Farīd al-Dīn Muḥammad — called ʿAṭṭār, “the perfumer,” because such was his trade — is one of the greatest mystical poets of the Persian language, and probably the greatest spiritual storyteller of Islam. He translated the Sufi doctrine into narratives, allegories, parables, which have circulated for eight centuries throughout Muslim Asia.
The apothecary of Nishapur
He was born in Nishapur, one of the great capitals of Khorasan, around 1145. His life remains largely obscure: it is known that he was an apothecary-perfumer — a trade that consisted in preparing medicines and essences from plants. This trade, in Persian medieval times, put a man in contact with a crowd of patients, whose sorrows he heard. ʿAṭṭār is said to have said: “I have seen all the remedies of the earth pass through my hands, and none heals the soul. So I turned toward the only Remedy.”
He is said to have undergone an abrupt conversion, following the death of a mystic at his door. According to the legend, a wandering dervish approached his shop and, seeing the riches displayed, said: “What ease you will have in dying!” ʿAṭṭār retorted: “And you, how will you die?” The dervish set down his empty bowl, pronounced Allāh, and expired on the spot. ʿAṭṭār closed his shop and entered the way.
A prolific body of work
His work numbers some thirty treatises — most in Persian verse — totalling tens of thousands of couplets. He expressed himself above all through the mathnawī (a long poem in rhyming couplets), a form he carried to its summit and which would be taken up after him by Rūmī.
Manṭiq al-Ṭayr — The Conference of the Birds
The major work. About 4,500 couplets recounting the journey of the birds of the earth in search of their mysterious king, the Sīmurgh. Led by the hoopoe (an allusion to the hoopoe of Solomon in the Quran), they cross seven initiatic valleys — Quest, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Bewilderment, Annihilation-Subsistence. At the end, of thirty survivors (sī murgh in Persian means “thirty birds”), they discover that the Sīmurgh is none other than their own reflection. The journey has constituted them as what they were seeking.
Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ — Memorial of the Saints
A hagiography in prose: a collection of the biographies and sayings of seventy-two Sufi saints, from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq to Al-Ḥallāj. It is through this book that the knowledge of the great ancient masters — notably al-Ḥallāj — would be transmitted to the following generations. A precious source for the whole spiritual history.
Ilāhī Nāmeh · Muṣībat Nāmeh · Ushturnāmeh
Three other great didactic mathnawī: the Divine Book, the Book of Affliction, the Book of the Camel. All weave together narratives, anecdotes and doctrinal meditations.
Wisdom in stories
What makes the originality of ʿAṭṭār is his narrative manner. Where Junayd wrote brief aphorisms and Ibn ʿArabī metaphysical treatises, ʿAṭṭār tells stories. He has a fundamental pedagogical intuition: the Sufi doctrine is not transmitted by concepts alone, it needs the narrative in order to penetrate the deep levels of the soul. A well-told story can make heard what no argument could reach.
The Manṭiq al-Ṭayr is its summit: it is at once a work of art (sublime poetry), a doctrinal manual (the seven valleys correspond to the classical stations of the way), a symbolic initiation (the reader, as he advances, himself makes a little of the journey). The device of the Sīmurgh (a play on words between the mythical bird and the “thirty birds”) says in one image the whole Sufi metaphysics: what you seek is yourself, but made transparent.
The passing of the torch
A founding scene — perhaps historical, perhaps legendary — is reported by the hagiographers. When the family of the young Rūmī, fleeing the Mongols, passed through Nishapur, Rūmī's father, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad, was received by the old ʿAṭṭār. The old man, seeing the child Jalāl al-Dīn walking behind his father, said: “Here is an ocean advancing, followed by an immense sea — and his son will set fire to all the souls in love.” He offered the child his Asrār-nāmeh (“Book of Secrets”).
Whether the scene be historical or not, its spiritual meaning is exact: ʿAṭṭār truly was the invisible master of Rūmī. Without ʿAṭṭār's Mathnawī, Rūmī's Mathnawī is inconceivable. Rūmī himself testified to it:
ʿAṭṭār was the spirit, and Sanāʾī its two eyes;
we come after them, Sanāʾī and ʿAṭṭār have preceded us. Rūmī
Death beneath the Mongol sabres
In 1221, the armies of Genghis Khan swept over Khorasan. Nishapur, one of the greatest cities of the medieval Muslim world, was razed. The population — perhaps several hundred thousand inhabitants — was massacred. ʿAṭṭār was then about seventy-five or eighty years old.
According to one tradition, a Mongol soldier took him prisoner. Someone offered a ransom; ʿAṭṭār advised the soldier not to accept it: he is worth more, he said. Later, another offered for him a sack of straw; ʿAṭṭār said: “Take it, that is all I am worth.” The soldier, furious at having been duped, killed him. A story perhaps invented, but one that says what ʿAṭṭār taught: the true saint knows his own true worth — which is absolute humility before God.
The universal apothecary
ʿAṭṭār thus died in the sack of Nishapur. But his work survived, copied by hand, recopied, translated into Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, French (by Garcin de Tassy and Henri Massé), English (by Edward FitzGerald). The Conference of the Birds has become, with Rūmī's Mathnawī, the summit of the Persian mystical mathnawī — and one of the absolute masterpieces of universal spirituality.
The apothecary who could heal only bodies finally composed, in words and narratives, the most complete pharmacopoeia of the sicknesses of the soul.
When you look well, you will see that the sea that contains you is within you. ʿAṭṭār, Manṭiq al-Ṭayr