Qarn-hā-ye bi-zamān is primarily an analysis of ʿAttār's poem Conference of the Birds (Manteq al-tayr), through which the author, Mehdi Mohabbati, seeks to provide a coherent overview of ʿAttār's epistemology, mysticism, and personality more broadly. According to him, a precise understanding of ʿAttār's narration style is key to any analysis of the Conference of the Birds. He argues that the Conference of the Birds—and Attar's oeuvre more generally—follows a spiral path. Just like a funnel, it is wide at the top, gradually becomes narrower and deeper, and reaches the central end point. This narrative narrowing is visible in a few ways: first, in the reduction of the characters from thousands of inexperienced birds to thirty of the select; a second lessening is the gradual contraction of the ethical subject matter of the poem, which becomes more specific until a single point remains—the Simorgh and the mystical unity it represents. At the same time, the birds had always participated in the Simorgh, even at the very beginning, but their participation was not clearly seen. Mohabbati claims that this circular motion is the main feature of Eastern art and culture, especially Iranian and Islamic culture and civilization, from Ibn ʿArabi to ʿAttār and Sohravardi. Again drawing on the metaphor of the circle, he argues that ʿAttār's mysticism cannot be understood based on a reading of only one of his works, but only by placing all of his works in a nonhierarchical dialogue with each other: he conceptualizes them as overlapping circles that take meaning from and give meaning to each other.
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