The conference of the birds

The "Conference of the Birds" is a 12th-century Sufi allegory that has beenescribed as the Islamic "Canterbury Tales". Written by an Iranian Sufi,arid ud-Din Attar, who was a major influence on the work of Rumi, it is thetory of the birds' quest for an ideal king, and an allegory for the Sufi (orystical Islamic) path to enlightenment. Though hugely popular andnfluential in the Islamic world, it is still relatively unfamiliar in theest. In this edition, the poet Raficq Abdulla has reinterpreted key extractso make the insight of Sufism accessible to a contemporary reader. Each pages decorated with illustrations taken from Persian manuscripts in theriental collection at the British Library.;The poem uses the birds' journeyo describe the stages of Sufi enlightenment, and each bird represents auman archetype. At the end of the tale, the birds discover tht what they areeeking is none other than themselves: in Sufism, enlightenment is unity withhe Divine, and the way to God is inward, through one's own soul.