By reading and allegorically interpreting the story of Joseph's reunion with his brothers, the birds bring about their own reunion with the Simorgh; and by reading the Conference of the Birds, ʿAttar's readers precipitate an analogous reconciliation with God, or so the recursive logic of the frame-tale implies. Allegorical reading, as reflexively portrayed in that climactic episode, is accorded a special power to transform, and ʿAttar seeks to harness that power in other narratives at key junctures throughout his masnavis, as well as in the allegorical frame-tales that bind the poems together. The present chapter examines these allegories, in particular the frame-tale of the Mosibat-nama, not just to explicate their deeper meanings, but to clarify their performative work and the philosophical assumptions that make that work possible. ʿAttar, like many of his sufi contemporaries, was hostile to philosophy in a strict sense; nevertheless, his work is infused with Islamicised Neoplatonic concepts and habits of thought. His poems invoke a metaphysical system in which allegorical interpretation leads not only to the recovery of hidden meanings, but also constitutes a symbolic ascent to higher realms of reality, granting ontological access to referents that could not otherwise be grasped. Allegorical reading thus becomes a spiritual exercise, a ritual performance in which the reader not only interprets, but enacts.

In addition to Neoplatonic metaphysics, this understanding of allegory draws on Islamicate philosophical theories of the imagination, especially as it relates to dreams, visions and prophecy. Dreams and visions, according to thinkers as diverse as Farabi and Ghazali, do not necessarily originate with the dreamer but descend from these higher realms. Non-material meanings and entities (which, depending on the theorist in question, might include psychological faculties, angelic beings, the divine attributes or pure intelligibles) are clothed in sensible forms through the faculty of the imagination, and they are thereby made visible to the dreamer. Through allegorical interpretation, one can trace the resulting sensible forms back to their more abstract, non-material origins. Such theories of meaning are especially relevant for an analysis of the Mosibat-nama, ʿAttar's longest work, whose frame-tale recounts a visionary experience witnessed by a sufi wayfarer (salek) over the course of a forty-day retreat (chella).