The Conception of Sunnism and Debates on Sectarian Identity in Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-Ṭayr

This study examines the life, works, and, in particular, the sectarian identity of Farid al-Din Attar, one of the most influential figures of thirteenth-century Islamic thought and Sufi literature, whose affiliation has long been debated in academic scholarship. Attar’s sectarian belonging has become open to speculation primarily through works such as Mazhar al-Ajaib and Heaft Vadi, which were attributed to him by Shi‘i biographical writers but have been shown by modern research to be apocryphal. Although these claims are generally grounded in the pronounced devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt and the gnostic attachment to Ali evident in Attar’s writings, Mantiq al-Tayr, regarded as his principal masterpiece, provides doctrinal clarity with respect to these debates. The article offers a detailed analysis of the eulogies composed by Attar for the Four Caliphs (the Rightly Guided Caliphs) in the preface of Mantiq al-Tayr. While portraying Abu Bakr as the center of loyalty and Sufi spiritual authority, Umar as the criterion of justice and truth, Uthman as a source in which modesty and knowledge converge, and Ali as the gate of spiritual authority and gnosis, Attar remains faithful to the hierarchical and historical framework of legitimacy upheld by the Sunni Islamic tradition. His understanding of Sunnism is not confined to a narrow juridical framework; rather, it is grounded in a gnostic perspective shaped by the Khurasan-Nishapur milieu, one that places devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt at its core and reconciles the concept of spiritual authority with Sunni creed. As a result, the study demonstrates that although Attar employs a suprasectarian language, he emerges as one of the most significant representatives of the Sunni Sufi paradigm at the level of fundamental belief.