about the self and the divine that readers still argue over.