The Congregation of the Birds -- 11th century Persian poem

[KyriakosCH]

This is about a very interesting 4000 verse poem, by a persian of the 11th century, which i came to hear of through Borges and his story on Al-Motashim, and lately came to see it used in a very different setting (the point n click indie horror adventure game 'The Last Door')

The poem is about the birds deciding to meet so as to find a king, because they were a species without one and this had to be changed in their view. So they undertake a dangerous journey, lasting years, to reach a high mountain top where supposedly the mythical bird Simorgh lives. Simorgh is a persian mythological being, used also in islamic art there, and still a symbol of Persia. It seems to be similar to the greek Phoenix bird in some ways.

The birds reach the mountain, although almost all of them die in the process; only 30 survive. In the mountain they find a lake, and the only thing they can see there is their own reflection. But "30" is "si" in persian, and "morgh" means "bird", so in the end what they were looking for was what survived the journey to find it: their own selves.

There is a translation to english by Fitzgerald, which i was reading these days. Sad that islamic art and culture subsided in the same century, and finally died with works of polemic against greek philosophy and even math. Prior to that they had a golden age of almost half a millenium, with many important astronomers, philosophers and mathematicians.

-Have you read this work?