saqarTvelos mecnierebaTa erovnuli akademiis moambe, t. 7, #3, 2013 BULLETIN OF THE GEORGIAN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, vol. 7, no. 3, 2013 © 2013 Bull. Georg. Natl. Acad. Sci. Linguistics Attar’s Seven Valleys of Love and Seven Waves of Human Society: A Hermeneutical Perspective Sepehr Ghazinoory * , Masoud Afshari-Mofrad * , Gholam Ali Montazer ** , Mona Rashidirad § * Department of IT Management, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran ** Faculty of Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran § Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Brighton, East Sussex, UK (Presented by Academy Member Thomas V. Gamkrelidze) ABSTRACT. Attar Neyshaburi is one of the major Persian poets and mystics who lived about 800 years ago. The main characteristic of his works is the simplicity and impressiveness of the language that he used. He tried to express his eminent mystical concepts by utilization of simple symbolic stories, meant to be comprehensible for everyone. He has left behind many poetic works, such as Massnavis, Asrarnameh and Elahiname. But many scholars believe that his masterwork is ‘The Conference of the Birds’ in which Attar narrates a journey of thousands of birds towards invincible Simurgh; a journey in which the birds experience seven valleys of love and most of them cannot survive. According to his point of view, the symbolic language of this work makes it possible for every single reader to comprehend one aspect of Attar’s thoughts. In this study, we have used the seven valleys of love as a metaphor to seven waves of human society in order to present a new perspective of the future. A Hermeneutical method has been used to extract the meaning of Attar’s texts. The findings show that the aforementioned metaphor could provide a fruitful source of vision for better understanding of the evolution of human society. The findings also imply that we can use the experiences and notions concealed in our rich literature to learn and build a better life for everyone. © 2013 Bull. Georg. Natl. Acad. Sci. Keywords: Attar Neyshaburi, human society, hermeneutics. Born in Neyshabur (a historical city in Iran), Fariduddin Mohammad ibne Attar Neyshaburi, the famous Persian poet and mystic lived around the 13 th century A.D. He had an immense influence on Per- sian poetry and Sufism [1]. In spite of his genius, there is little information about his life compared to other renowned poets such as Rumi and Hafez. He was a grocer and according to historical evidences, he was not well-known as a poet in his lifetime. During the invasion of the Mongolians to Persia, Attar was killed by a Mongolian soldier. His mauso- leum is located in Neyshabur. Attar possessed a great wealth of literature and genius in poetry, especially in mystical science. To demonstrate Attar’s value as a great teacher of mys- tical science, it is sufficient to quote the following