ʿAṬṬĀR, FARĪD AL-DĪN (c. 1158–1229 CE) was the most important Ṣūfī poet of the twelfth century, the central figure in the famous trio of Persian Ṣūfī poets beginning with Sanāʾī (d. 1131) and culminating in Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 1273).

Life and Works

Almost nothing of ʿAṭṭār's life is known except that he was a druggist (ʿaṭṭār means "perfumer") by profession and worked in a pharmacy in a local bazaar in Nīshāpūr, and that he died in 1221 or 1229 during a massacre when the Mongols attacked the city. He lived most of his life in Nīshāpūr, which was the administrative capital of...