Suhrawardi’s philosophy. His combination of Hellenic philosophical tradi-
tion with Islamic hermeneutics enabled a powerful narrative of sovereignty
supporting the Seljuq and Artukid dynasties, reflected in the adoption of
Hellenistic Apollonian imagery and solar geometric motifs.^44 Such solar
imagery reemerged as part of the Mughal amalgamation of earlier dynastic
traditions, where the prominence of the Simurgh in relation to throne
imagery may have reflected the incorporation of Suhrawardi’s illumina-
tionist interpretations of Islam.^45
Suhrawardi’s elaboration of Firdausi’sfire imagery enhanced the solar
implications of the Simurgh:“His food isfire, and whoever binds one of his
feathers to his right side and passes throughfire with be safe from burn-
ing.”The Simurgh’s emergence from the voice suggests the Quran’s emer-
gence through recitation:“The zephyr is from his breath; hence lovers
speak their hearts’secrets and innermost thoughts with him.”^46 The heal-
ing properties of the Simurgh, alluded to in theShahnameh, gain Platonic
associations through Suhrawardi. In twelfth-century Nishapur, Platonism
circulated through both philosophical and medical texts, such as the late
eleventh-centuryBook of Antidotes(Kitab al-Diryaq) attributed to the
second-century physician Galen of Pergamon, known to esteem Plato.^47
For Plato, the rhetorician functions like a doctor. Firstly, he must know
how to persuade by manipulating linguistic structures, much as a doctor
matches medicine to illness.^48 More importantly, both must evaluate the
ability of the audience/patient to internalize the cure. Like medicine,
rhetoric thus constitutes an art of internalized aesthetics, ultimately
focused on the substrate of reception. Aristotle (384–322 BC) propagated
this idea further, such as in hisThe Art of Rhetoric, when he explains that
the function of rhetoric is not persuasion, but the detection of the persua-
sive aspects of each matter–just as the function of medicine is not to
produce good health, but to enable care based on understanding the realm
of possibility.^49
This may have influenced how Abu Hamed Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr
Ebrahim, (or, according to other sources, ibn Sa’d ibn Yusof) of Nishapur,
chose the sobriquet through which we know him: Farid al-Din Attar, which
means‘Unique of the Religion, Perfumer.’As a peddler of rose oil and
other perfumes and spices, he provided medical cures–in one of his
poems, the Khosraunameh(Book of Khosrau), he describes writing(^44) Yalman, 2012. (^45) Malecka, 1999. (^46) Suhrawardi, 1982 : 89.
(^47) von Staden, 1995 ; Pancaroğlu, 2001. (^48) Plato, 2005 : 56. (^49) Aristotle, 1991 : 70.
92 The Insufficient Image