Unlike the allegorical journey of The Conference of the Birds , The Book of Secrets is a profound exploration of (the Oneness of God) and the inner stations of the soul. The poem is structured around 22 articles, each unveiling a different "secret" about existence, the ego ( nafs ), and the annihilation of the self ( fana ) in the divine presence.
The secret of the Asrar-Nama is not hidden in a file format. It is not locked behind a corrupted download link. The secret is that the seeker, the searched, and the search are one.
Unlike Rumi or Hafiz, Attar’s lesser works have been neglected by mainstream publishers. As of this writing, there is no widely available, public domain, complete English translation of the Asrar-Nama in standard PDF format.
Attar himself was killed by Genghis Khan’s soldiers in 1221. His physical body turned to dust. But his words—copied by hand for 500 years, printed for 200, and now digitized—remain.
By 2026 (the year after this article is written), it is likely that a crowd-sourced English translation of the Asrar-Nama will appear on platforms like Wikisource or Gutenberg.