When we first launched the website in 2017, I wrote a piece that directly answered the question “What is Simurg’un Sedası?” It disappeared along with the site. Recently, after recovering both, I had the chance to read it again. I wanted to share it here as an archive for anyone asking, “What is Simurg’un Sedası?”
Hidden and visible alike... all the birds in the world gathered together.
They all said, “No country is without a king now.
How can our country remain without one?
We can no longer remain without a king.
Let us help one another and seek out a king for ourselves.
For when a country has no king, its army has no order...”
They gathered in one place and began searching for a king.
(Mantıku't-Tayr, Turkish translation by Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı)
So begins the story of the birds’ search for Simurg.
Simurg...
The legendary bird mentioned in the Shahnameh and so many other works...
Whenever someone is about to fall into trouble, Simurg arrives to protect and watch over them.
Simurg is an ideal.
The name of the bird that knows everything,
Lives among the branches of the tree of knowledge,
Never alights on the earth,
And always rises again from its ashes,
More alive than before.
It is known by many names:
Phoenix, Zümrüd-ü Anka,
Syenah, Kerkes, Dumrul,
Senmurw, Sina-mrü.
It is the king.
It is the ideal.
Its path is the one to follow.
And that path is far from easy.
It lives beyond Mount Qaf.
To reach it, one must overcome obstacle after formidable obstacle.
And so, birds of every kind
Begin flying toward Simurg.
Different in their qualities,
Different in color,
Different in size,
So many birds
Have become “one”
For “one purpose,”
And make their way onward.
Ask each of those birds,
And every one has the resolve and ability to fly to Simurg.
But the truth is otherwise.
One by one, they disappear.
Some cannot endure the hardships,
Some become lost in pleasure,
Some lose their faith,
Some become entangled in other pursuits.
In the end, only thirty complete the journey.
They arrive at Simurg’s threshold,
Only to discover that they themselves are Simurg.
Those thirty birds are Simurg itself.
For in Persian, “si” means thirty,
And “murg,” or “morgh,” means bird.
Those thirty birds, then,
Are none other than Si-murg.
Not twenty-nine,
Not thirty-one...
These thirty birds,
Who managed to follow the path,
Reach their ideal,
And overcome its hardships,
Are Simurg...
Simurg’un Sedası is made up of birds of different qualities pursuing an ideal.
Some are as small and vulnerable as sparrows,
Some as keen-sighted and imposing as eagles.
But
Their purpose is one.
Their path is one.
Attar describes the journey of the birds who reach Simurg as follows:
“For years, they flew over rises and descents.
They spent a long lifetime on that path.
How could one recount all they encountered along the way?
If one day you, too, set out upon this road,
You will see and understand its steep passes, one by one.
Only then will you understand what befell them,
And know clearly their condition and all their wanderings.
In the end, very few birds reached that presence.
Very few attained that station.
Barely one in a thousand made the journey and arrived.
Some drowned in the seas.
Some lost their way and vanished.
Some died of heat and thirst atop lofty mountains.
Some had their wings scorched by the sun’s heat, their hearts roasted.
Some were torn apart and destroyed in an instant by lions and tigers along the road.
Some sank into the mud of foul waters and disappeared.
Some grew thirsty in those deserts.
With lips parched, they reached the sea, yet still died in the torment of thirst!
Some madly gave their lives for the love of a single grain.
Some fell gravely ill, lagged behind, and parted from the flock.
Some became absorbed in strange sights along the way and remained there.
Some were captivated by spectacles, music, and dancers;
They bowed their heads and abandoned the search for their destination.
In the end, barely one bird in hundreds of thousands did not turn back.
Thus, only thirty birds reached that place.
The birds who set out filled a whole world, but in the end only thirty arrived.
Brokenhearted, their spirits crushed, their bodies weary,
Thirty birds, shorn of wings and strength, sick and forlorn.”
(Mantıku't-Tayr, Turkish translation by Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı)
Every undertaking is a wingbeat toward Simurg...
Every undertaking, an echo of Simurg...
Simurg’un Sedası...