Investigation of mystic bewilderment In the book of The Cloud of Unknowing and comparing it with The Conference of the Birds (Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr)

The inability of the intellect to reach the essence of transcendence and bewilderment against it, is one of the common concepts of Islamic and Christian mysticism. The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an Christian mystic interprets the path of a mystic as moving towards God in a cloud of darkness, ignorance, and bewilderment; In this journey, the seeker flies towards the transcendent truth with a sharp arrow of love, placing a cloud of forgetting between himself and the whole universe. The essay deals with the central themes of this book, especially The Cloud of Unknowing and The Cloud of Forgetting, and in order to deepen this analysis, it uses an example of Iranian mysticism, that is, The Conference of the Birds (Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr) by Farid ud-Din Attar. In this way, while trying to understand the perspective of the English mystic, the common point of views between these two prominent mystics is analyzed.Attar considers man's desire to Join God as passing through the burning deserts and valleys and finally reaching the level of bewilderment (hayra), while the Christian mystic, who lived in the rainy Midlands of England, sees this attainment as flying through the clouds of bewilderment, darkness and ignorance.