Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Bird Parliament

by

Farid ud-Din Attar

Translated by Edward FitzGerald

first published in

Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald

(William Aldis Wright, ed.)

London and New York: Macmillan and Co.

[1889]

Table of Contents

Introduction. 3

Bird Parliament 4

Introduction

Scanned at sacred-texts.com, April 2007. Proofed and formatted by John Bruno Hare. This text is in the public domain in the United States because it was first published prior to January 1st, 1923. These files may be used for any non-comercial use provided this notice of attribution is left intact in all copies.

This celebrated Sufi poem, also known as Conference of the Birds , by the 12th century Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar, is a tale of a journey of a group of thirty birds to the summit of the world mountain, Qaf. An allegory of the Sufi journey to realization of the nature of God, each bird has a particular signficance, a special fault, and a tale to tell.

In spite of its significance for world literature and the study of religion, Attar's poem was not translated in its entirety until the mid-twentieth century, and the standard English translations are hence not in the public domain. However Edward FitzGerald, best known as the translatorof The Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam worked on this abridged translation of the Bird Parliament through 1857. It is little known today, primarily because it was only published posthumously (FitzGerald died in 1883), in Letters and Literary Remains , edited by William Aldis Wright, in 1889. This is the first time an etext of FitzGerald's translation of this work has been posted on the Internet.

John B. Hare, April 12, 2007