A Gadamerian Reading of Attar’s Conference of the Birds

Abstract

The present study was conducted with the aim of offering a hermeneutic reading of Attar’s Conference of the Birds within the philosophical horizon of Gadamer, and of demonstrating the possibility of understanding this work not as a text possessing fixed meanings, but as a living, dialogical event. In this regard, by drawing on the fundamental concepts of Gadamerian hermeneutics—such as the historicity of understanding, the fusion of horizons, and prejudice—the possibility of reinterpreting the narrative and allegorical structure of the work was established, and the relationship between mystical wayfaring in Attar’s text and the process of understanding in philosophical hermeneutics was explicated. The findings of the study indicated that, within the horizon of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, Conference of the Birds should be regarded as a historically situated text emerging from tradition; a text that acquires meaning not in a vacuum, but within the context of Islamic mystical tradition and in the continuity of its history of effects. In each period, this work is reinterpreted in light of new questions and horizons of expectation, and it remains open to ever-new readings. At the same time, the allegorical and narrative structure of Conference of the Birds constitutes an autonomous and dynamic movement that encompasses both subject and object, and reveals truth not in propositional form, but as an event and lived experience. Accordingly, Conference of the Birds is not only a foundational text in Iranian mysticism, but also a concrete exemplar of the realization of the principles of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics; a work that demonstrates that understanding is a living, historical, and dialogical event, and that meaning is constituted through the dynamic interaction among tradition, text, and interpreter.