A BIRD OF THE RICHEST COLOURS

(Quoted from the book:) "This Persian Simorgh is identified as a fabulous bird from Islamic mythology, the Anka. The tenth century Arab historian Al-Masudi mentions it in The Meadows of Gold: "The prophet (Mohammed) told us one day: ‘In the first ages of the world, God created a bird of astonishing beauty and bestowed upon her every perfection: a face like that of Man, a radiant plumage of the richest colours… God created a female on the likeness of the male and named the couple Anka’.” Note how that is the couple’s name; it is, then, a double, androgynous bird, a bird that embodies the mystery of the “two in one”. Among the ancient Muslim sages, the Anka became a symbol of Divinity equivalent to the Simorgh, to which it eventually became similar. Its radiant plumage, says Masudi, is “of the richest colours”, which leads us to imagine it to be similar to the peacock, covered in the colours of the rainbow, that androgynous symbol."

https://www.amazon.com/Love-letters-widower-mystery-ancient-ebook/dp/B07CMG3HY3

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