65 min listen
Episode 6: ‘Attar
ratings:
Length:
62 minutes
Released:
Mar 11, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Professors Nicholas Boylston and Cyrus Zargar explore the striking poetry of ‘Attar of Nishapur, an seminal Persian Sufi poet and master of the Persian Masnavi (epic in rhymed-couplets) genre. His Conference of the Birds is a masterpiece of Sufi literature, and it and ‘Attar’s other poetic works, including his ghazals, exerted a strong influence on later Sufi poets, especially Rumi.
Links and Further Reading/Listening:
“Attar’s “Conference of the Birds” – The Greatest Sufi Masterpiece?” Let’s Talk Religion
Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi , The Conference of the Birds (London: Penguin Classics, 1984)
Zargar, Cyrus, Religion of Love: Sufism and Self-Transformation in the Poetic Imagination of ʿAṭṭār (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2024).
Lewisohn, Leonard and Christopher Shackle, Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).
Austin O’Malley, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid al-Din ʿAttar and Persian Sufi Didacticism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023,
Boylston, Nicholas, “Writing the Kaleidoscope of Reality: The Significance of Diversity in the 6 th/12 th Century Persian Metaphysical Literature of Sanā’ī,’Ayn Al-Qudāt and’Attār.” PhD diss..Georgetown University, 2017.
Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh, Fifty Poems of Attar, (Melbourne: re.press, 2007)
Host: Oludamini Ogunnaike
Guests: Nicholas Boylston and Cyrus Zargar
Edited By: Alana Bittner, WJTU
Online Collection of ‘Attar’s Poetry (in Persian): https://ganjoor.net/attar
Links and Further Reading/Listening:
“Attar’s “Conference of the Birds” – The Greatest Sufi Masterpiece?” Let’s Talk Religion
Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi , The Conference of the Birds (London: Penguin Classics, 1984)
Zargar, Cyrus, Religion of Love: Sufism and Self-Transformation in the Poetic Imagination of ʿAṭṭār (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2024).
Lewisohn, Leonard and Christopher Shackle, Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).
Austin O’Malley, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid al-Din ʿAttar and Persian Sufi Didacticism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023,
Boylston, Nicholas, “Writing the Kaleidoscope of Reality: The Significance of Diversity in the 6 th/12 th Century Persian Metaphysical Literature of Sanā’ī,’Ayn Al-Qudāt and’Attār.” PhD diss..Georgetown University, 2017.
Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh, Fifty Poems of Attar, (Melbourne: re.press, 2007)
Host: Oludamini Ogunnaike
Guests: Nicholas Boylston and Cyrus Zargar
Edited By: Alana Bittner, WJTU
Online Collection of ‘Attar’s Poetry (in Persian): https://ganjoor.net/attar
Released:
Mar 11, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (9)
Episode 5: Sa’di: Professors Fatemeh Keshavarz and Cyrus Zargar explore the poetry of Sa‘di, the traveling poet of 7th/13th-century Shiraz known for his fluid and natural style, wit, and wisdom. His Bustan and Gulistan are considered masterpieces of Persian composition and were widely-studied from the Balkans to Bengal, influencing later Persian as well as European authors. Links and Further Reading/Listening: Thackston, W.M. The Gulistan (Rose Garden) is Sa’di: A Bilingual English and Persian Edition (Bethesda, MD: Ibex Publishers, 2008). Keshavarz, Fatemeh. Lyrics of Life: Sa’di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). Zargar, Cyrus, The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017). Ingenito, Domenico, Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry (Boston: Brill, 2020) Online Collection by Logic of the Birds