Farid al-Din Attar, author of the book here presented in an abridged translation, is to be accounted amongst the greatest poets of Persia; his dimensions as a literary genius increase with the further investigation of his writings, which are still far from completely explored, though welcome progress has been made of late in their publication. The existence of a number of remarkable studies of Attar, listed in the Bibliography below, absolves the present writer from the necessity of going into lengthy detail about the keenly disputed details of his life and works. Here it will suffice to state that he appears to have died between a.d. 1220 and 1230 at an advanced age, possibly at the hands of the Mongol invaders of Persia; the traditional account that he was born in 1119 and murdered precisely in 1230 is now generally rejected.

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