The Simurgh is a marvellous bird of Persian literature, raising the abandoned Zál and protecting his descendants; in Attar’s poem, birds seek a king bearing the same name.

Simurgh

Also recorded as Simorḡ, Simorgh

On a mountain where his father has abandoned him, a white-haired infant cries beneath the Simurgh’s nest. She has hungry young to feed. Yet she carries him upward to raise him beside them. Years later, the feather she gives this rescued child will summon her into a human conflict that even her healing cannot mend. [1]