Attar endeavored to open the "door to the divine treasure" with this poem and he believed that the final work has praised Muhammad in a manner beyond any poet before or after himself.
Attar spent his later years in Nishapur, where he remained comfortably retired until he was violently executed as part of a massacre during the Mongol invasion of 1221.
So the incredulous ruler tries to explain the absurdity of each desire before using spiritual stories to illuminate the deeper interpretation of each of the princes' wants; examples include how the princess represents the prince's own purified soul, the cup of Jamshid is the moment when state of union with god turns into the mirror of reality, and the ring of Solomon is to be content with what one already has.
Beyond the metaphysics of Sufism, the poem also exhibits Attar's secular knowledge as a man of medicine as he brings up an anecdote of a polymath's deft talent in removing a brain tumor.
[3] The text also contains high praise for the Prophet through Sufi-style mystical poetry, as Attar writes: Muhammad is the exemplar to both worlds, the guide of the descendants of Adam.