“The Conference of the Birds is a twelfth-century Sufi allegorical poem. The story of the quest for a king undertaken by the birds of the world, it also describes the Sufi (or mystical Islamic) path to enlightenment.

(...) the poem uses the birds journey to describe the stages of spiritual experience. From proud hawk to avaricous owl, the birds represent human archetypes with their own, very human, reasons for not setting out on the spiritual path. At the end of the tale, the birds discover that what they are seeking is nothing other then themselves: in Sufism, the way to God is inward and enlightnment is the passionate union of an individual soul with the Divine.”
 

Farid ud-Din Attar