A review on the three written sources of the Masnavi of Sufism Mantiku'l-Tayr

Abstract

Feriduddin Attar wrote his mystical masnavi called Mantık'ul-Tayr, influenced by the works that used similar allegories with the language of birds before him. The name of the aforementioned work and some concepts in its content are based on the Qur'an. The plot of the stories in the work is similar to the plot of the stories in the Risaletü't-Tayr works of İbn-i Sina and Ahmad Gazzālî. The bird-containing poems of Hakānî-i Shirvānî and Sānaî-i Gaznevî also influenced Attâr in this regard. Attâr reflected the bird parodies in the aforementioned treatises and poems to the fictional texture in Mantıkul Tayr, thus exhibiting an intertextual approach. Among the written sources that influenced Attar is al-Fūsul by Ebu Hanife Abdulvahab b. Muhammad who is a Karramiya scholar; Tafsir by Surabâdi who is one of the commentators close to the Karrāmis and Ebu'r-Reca el-Chachi’s Ravzatū'l Farikeyn, which is considered an Islamic law-mystical works of the first period. Because all three works were written before Mantık'ul-Tayr in the Nishabur region where Attâr was born and raised intellectually, symbolic bird stories and bird parodies are included in all three works. In order to reveal the similar points of these three works with Mantıku'l Tayr, first of all, information about the Mantıku'l Tayr masnavi is given in this article. It has been explained which moral and mystical thought the birds in the work correspond to. After the three written sources, which are thought to be effective in the emergence of the work are introduced in detail, they are examined in the light of the bird stories and narrations they contain.