Record #126
Simurgh
An immortal bird of wisdom associated with spiritual unity and divine knowledge.
Original Text
The Simurghis an immortal bird that nests in the branches of the Tree of Knowledge; Burton compares it with the eagle which, according to the Younger Edda, has knowledge of many things and makes its nest in the branches of the World Tree, Yggdrasil.
Both Southey’s Thalaba (I8OI) and Flaubert’s Temptation ofSaintAnthony (I874) speak of the Simorg Anka; Flaubert reduces the bird’s status to that of an attendant to the Queen of Sheba, and describes it as having orange-coloured feathers like metallic scales, a small silver-coloured head with a human face, four wings, a vulture’s talons, and a long, long peacock’s tail. In the original sources the Simurgh is a far more important being. Firdausi in the Book ofKings, which compiles and sets to verse ancient Iranian legends, makes the bird the foster father of Zal, father of the poem’s hero; Farid al-Din Attar, in the twelfth century, makes it a symbol of the godhead. This takes place in the Mantiq al-Tayr (Parliament of Birds). The plot of this allegory, made up of some 4,;oo couplets, is striking. The distant king of birds, the Simurgh, drops one of his splendid feathers somewhere in the middle of China; on learning of this, the other birds, tired of their present anarchy, decide to seek him. They know that the king’s name means ‘thirty birds’; they know that his castle lies in the Kaf, the mountain or range of mountains that ring the earth. At the outset, some of the birds lose heart: the nightingale pleads his love for the rose; the parrot pleads his beauty, for which he lives caged; the partridge cannot do without his home in the hills, nor the heron without his marsh, nor the owl without his ruins. But finally, certain of them set out on the perilous venture; they cross seven valleys or seas, the next to last bearing the name Bewilderment, the last the name Annihilation. Many of the pilgrims desert; the journey takes its toll among the rest. Thirty, made pure by their sufferings, reach the great peak of the Simurgh. At last they behold him; they realize that they are the Simurgh, and that the Simurghis each of them and all of them.
Edward FitzGerald translated portions of the poem under the playful title The Bird-parliament; A bird’s-eye viewof Faríd-UddínAttar’s Bird-parliament.
The cosmographer al-Qaswini, in his Wonders of Creation, states that the Simorg Anka lives for seventeen hundred years and that, upon the coming of age of its son, the father burns himself on a funeral pyre. ‘This,’ observes Lane, ‘reminds us of the phoenix.’
Both Southey’s Thalaba (I8OI) and Flaubert’s Temptation ofSaintAnthony (I874) speak of the Simorg Anka; Flaubert reduces the bird’s status to that of an attendant to the Queen of Sheba, and describes it as having orange-coloured feathers like metallic scales, a small silver-coloured head with a human face, four wings, a vulture’s talons, and a long, long peacock’s tail. In the original sources the Simurgh is a far more important being. Firdausi in the Book ofKings, which compiles and sets to verse ancient Iranian legends, makes the bird the foster father of Zal, father of the poem’s hero; Farid al-Din Attar, in the twelfth century, makes it a symbol of the godhead. This takes place in the Mantiq al-Tayr (Parliament of Birds). The plot of this allegory, made up of some 4,;oo couplets, is striking. The distant king of birds, the Simurgh, drops one of his splendid feathers somewhere in the middle of China; on learning of this, the other birds, tired of their present anarchy, decide to seek him. They know that the king’s name means ‘thirty birds’; they know that his castle lies in the Kaf, the mountain or range of mountains that ring the earth. At the outset, some of the birds lose heart: the nightingale pleads his love for the rose; the parrot pleads his beauty, for which he lives caged; the partridge cannot do without his home in the hills, nor the heron without his marsh, nor the owl without his ruins. But finally, certain of them set out on the perilous venture; they cross seven valleys or seas, the next to last bearing the name Bewilderment, the last the name Annihilation. Many of the pilgrims desert; the journey takes its toll among the rest. Thirty, made pure by their sufferings, reach the great peak of the Simurgh. At last they behold him; they realize that they are the Simurgh, and that the Simurghis each of them and all of them.
Edward FitzGerald translated portions of the poem under the playful title The Bird-parliament; A bird’s-eye viewof Faríd-UddínAttar’s Bird-parliament.
The cosmographer al-Qaswini, in his Wonders of Creation, states that the Simorg Anka lives for seventeen hundred years and that, upon the coming of age of its son, the father burns himself on a funeral pyre. ‘This,’ observes Lane, ‘reminds us of the phoenix.’