The Origin of Soul and Its relationship with God in Attar's Manteq Al-tayr, with a Review on Bird Treatises of Ibn Sina and Al-Suhrawardi

What can be seen in the mystical and allegorical stories of the philosophers and mystics, especially in their Bird Treatises, is the flight of the human soul, which is imprisoned in the exile of body, toward his own origin and truth. In these stories, the soul of the traveler or travelers is represented, symbolically, in the form of a bird or birds. Reaching the soul to its origin and at the same time arriving at a subjective relationship with a Sacred Truth is one of the central ideas in these travelogues. By using some philosophical-theological ideas, and by reviewing Bird Treatises of Ibn Sina and Al-Suhrawardi, we try to analyze and explain Attar's theological system in Manteq al-tayr about the origin of the soul and its relationship with God. Unlike Ibn Sina and Suhrawardi, who equate reaching the soul to its origin with arriving at personal and subjective relationship with the active intellect, Attar speaks of a communal subjective relationship of soul with God at the end of the journey. Attar has also discussed some important ideas which, have been neglected or disregarded in the treatises of the two other philosophers. The negation of the subjective/objective distinction concerning the relationship between man and God, taking a negative stance toward the essence and attributes of God along with a positive approach to God's actions and names, believing in the divine identity of the soul, believing in the existence of a single communal soul for multiple religious human beings, and a theory about the first manifestation of God in a personal human being, are among these ideas.