The Art of Spiritual Flight
Attar and The Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight
Publication and book launch – Introduction
16 January 2007, 8pm
Ismaili Centre, Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London SW7
A beautifully-illustrated companion to the love poetry of one of the greatest of all Sufi writers
Editors
Leonard Lewisohn & Christopher Shackle
Publisher
I.B.Tauris Publishers in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies
Publication date
December 2006
Introduction
Farid al-Din ‘Attar (d. 1221) was the principal Muslim religious poet of the second half of the twelfth century. Best known for his masterpiece Mantiq al-tayr, or The Conference of Birds, his verse is still considered to be the finest example of Sufi love poetry in the Persian language after that of Rumi. Distinguished by their provocative and radical theology of love, many lines of ‘Attar’s epics and lyrics are cited independently of their poems as maxims in their own right. These pithy, paradoxical statements are still known by heart and sung by minstrels throughout Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and wherever Persian is spoken or understood, such as in the lands of the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent. Designed to complement The Ocean of the Soul, the classic study of ‘Attar by Hellmut Ritter, this volume offers the most comprehensive survey of ‘Attar’s literary works to date, and situates his poetry and prose within the wider context of the Persian Sufi tradition. The essays in the volume are grouped in three sections, and feature contributions by fifteen scholars from North America, Europe and Iran, which illustrate, from a variety of perspectives, the full range of ‘Attar’s monumental achievement. They show how and why ‘Attar’s poetical works, as well as his mystical doctrines, came to wield such tremendous and formative influence over the whole of the Persian Sufi Tradition.
‘Attar is not only indisputably one of the greatest of Persian medieval writers, the clarity, warmth and charm of his narrative genius have also meant that his works can have a strong and immediate appeal for Western readers. Nevertheless very little scholarship on him has been published in English hitherto. This superlative collection of essays on a wide variety of Attarian topics is therefore extremely welcome: it is one of the most consistently informative and exciting collections of essays on a single Persian author that I have read. – Dick Davis, Professor of Persian, Ohio State University, translator (with Afkham Darbandi) of ‘Attar’s The Conference of the Birds.
Leonard Lewisohn is currently Lecturer in Persian, Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Classical Persian and Sufi Literature at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, England. Formerly he was a Research Associate at The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. He is the author of Beyond Faith and Infidelity. Christopher Shackle is Professor of the Modern Languages of South Asia at SOAS in the University of London. Among his recent books are Ismaili Hymns from South Asia and A Treasury of Indian Love Poems and Proverbs (1999).
Retail price
35 GBP Hardcover, plus 2.95 GBP postage and packing.
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