Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: David Adams Leeming, Jealous Gods 

and Chosen People: The Mythology of the Middle East (New 

York: Oxford University Press, 2004); G. R. Hawting, The 

shirk

  

627  J

---

Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to 

History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); 

Muhammad Ibrahim Hafiz Ismail Surty, The Quranic 

Concept of al-Shirk (London: Ta-Ha Publishers, 1982); 

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, The Book of Tawheed

(Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: International Islamic Publishing 

House, 1998).

shrine

  See 

mawlid

; 

saint

; 

wali

.

Simurgh

 

(Simorgh)

The Simurgh is a gigantic mythological bird men-

tioned in Persian literature. It has been identified 

with the anka, a legendary bird in Arabian tales, 

Garuda, the winged mount of the Hindu god 

Vishnu, and the phoenix, a mythological fire bird 

that Greeks and Romans believed had first appeared 

in ancient Egypt. Pre-Islamic and Islamic textiles, 

metalwork, ceramics, and illustrated manuscripts 

from i

ran

 and i

ndia

 feature depictions of it.

Ancient Iranian texts say that Simurgh was 

immortal and lived in the Tree of Knowledge; 

other Persian texts say that it could live for 1,000 

years. It is described as having brilliant plumage 

and the power to bestow fertility in the land and 

good health among human beings. According to 

Firdawsi’s  s

hahnama

 (the Persian Epic of Kings,

composed in the late 10th century), Simurgh lived 

in the Alburz Mountains of northern i

ran

. When 

Zal, the albino child of a Persian warrior, was 

abandoned there by his father, Simurgh, a female 

bird, raised him as one of her own offspring. 

Zal returned to his people as an adult, bearing a 

golden feather Simurgh had given him to use in 

case he needed her help. Zal married Rudabe, a 

beautiful princess, and when she was suffering 

a painful childbirth, Zal used the feather to call 

upon Simurgh’s assistance. The bird saved both 

the mother and child, and Zal’s son grew up to 

become the great Persian hero Rustam.

The Simurgh is also featured in Farid al-Din 

Attar’s Persian-language Sufi poem, Conference of 

the Birds (Mantiq al-tayr), written in the 13th cen-

tury. There it is portrayed as an ideal king (a meta-

phor for God) living in far-off China to whom a 

flock of different kinds of birds are called to jour-

ney. After overcoming spiritual obstacles and pass-

ing through seven valleys, which represent stages 

in the mystical quest for the divine, a party of 30 

birds finally arrives at Simurgh’s palace, only to 

discover that the king they seek is really the God 

reflected in their inner hearts. Attar here makes a 

play on the name Simurgh, which can also mean 

“thirty birds” in Persian.

See also 

animals

; 

maqam

;  p

ersian

 

langUage

and

 

literatUre

; s

UFism

.