Translated by the Uzbek poet Jamal Kamal, the book was published by the Iranian cultural attaché in collaboration with the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences.
The 400-page version has a print run of 1,000 copies.
“Mantiq al-Tayr” 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 (collection of poems) and Tadhkirat al-Awliya (Biographies of the Saints), a prose work about the early Sufis.
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