The Wise Giant Bird of the World Tree
The Simurgh is the giant bird of Persian myth, its spread wings broad enough to shade the sun. Its lineage runs back to the Avestan bird Saena; Middle Persian texts call it the Senmurw, and the Bundahishn perches it on the Tree of All Seeds in the middle of the world sea Vourukasha — each time it takes flight, the seeds shake loose and are carried by rain and wind to every corner of the earth.
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh made it one of the most affecting figures in the epic. Zal, son of Sam, was born with the white hair of an old man and abandoned on Mount Alborz as an ill omen; the Simurgh carried the infant to its nest, reared him with its own chicks, and taught him speech and wisdom. When the grown Zal returned to men, the bird gave him a feather from its breast: burn it, and I will come. The feather was redeemed twice. When Zal's wife Rudaba lay dying in labor, the Simurgh flew down and taught the delivery of the child by cesarean cut — the infant was Rostam, the greatest of Persian heroes. Years later, when Rostam lay grievously wounded from his duel with the invulnerable prince Esfandiyar, the bird came again, drew the arrowheads from him and his horse Rakhsh, healed them with its feathers, and revealed the one weapon that could prevail: a double-pointed arrow of tamarisk wood aimed at the prince's eyes. In the twelfth century, Attar's Conference of the Birds built a famous pun upon it: thirty birds (si morgh) cross seven valleys seeking the Simorgh, and what they find at journey's end is their own reflection — the bird became Sufi poetry's emblem of the self united with the divine.
