Muṣībat-Nāme by Attar Neyshaburi; A Mixture of Practical Ethics and Mysticism (Concentrating on Fable)

Attar Neyshabouri's moral views and words in Persian poetry and prose are valuable and worthy for further reflection and more research. Though the mythical and linguistics characteristics of Attar's works have been mainly focused on, the moral and and didactic issues of his works, especially in his Muṣībat-Nāme, have been less researched on. This article is going to perform a content and statistical analysis of Muṣībat-Nāme. The research seeks to answer the following questions: which themes, moral contents, and advice are more outstanding in Attar's mystical view in Muṣībat-Nāme? and is Attar's mysticism close to practical wisdom? Attar's concern was to elaborate virtues and warning and forbidding vices. Ethical and humanizing issues in educational and mystical literature are frequently recounted in the journey of the main character, i.e. Fekrat as a seeker. These themes were good temperament, fraternity, kindness, reflecting on afterlife and destiny, belief in mortality, forgiveness, justice of the king and ruler, love, servitude, modesty, trivializing the lust, avoiding lies and greed, invitation to fellowship and contentment, learning wisdom, sincerity, friendliness, despising the world, condemnation of the world and the self, observance of moderation in affairs, tolerance and patience. While narrating the mystical allegory of the journey for self-knowledge, Attar did not neglect the educational and moral anecdotes; And as far as possible, in the section of short anecdotes of this mystical prose, he considered ethics, moral virtues and preaching to follow them, condemning moral vices and avoiding from them. Another result of this research is that the expression of advice and educational topics of the short anecdote section in these forty essays (destination) is usually consistent with that section. For instance, during the narration of the seeker's journey to the soil, he spoke of humility and modesty, and during the journey to visit prophet Ibrahim (the God’s friend), he spoke of friendliness, fraternity and friendship. One important result of this research is that most of Attar's educational and advisory verses have been in short anecdotes and the sayings of Old man to Fekrat the seeker have more mystical aspects.