Abu Hamid bin Abu Bakr Ibrahim (Farid ud-Din Attar)

Farid ud-Din Attar (c. 1145–1221 CE) lived and worked as a practicing apothecary and physician (*attar*) in Nishapur, compounding herbal remedies while attending to hundreds of patients daily. An encounter with a wandering Sufi dervish prompted his complete spiritual awakening, leading him to channel divine wisdom into transcendent mystical verse.

His defining masterpiece, Mantiq al-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds), recounts the allegorical pilgrimage of thousands of birds led by the wise Hoopoe across seven perilous valleys in search of their king, the Simurgh. Upon reaching the summit of Mount Qaf, the surviving thirty birds (*si murgh*) gaze into a divine mirror, realizing that the divine essence they sought was nothing other than their own purified collective soul. Attar was martyred during the Mongol sack of Nishapur in 1221.