Literary Analysis Essay on The Conference of Birds

Introduction

The Conference of the Birds is an epic poem composed by a Persian poet called Farid ud-Din Attar. It is made up of over 45000 lines and is widely considered a Persian literature masterpiece. Initially published in 1077 CE, it narrates the story of a group of birds that embark on a journey to find a mythical bird called the Great Simorgh, which they look up to as their ideal sovereign. The main theme in the poem is a mystical Islamic doctrine called Sufism. Muslims who practice this doctrine seek answers about divine knowledge and love by having a direct personal experience with Allah (Fathi 19). This essay identifies the allegorical players in one of the parables narrated in the poem, titled The Story of Sheikh San'an. It will also explain what each of the significant characters in the parable represents.

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Summary of the Poem

The poem begins with all the birds in the world coming together at a summit with the aim of appointing a king. They turn to the Hoopoe, considered to be the most enlightened and wisest bird, for guidance. The hoopoe informs them that they should find the Great Simorgh and acknowledge him as their king. However, they have to make a long and perilous journey to his court whereby they are likely to encounter various tests and trials. While the birds are initially enthusiastic about the journey, they begin chickening out when they realize its difficulty. The hoopoe addresses each of their fears with parables that counter the various individual concerns. The Story of Sheikh San'an is one of these parables. The birds unanimously appoint the hoopoe as their leader, who then describes seven valleys they are supposed to cross in order to make their way to the Great Simorgh's court. These are the valleys of the Quest, Love, Insight into Mystery, Detachment, Unity, Bewilderment, as well as Poverty and Nothingness. While the birds are full of apprehensions, they decide to go ahead with the journey.

Interpretation of the Poem

Many birds die in the course of the journey, and only thirty of them make it to the end. The hoopoe takes them to a lake, where each bird sees the Simorgh in its own reflection on the water. It is revealed that the Great Simorgh together with the divine leadership they were looking for has been within them all along. This is attested by the fact that the term Simorgh when translated to English means thirty birds. The relationship between the thirty birds and the hoopoe is an allegory of how Sufi Sheikh guides his religious students towards the path of enlightenment. Also, the obstacles that the birds encounter during the journey across the seven valleys is an allegorical reference to the stages encountered by the students on the way to enlightenment. While the birds eventually get to the Great Simorgh's court and attain enlightenment, they realize the Simorgh is not the so-called mythical bird as per their initial expectations (Fathi 21).

The Story of Sheikh San'an

The Story of Sheikh San'an is about a celebrated Muslim priest called San'an. He travels from the holy city of Mecca to Greece where he falls in love with a young and attractive Christian woman. The woman convinces him to abandon Islam and join Christianity. She even goes to the extent of getting him to look after pigs, which are considered by the Islam religion as unclean. When San'an's disciples hear of this, they go to Greece and pray to Allah that he returns to the right path. Thanks to the prayers, Sa'nan reverts back to his Muslim faith and decides to go back to his home in the Hijaz. The Christian woman repents her sins, decides to follow Sa'nan, and converts to Islam. It is revealed that Sa'na had sensed the woman had the potential to embrace true Islamic faith. This made him and his disciples to turn back and try to convert her. She fainted upon seeing Sa'nan, something that made him very sad. When the Christian woman recovers consciousness, she begs him for forgiveness and falls dead (Yaghoobi 8).

In The Conference of the Birds, the hoopoe narrates Sa'nan's story at a crucial moment when the birds are facing uncertainties about the right course of the journey to the Simurgh's court. The hoopoe uses the parable to encourage the birds and teach them about spirituality. By the end of the parable, Sa'nan and the young Christian woman have undergone both an inwards and outward transformation. At the beginning, the girl is depicted as an earthly love object whose only aim is to satisfy her own worldly desires. In the end, she is converted into a symbol of heavenly love and goes on to assist Sa'nan purify his soul from earthly desires. This is a good example of a well-known symbol in Sufi dialogue whereby earthly love function as a bridge that the lover has to cross on order to reach divine love. The Christian woman becomes a 'shahid,' which is a worldly manifestation of divine beauty in the form of a human being. It is this manifestation that leads the austere Sa'nan towards the pure love displayed by the divine(Telli, Parvin, and Mahdiar 59).

The Story of Sheikh San'an highlights what medieval Muslim societies understood about the power of love and religious transgressions. Sana'n falls in love with someone from another religion, something that goes against Islamic laws. The subsequent mystical relationship triggers suspicion of conversion. With this in mind, it is worth paying attention to the elements of allegiance, seeking, psychology, and self-transformation. By crossing the religious barriers, Sa'nan gets a chance to experience alternative identity and spirituality. Violating Islamic laws creates a possibility of him accepting someone from another religion and reconstructing his own subjectivity. By falling in love with a Christian woman, San'an is being somewhat demolished and then rebuilt. In other words, his subjectivity undergoes deconstruction and reshaping, with a mutual transformation occurring in the process (Khorashad 2204).

Muslims and Christians have historically coexisted since the Arab conquests began in the sixth century. However, neither religion has been tolerant of members who abandon their faith and join other religions. The Conference of the Bird was composed at a time when Muslims were reaching out to members of other religions, highlighting the shortcomings of other faiths, and generally spreading Islam. Sa'nan may be a fictional character who appeared in a piece of literature set during that particular period. All in all, the mere fact that this literature features a muslim character who falls in love with a Christian woman and converts to Christianity shows that such relationships actually existed in real life at the time.

'Tarsa-bachcha,' which means a Christian child, is one of the most crucial symbols in Sufi literature and poetry. It is an earthly manifestation of divine love that takes the form of a human being, and which depicts love as the first step in the path to divine enlightenment. The Story of Sheikh San'an borrows a leaf from this symbol whereby a Christian woman makes Sa'nan stray from his simplicity and mesmerizes him with her dazzling beauty. She then introduces him to a seemingly higher religion of love. Attar uses the Christian woman to illustrate how the worldly manifestation of divine beauty seduces Sa'nan. It then converts him into an exceptional Sufi master who mulls over divine beauty through a female human's form. Prior to meeting the Christian woman, Sa'nan is just a pious ascetic. However, following the encounter, he turns into a true fanatic of the religion of love (Khorashad 2208).

Conclusion

The Story of Sheikh San'an depicts love as powerful force that a mortar human being cannot resist. Love is capable of scandalizing anyone and any religion at any given time. It can also diminish boundaries and subvert laws. Love happens to be the only sublimated factor in this parable as it allows the main protagonists to do what would not be expected of them under normal circumstances. What Sa'nan and the Christian woman go through implies that mystical experiences are linked to intersubjectivity. Such experiences can reconcile individuals from different religions, as seen in the way a Muslim sheikh and a Christian woman fall in love.

Works Cited

Fathi, Hamed. "The Gender Descriptive Attitude toward Power Translation: A Case Study of the Conference of the Birds (Manteq at-Tair) in Attar Neishapouri's Work (Any theories movement the line of a new intellectual jump): International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Scientific Research (IJAMSR) ISSN: 2581-4281, 2 (4), April, 2019,# Art. 1412, pp 16-35." International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Scientific Research (IJAMSR) ISSN 2581.4281 (2019): 2.

Khorashad, S. Khosravi, et al. "Psychological Analysis of Sheikh San'aan by Using TAT." Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 5 (2010): 2201-2207.

Telli, Parvin, and Meisam Mahdiar. "Barthesian Narrative Codes as a Technique for the Analysis of Attar's 'Sheikh San'an'." Persian Literary Studies Journal 3.4 (2015): 57-71.

Yaghoobi, Claudia. "Subjectivity in'Attar's Shaykh of San'an Story in The Conference of the Birds." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 16.1 (2014): 8.