Le cantique des oiseaux

Song of the birds, a masterpiece of mystical poetry, written in Persian at the end of the twelfth century, sings the journey of thousands of birds in search of Simorgh, a mythical bird, the visible manifestation of the Divine. They will be guided through seven valleys by the hoopoe, Solomon's messenger, who encourages them on their mystical track by telling them stories of wisdom. Only thirty birds finally reach the end of the chemin. The beauty and symbolic value of the 207 works reproduced in this work resonate with the poem, illuminate and magnify it. The iconographic research has been conducted within the public and private collections of Islamic art in Europe and the United States, as well as the Near and Middle East. Those are barely accessible collections, keeping treasures rarely reproduced: the museums of Cairo, Baghdad and Kabul, the Golestan Palace Library and the National Museum in Tehran, as well as the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. This is a new translation.