Islamic Faith and Practice: Farid ud-Din ‘Attar (12th century) composed The Conference of the Birds as an allegorical story about human characteristics and failings. It is a philosophical tale about the purpose of human life. ‘Attar proposes a journey, a spiritual path for attainment of unity which is the goal of the Sufis. The mythical bird Simurgh symbolically represents the Divine. ‘Attar’s stories depict a group of birds crossing 7 valleys of:
Quest
Love
Understanding
Detachment
Unity
Astonishment
Poverty and nothingness
Prompt:
Write a three-page paper on the allegorical stories of The Conference of the Birds:
1. Select two of the valleys.
2. Explain what the valley/challenge mean by giving reference to a few (4 or 5) of the stories that explain the related challenge of the particular valley/s.
3. Relate those stories to your own challenge/s. How do you understand those challenge/s? How do you understand unity?
4. And finally end with your own allegorical story that reflects your understanding of that theme/valley.
Please keep with the following in mind:
-The paper is to be double-spaced, use standard margins, standard font, no footnotes, reference/s if necessary MUST be given in the text, e.g. (Rumi, 137 or ‘Attar, 76)
-Your main RESOURCE for this paper is the BOOK itself. You are encouraged to read Rumi’s stories available on e-res as it may help you in understanding sufi literature/poetry/themes and those of ‘Attar. Rumi was after all influenced by ‘Attar.
-DO NOT retell the entire 4-5 stories you are using in your analysis (you only have a limited 3 page space), but simply give reference to them in a way that it becomes accessible to the reader (giving page number reference in parenthesis.)
– The goal of writing this paper is to show that you have understood the valley/spiritual challenge that you have selected in ‘Attar’s work and that you can analyze how overcoming that valley/challenge will lead the birds to Simurgh.
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