Faridoddin Abu Hamed Mohammad Attar Nishapuri (c. 1145 – c. 1221; Persian: ابوحمید محمد عطار نیشاپوری), better known by his pen-names Faridoddin (فریدالدین) and ʿAttar of Nishapur (عطار نیشاپوری, Attar means apothecary), was an Iranian poet, theoretician of Sufism, and hagiographer from Nishapur who had an immense and lasting influence on Persian poetry and Sufism.

However, Attar was born to a Persian[4][5][6] family and he practised the profession of pharmacist and personally attended to a very large number of customers.

However, all sources confirm that he was from Nishapur, a major city of medieval Khorasan (now located in the northeast of Iran), and according to `Awfi, he was a poet of the Seljuq period.

While his works say little else about his life, they tell us that he practised the profession of pharmacy and personally attended to a very large number of customers.

[11] From childhood onward Attar, encouraged by his father, was interested in the Sufis and their sayings and way of life, and regarded their saints as his spiritual guides.

The starting point is the idea that the body-bound soul's awaited release and return to its source in the other world can be experienced during the present life in mystic union attainable through inward purification.

Although his heroes are for the most part Sufis and ascetics, he also introduces stories from historical chronicles, collections of anecdotes, and all types of high-esteemed literature.

[4] His talent for perception of deeper meanings behind outward appearances enables him to turn details of everyday life into illustrations of his thoughts.

He obviously had no motive for sharing his expert knowledge in the manner customary among court panegyrists, whose type of poetry he despised and never practised.

According to Edward G. Browne, Attar as well as Rumi and Sana'i, were Sunni as evident from the fact that their poetry abounds with praise for the first two caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattāb - who are detested by Shia mysticism.

Although the contemporary sources confirm only Attar's authorship of the Dīwān and the Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr, there are no grounds for doubting the authenticity of the Mukhtār-Nāma and Khusraw-Nāma and their prefaces.

Written and compiled throughout much of his life and published before his death, the compelling account of the execution of the mystic Mansur al-Hallaj, who had uttered the words "I am the Truth" in a state of ecstatic contemplation, is perhaps the most well known extract from the book.

In the Mokhtar-nama, a coherent group of mystical and religious subjects is outlined (search for union, sense of uniqueness, distancing from the world, annihilation, amazement, pain, awareness of death, etc.

[24] The Diwan of Attar (Persian: دیوان عطار) consists almost entirely of poems in the Ghazal ("lyric") form, as he collected his Ruba'i ("quatrains") in a separate work called the Mokhtar-nama.

The Ghazals often seem from their outward vocabulary just to be love and wine songs with a predilection for libertine imagery, but generally imply spiritual experiences in the familiar symbolic language of classical Islamic Sufism.

Attar means herbalist, druggist, perfumist or alchemist, and during his lifetime in Persia, much of medicine and drugs were based on herbs.

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges used a summary reference to The Conference of the Birds in his short story, The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (1936).

In an 1822 entry, the French writer François-René de Chateaubriand quoted a line, "Palaces are not built on the sea," in Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768-1800.