A seminar on Attar will be held tomorrow in Neyshabur and 25 countries across the globe simultaneously, which will be opened with the speech of Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ahmad Masjed Jamei, the secretary of the seminar said on Wednesday.
Mojtaba Moravejol-Sharieh added that the speech of the chairman of the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization, Hojjatoleslam Mahmud Mohammadi Araqi, will also be read at the seminar.
Several scholars and literary figures such as Jalaleddin Kazzazi, Mohammad-Jafar Yahaqi, Reza Ashrafzadeh, and Behruz Servatian have been invited to the seminar, he said, adding that the tomb of Attar in Neyshabur will also be covered with flowers.
A night poetry session and exhibitions of photography, calligraphy, and handicrafts are some of the sidelines section programs.
Farid al-Din Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Attar, (1145?-1221?) was a strong believer in the principles of Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism. Attar was born in Neyshabur, Khorasan Province. He traveled widely throughout Egypt, Turkistan, and India during his youth, eventually returning to live in Neyshabur. Little is known of his life, although it is thought that he may have been a pharmacist.
Attar's most celebrated work is Mantiq al-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds), a poem consisting of 4600 couplets. The work describes the journey of a flock of birds to the home of their leader, whom they have never met. When they arrive after an arduous voyage, the surviving birds discover that their leader is in fact not another individual, but themselves, as a cohesive group.
The poem thus uses allegory to illustrate the Sufi doctrine of union between the human and the divine. Attar was an extremely prolific writer. His other important writings include his Divan (collected poems) and Tadhkirat al-Awliya (Biographies of the Saints), a prose work about the early Sufis.
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MNA