Book excerpt: The Conference of the Birds is one of the great works of world literature. In Farid ud-Din Attar's masterpiece, the nature of the spiritual path is examined through the allegory of thirty brave birds that go in search of their king through the peaks of exultation and valleys of despair that represent the stages of the seeker as he travels toward enlightenment. Attar was the predecessor of the great Persian Sufi poet Jalalludin Rumi, who borrowed Attar's technique of weaving wisdom within entertaining and amusing tales.