He builds a pyre from logs and massy trees
...
Each plaintive note trills out, from each pierced hole
Comes evidence of his untarnished soul–
Now like a mourner’s ululating cries,
Now with an inward care the cadence dies
...
So death draws near and as the phoenix sings
He fans the air with his tremendous wings,
Aflame darts out and licks across the pyre–
Now wood and phoenix are a ragingfire
...
The pyre’s consumed–and from the ashy bed
A little phoenix pushes up its head.
What other creature can–throughout the earth–
After death takes him, to himself give birth?^68
Through the Simurgh narrating this tale to the birds, Attar challenges his
human reader to fathom the solitude of the Phoenix, transformed into a
flute and eternally reborn alone. Through association with al-Hallaj, the
Phoenix becomes a parable rewarding martyrdom for the sake of truth with
eternal rebirth, reflecting Hindu concepts of reincarnation.^69 The descrip-
tion of a whistling sound, unprecedented in earlier depictions, suggests
Attar’s awareness of Hindu rituals of burning the dead on funeral pyres,
during which process bodies often pop and hot air whistles while passing
through bone.^70
Like the Quran between sound and word, book and tablet, the Simurgh
oscillates between being and non-being. While immaterial in Attar’s text,
the Simurgh gains a visual iconography at the end of the thirteenth century.
This convention derived from the Chinese image of the Fenghuang. Early
Chinese renditions appear as early as the seventh or eighth century,
probably based on Western forms. These changed in the eleventh century
through contact with Sasanian art.^71 An early example appears in a(^68) Attar, 1984 : 116–117.
(^69) Although the association withfire suggests Zoroastrianism, such death would be anathema to
purity rituals requiring the purified corpse to be quickly consumed by vultures.
(^70) Derrett, 2002. (^71) Walker, 2008 : 193–194.
100 The Insufficient Image