Simurgh- Persian CreatureCreature · Beast"King of Birds"

The Saena

In the Avesta, a bird called the Saena nests in the Tree of All Seeds, which grows in the cosmic sea Vourukasha. The tree bears the seeds of every plant in creation. When the Saena alights upon it, she scatters a thousand seeds that fall to earth, carried by wind and rain to produce all the world's vegetation. Another bird, Chamrosh, gathers what she scatters and distributes the seeds into the waters that Tishtrya draws up to the clouds.

The name "Simurgh" descends from Avestan "saena meregho." The Bundahishn places her nesting tree opposite the Gaokerena, the white Haoma tree of immortality, at the center of Zoroastrian cosmological geography. Sasanian-era artists rendered her as the Senmurv: a creature with a canine head, lion's claws, and a peacock's tail, stamped onto silver plates and woven into silk. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh left the composite form behind and gave her wings alone, vast and radiant.

Foster-Mother of Zal

When Zal was born with pure white hair, his father Sam feared the child was demon-touched and ordered the infant exposed on Mount Alborz to die. The Simurgh, hearing the baby crying among the rocks, carried him to her nest and raised him alongside her own chicks.

For years she fed and protected him. Zal grew strong under her care. When Sam, tormented by guilt and prophetic dreams, finally came seeking his child, the Simurgh surrendered her foster son. She addressed Sam directly, rebuking his cruelty while acknowledging that Zal's destiny lay among his own kind.

As a parting gift, she gave Zal three of her feathers. If ever he faced a crisis beyond his ability to solve, he should burn a feather and she would come.

The Birth of Rostam

Zal burned the first feather when his wife Rudabeh went into labor with their son Rostam. The child was enormous, and Rudabeh was dying. The Simurgh appeared and instructed Zal in a procedure unknown to any human physician: give Rudabeh wine to dull her senses, then have a skilled mobad make an incision in her side and draw the child out.

The baby Rostam was so large he looked like a one-year-old at birth. The Simurgh prepared a healing poultice from herbs and her own feather, and Rudabeh's wound closed without scar.

The Arrow of Esfandiar

The last feather burned when the aging Rostam faced an impossible foe. Prince Esfandiar, whose body had been made proof against all weapons by bathing in water blessed by Zoroaster, came to arrest Rostam on his father's orders. After a day of combat in which every weapon bounced off Esfandiar's invulnerable flesh, the battered Rostam retreated to his father.

Zal burned the last feather. The Simurgh came one final time. She healed Rostam's wounds, then revealed Esfandiar's single vulnerability: his eyes, which he had closed during the sacred bathing. She showed Rostam a tamarisk tree and told him to fashion a double-pointed arrow from its wood. The next day, Rostam fired the tamarisk arrow into Esfandiar's eyes, and the invincible prince fell.

Both men had acted under compulsion. The Simurgh acknowledged the tragedy even as she provided the means.

The Conference of the Birds

Farid ud-Din Attar took the Simurgh out of epic and into mystical poetry. In his Mantiq at-Tayr, the birds of the world gather to seek a king. The hoopoe, their guide, tells them of the Simurgh, who dwells beyond seven valleys: Quest, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Bewilderment, and Poverty and Annihilation. Each valley strips away another layer of the self.

Most birds refuse the journey. The nightingale is trapped by love of the rose, the hawk content at the king's wrist, the owl hoarding his gold. Of the thousands who begin, only thirty complete the passage through all seven valleys. When they arrive, exhausted and stripped of every pretension, they discover the truth concealed in the name: "si murgh" means "thirty birds." Looking upon the Simurgh, they see only themselves, purified. The seeker and the sought were one all along.