33 pages • 1 hour read
Farid ud-Din AttarThe Conference of the Birds
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 76-123Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 76-87 Summary
The birds, elated by the story of Sheikh Sam’an, set out on their journey, but soon stop to elect an official leader. They conduct a lottery and the hoopoe wins. The birds, now numbering 100,000, continue to the Simorgh, but become frightened by the “endless desolation” of the path. The hoopoe tells them the story of Sheikh Bayazi, who, also afraid of the emptiness of his spiritual journey, was consoled by the knowledge that God only shows himself to a few worshippers and so the path must be empty. The birds continue to doubt their ability to take the journey, and ask the hoopoe why he is spiritually successful but they are not. The hoopoe tells the birds how Solomon’s glance gave him enlightenment, but only because he prayed ceaselessly until he received the glance from Solomon. He also tells the story of King Masoud’s visit to a poor boy who fishes every day, in order to feed his family. The day the King appears, the boy catches 100 fish and his fortunes change forever.
Another bird protests that he is too weak and timid to complete the journey and he is certain he will die. The hoopoe admonishes the bird for being afraid, since his time on earth is so short anyway, and perishing in this quest is better than living a life of filth and greed. He then tells the bird that their ability to free themselves from the Self is always hindered by the influence of society, and to be “admitted past the veil” of the Self one must be “dead to all the crowd considers just” (78). The hoopoe tells three stories to prove his point. The first story is about Sheikh Noughani, who endured hunger, poverty, and nakedness until God decided to relieve him. The second story is about Saint Rabe’eh, who is distracted on her path to enlightenment by doubt because society thought of her as “impure.” The third story tells of a “saintly fool” that is distracted by fleas and flies, and likens himself to Nimrod.
Pages 88-110 Summary
Another bird complains to the hoopoe that he has sinned too much to be brought to the Simorgh. The hoopoe answers that it is only his shame that stands in the way of travelling to the Simorgh, not the sins he has committed in the past. He then tells the bird several stories to prove his point. In one story, God sends Gabriel to a man in Rome who has subdued the Self despite being a “idol-worshipper” (89). In another, God admits a sinner into heaven as an act of mercy because a pious man would not pray for him.
Next, a bird worries about his indecisiveness and says he is “imprisoned by conflicting needs and dreams” (92). The hoopoe tells him that everyone deals with indecisiveness, and no person can “boast a spotless mind” (92). One of the many stories the hoopoe tells this bird is an anecdote of two Sufis going to court to lodge a legal claim. The court’s judge chastises the men for coming to court dressed as Sufis, saying that true Sufis would have no need for society’s judicial system and says that the clothes they wear are “dishonest” (94).
The next bird complains he cannot escape the Self. He uses the analogy that the Self was once a dog that followed him, and now is a wolf that stalks him. The hoopoe counters that he must cast off pride, personal history, and knowledge or this “dog” will never leave him alone, and tells several stories where the Self is compared to a dog or fox. (95)
More birds speak to the hoopoe. They ask about pride obstructing their spiritual path, and succumbing to two different types of greed: wealth and comfort. The hoopoe answers all of these concerns with variations on the need to abandon the Self, for all of these obstacles are iterations of self-love.
Pages 111-123 Summary
This section continues the narrative structure of the previous sections, with various birds asking the hoopoe questions about their faults, and the hoopoe providing evidence for his answers with anecdotes and fables. One bird tells the hoopoe he is totally overcome with love and cannot leave his lover. The hoopoe answers that this is superficial rather than divine love and says it is only another type of greed: the greed of the flesh. He tells the bird several stories about superficial love contained in grief, romantic love, and platonic love.
Another bird admits he is terrified of death. The hoopoe answers him with stories of death’s inevitability, ranging from the story of the phoenix, who lives 1,000 years but still eventually must die, to the death of Socrates.
The final bird in this section complains of a lifetime of bad luck, and the sorrow in his heart stops him from undergoing the journey to the Simorgh. The hoopoe calls this bird arrogant for thinking that he is singular in his misery, and since their time on earth is so short, he should not care about his fortune. The hoopoe illustrates this point with various anecdotes about people seeking happiness, concluding that this search is where “the Self rages like an unquenched fire” (123) and whatever joy exists on earth cannot compare to their journey to enlightenment.
Pages 76-123 Analysis
Though the reader is told by the poem’s first line that the hoopoe is the leader of the journey, his leadership is not official until now. The group decides to draw lots to choose a leader, agreeing it is the most just method. Rather than being elected by the other birds, the hoopoe is chosen by lots, in order to underscore his relationship to the divine.
This section continues the narrative structure established in the first section, but the exchanges between the hoopoe and the birds are even more transparently geared towards the human reader. While previously physical descriptions of each bird accompanied their dialogues with the hoopoe, the lack of markers in this section that indicate individual birds shifts the focus of the narrative directly to the reader. The analogy becomes much closer to a beginning pupil on the spiritual path asking his or her sheikh about the trials he or she is likely to encounter.
The hoopoe’s stories are consistently affected by the context in which they appear. The stories of Solomon’s glance and King Masoud and the fisherboy are both situated as answers to the question, why is the hoopoe more spiritually successful than the other birds? The story of Solomon’s glance directly addresses the hoopoe’s experience of obtaining enlightenment once Solomon looks at him, and praying constantly up until that point. It’s followed by the fable of King Masoud, with no clear connection to either the previous story or the bird’s initial question. But there is a hidden parallelism here. In King Masoud’s story, the boy fishes constantly, until King Masoud appears to him to bring a large bounty. In a biblical context, fishing often represents constant prayer. The hoopoe prays unceasingly until Solomon glances at him, just as the boy fishes until the king visits him. Both stories communicate that a combination of individual devoutness and divine grace are necessary for spiritual progress.
Though many of the hoopoe’s fables and anecdotes that accompany the birds’ questions are inaccessible to a contemporary readership without a scholarly background in medieval Islam, Attar intentionally told stories that were irrelevant or obscure even at the time and place of his writing. This forces the reader to look at humanity’s problems in an unfamiliar way. The stories are contemplated and teased into understanding by the reader, rather than presented fully formed by the author.
Some major events or themes of Islam are enfolded in the more obscure anecdotes. In the story about a Sufi who refused to drink sherbet, for example, this couplet occurs: “What is your grief compared with all the pain/God’s martyrs suffered on Kerbelah’s plain?” (121) Husain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was killed at Kerbelah after refusing to swear allegiance to a caliph. Before his death, he and his followers were suffering greatly from thirst. During the mourning month of Moharram, many Shi’a Muslims refused to drink in commemoration of Husain’s thirst. Inserting hints to major religious allusions into obscure stories is one method that Attar uses to defamiliarize religious references and force his audience to approach humanity’s problems in a novel way.
