This is a marvelous allegorical rendering of sufism - the secretive and paradoxical form of Islamic mysticism. Like The Canterbury Tales, The Conference of the Birds consists of a group of stories bound together by a pilgrimage. The Way of the sufi is expounded here in tales that are often riddling and sometimes obscure, but full of incident and suspense, laced with quick character sketches and witty vignettes of everyday life in twelfth-century Persia. Above all, though, the poem puts into words themes of love and the search for divine unity; in converying these Attar 'has transformed belief into poetry, much in the same way that Milton or Dante did.'
