Attar of Nishapur

Faridoddin Abu Hamed Mohammad worked as an apothecary in Nishapur around 1145, a trade that gave him his pen name Attar. He turned to writing lyrical and long philosophical poems rooted in Sufi mysticism, alongside a prose collection of biographies and sayings of Muslim mystics. The Conference of the Birds and Book of the Divine established him as a theoretician whose allegorical method would shape Persian poetry for generations. His work reached Rumi, who carried the mystical tradition forward. Attar died around 1221, leaving a body of writing that remains central to the study of Sufism.