Between Speech and Silence: Islamic Fairy Tales as a Mystical Bridge in the Siyasatnama and Sufi Traditions

Abstract

This article posits that Islamic fairy tales function as a mystical bridge of speech, a discursive passage that, within the siyasatnama tradition, summons the subject toward ethico-political responsibility, while in Sufi narrative, it carries the seeker beyond the limits of language toward a transformative silence. Reading Indo-Persian and Ottoman siyasatnama texts alongside the Sufi classics of Attar and Rumi, the article traces this movement across both traditions. In the siyasatnama context, the fairy tale translates divine commandments into a set of virtues, such as justice, mercy, and compassion, that regulate the conduct of both ruler and subject, framing governance as an ethical response to a sacred truth. Conversely, in Sufi narrative, the fairy tale operates within a similar ethical–pedagogical grammar but directs the subject toward a fundamentally different ontological end: The dissolution of the self. Here, speech becomes a threshold to be crossed and narrative a cage to be surrendered, allowing the seeker to enter the silence in which divine love is realized. Ultimately, the article proposes that mystical transcendence does not signify a withdrawal from the ethical sphere; instead, it constitutes its most profound enactment, manifested either through the responsible exercise of power or its radical renunciation in love.

1. The Fairy Tale as Mystical Bridge

As symbolic and transformative narrative forms that stage truth through indirect, figurative means, fairy tales provide fertile ground for philosophical inquiry, functioning not merely as the art of storytelling but as treatises on society, political power, and the ethical construction of a certain life. The Islamic intellectual heritage extensively draws upon this pedagogical potential as a means of articulating metaphysical truth at various levels. Siyasatnama texts, which offer counsel through fairy tales, tend to be analyzed through the prism of political pragmatism. Similarly, sufi classics, though equally reliant on allegorical storytelling, are often received strictly within the realm of world-denying transcendence. Analyzing fairy tales through these separate lenses leaves a critical gap in understanding how they function as a mystical bridge. This article addresses this gap by proposing that the fairy tale is a medium of speech: a speculative narrative that, in the siyasatnama tradition, summons the subject toward ethico-political responsibility, and in Sufi narratives, carries the seeker beyond speech itself toward transformative silence.

To demonstrate this argument, the article draws on a selection of foundational texts from both traditions. From the Indo-Persian and Ottoman siyasatnama corpus, it examines Kalila and Dimna, The Tales of Marzuban, and Tooti-nameh. The Sufi texts under analysis—Attar’s Ilahi-nama and The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-Tayr), and Rumi’s Masnavi—are read not merely as expressions of world-denying mysticism but as works that equally partake in the siyasatnama tradition, functioning as ethical and political interventions. The analysis employs a synthesis of discourse analysis and phenomenological interpretation to examine how these narratives construct the subject’s mystical and ethical orientation. In both traditions, mystical transcendence does not lead to a withdrawal from reality but to a responsible engagement with the world, a movement this article traces from the fairy tale as sacred speech to the fairy tale as a threshold of transformative silence.

This study positions Islamic fairy tales as a mystical bridge connecting sacred commandment, ethical responsibility, and spiritual transcendence. As a discursive form, it carries the subject across the threshold between the divine call and its ethical or spiritual fulfillment. The term fairy tale is used here not in its narrow modern sense as associated primarily with children’s literature and the Brothers Grimm tradition but as a broader narrative category encompassing fictional worlds shaped by fantasy, symbolic action, and the marvellous (Ashliman 2008, p. 322). The preference for the term fairy tale over fable is also deliberate since the narratives examined in this study are not limited to the fable genre. They also encompass allegorical, didactic, and mystical narrative forms, and so fairy tales offer a more capacious designation for the range of narrative types under discussion. Within the siyasatnama tradition, the fairy tale serves as a pedagogical tool to build the ethical subject; here, the narrative facilitates the realization of truth rooted in divine law, establishing it as a normative principle where speech acts as the carrier of this sacred regulatory order. In Sufi narratives, by contrast, the function of the tale transcends normative teaching. In the siyasatnama, speech through fairy tales becomes power—a truth-bearing speech invested with a mystical authority that frames governance as a response to divine truth. In Sufi narratives, the movement runs from speech toward silence, where the tale acts as a temporary structure that must be surpassed to reach an ontological level of direct experience.

Within the context of this study, the fairy tale is defined as a narrative form that manifests sacred commandments or experiential knowledge through a symbolic plot, rather than through the direct propositional logic of a sermon or an explanation. Ricoeur emphasizes that limit-experiences can only be captured through indirect and figurative language; thus, the symbol, through its very indirection, serves as a revelatory ground that provokes thought (Ricœur 1969, pp. 348–50). Drawing on André Jolles, Zipes presents the fairy tale as a narrative form that gains its force by departing from the ordinary order of reality and by establishing an alternative horizon of meaning through which values and orientation can be conveyed (Zipes 2012, pp. 14–15). Rather than statically describing its heroes or its world, the fairy tale reveals the transformability of the subject and the environment through extraordinary tools, beings, and powers. The fairy tale aims not at a delivered answer, but to produce the maieutic stage where transformation can be experienced—a process akin to Socratic midwifery, in which the narrative does not deliver truth directly but creates the conditions under which the subject can give birth to it from within. It is this generative potential that makes the fairy tale a uniquely mystical form of discourse.

2. The Fairy Tale as Address: Counsel, Speech, and Response

The fairy tale, as a narrative bearing counsel (nasiha), also functions to situate the subject within a specific relationship. The modes of address produced by the speech demonstrate how the address summons the subject toward an ethical mode of response. From the subject’s side of this address, the fairy tale produces a response scene (e.g., obedience, justice, repentance, return, service, the dissolution of the self). The theoretical ground for this claim is established through Izutsu’s account of revelation as an address structure: The communicative relation between God and man, he writes, is basically twofold: from God to man and from man to God. Accordingly, revelation is not a neutral transfer of information but an initiating act. Speech establishes an ontological relation only insofar as it positions a respondent within it, since communication as such presupposes relationality. By extension, even when the fairy tale is not revelation, its mystical–discursive power can be theorized through the same formal logic of address: counsel is an initiating speech-act that places the receiver in the role of the one who must answer. As Chrétien puts it, wherever we are, we are always already called and requested, and our first utterance is already an answer to the request wherein it emerges (Chrétien 2004b, p. 15). The fairy tale stages precisely this scene: not merely through what is said, but by being addressed and thus becoming answerable (Izutsu 2008, pp. 163–64, 170). Drawing on the phenomenological tradition, Morales Arizmendi shows that this call does not remain a mere external imposition; rather, it is sustained by the receptivity and responsibility that define the constitutive structure of the human being in its exposure to Mystery. Responsibility and mercy are not moral additions or external ornaments to the self, but the concrete manifestation of a life already claimed by truth and vulnerability (Morales Arizmendi 2026, p. 10). Thus, the fairy tale is a mystical bridge that carries the subject from the state of being addressed to the actualization of an inherent responsibility—operating through the speech of divine justice in the siyasatnama, and through a transformation that reaches the very boundaries of speech in the sufi narrative.

The staging logic of the fairy tale indicates that meaning is constructed cathartically rather than through mere conceptual explanation. In its ritualistic form, the fairy tale transforms space and time, unfolding within In illo tempore—a temporality marked as once upon a time1, which connects back to the primordial moment when a hero performed the first archetype (Eliade 1959, p. 21). The recurring thresholds, transformations, and trials within the tale function as mechanisms that immerse the reader or listener into a specific mode of experience. Similarly, in Eastern Islamic traditions, didactic narratives do not aim to convince the listener of a judgment but seek to produce an effect that illuminates and deepens the experience of the moment by mobilizing a comprehension that descends beneath everyday perception. Thus, the narrative acquires a function directed toward transformation rather than direct instruction (King 1988, p. 222). Rather than employing didactic language, the fairy tale constructs a narrative structure that makes it possible to approach the ineffable through mechanisms of transformation, threshold, and repetition. Such a reading reveals that the fairy tale’s power lies not in what it explains, but in what it enacts—a threshold experience that prepares the subject for an encounter with truth that exceeds the boundaries of ordinary language and perception.

Mysticism, understood as the direct consciousness of the presence of God, is treated in this study not as a state of passive withdrawal but as an internal structure that transforms the divine call into an ethical responsibility. This process constitutes the stage in which the subject hinges the distance between transcendence and worldly action, thereby undergoing an ontological transformation. Truth is the moral and divine commandment transmitted through the allegorical language of the fairy tale, guiding both the political and ethical actions of the human being. This commandment echoes as a call within the symbolic world of the tale and becomes a lived reality only when the subject provides an active response. Speech functions as the discursive medium within the narrative structure of the fairy tale that articulates and transmits truth while maintaining the relationship between power and truth: Speech is the carrier, for it is the sole memorial and the sole promise (Chrétien 2004a, pp. 7, 40). Although the speech of the fairy tale operates through an otherworldly logic, via marvelous elements it is not entirely detached from the world, for the mystic’s action is the worldly manifestation of the fairy tale’s speech. Silence, on the other hand, signifies a metaphysical and epistemological threshold where truth exceeds the limits of language and can only be reached through internal experience (Montiglio 2000, p. 24). As the ultimate horizon of the fairy tale, Silence represents the stage of preparation for action, where the subject transcends the discursive level to establish a direct, experiential contact with Truth.

3. Speech, Justice, and the Siyasatnama Tradition

Throughout history, the issue of political power has been articulated not only through institutional structures and laws but also through traditions of counsel addressed to both rulers and subjects. These treatises represent a broad historical continuity, stretching from Greek paideia and the Eastern Roman basilikos logos to the speculum principis and Fürstenspiegel of the Latin Middle Ages, and including the Islamic siyasatnama tradition. While all these traditions treat political wisdom and moral integrity as an inseparable whole (Skinner 2010, p. 118), the Islamic Siyasatnama2 tradition adds a distinctively theological dimension to this shared framework: here, political authority is conceptualized not merely as a civic responsibility but as a call from the divine, and the subject’s ethical conduct as a response to this sacred truth. It is precisely this mystical dimension that transforms the fairy tale, as the primary medium of counsel in these texts, from a pedagogical tool into a discursive bridge between sacred commandment and ethical action.

The Siyasatnama tradition is deeply rooted in a rich discursive landscape, shaped by foundational Persian and Indian narratives that established the conceptual vocabulary through which political authority and divine truth intersect. Works such as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Firdawsī 2016), Attar’s mystical epics—including The Conference of the Birds (F. a.-D. Attar 1984), The Ilahi-nama (F. a.-D. Attar 1976), Pendnâme3—and didactic treatises like Kai Ka’Us Ibn Iskandar’s Qabūs nama (Ibn Iskandar 1951) collectively establish a framework in which governance is inseparable from sacred wisdom. The allegorical structures of Kalila and Dimna (Kalila and Dimna or Fables of Bidpai 1885; The Fables of Bidpai 1819) and Tooti-nameh (Tales of a Parrot) function as anthologies of fairy tales, providing a narrative medium through which the complexities of ethical regulation are navigated through storytelling. It is through the unique language of the fairy tale that these works manifest a structural overlap between divine sovereignty and earthly governance, constructing a worldview where human agency is inextricably linked to a sacred order.

In this context, the act of counseling, constituted through the medium of storytelling, functions as a mystical bridge designed to align earthly leadership with divine wisdom. By invoking scriptural mandates for consultation,4 these tales transform political decision-making into a sacred duty, thereby granting the ruler a form of spiritual legitimacy. The presence of a counselor, often depicted through allegorical figures in these fairy tales, serves as the intermediary between the state and the divine. Within this framework, the fairy tale as an act of counsel is no longer a mere administrative strategy; it becomes a manifestation of hidden wisdom that draws the ruler’s exercise of power into a layered system of ethical and spiritual obligation.

This perspective, rooted in the sacred nature of counseling as a divine imperative, further articulates the relationship between the sacred and the political—a central theme in the siyasatnama tradition. The tradition institutionalized these values by presenting justice not merely as a moral virtue, but as the fundamental discursive mechanism for ethical order. In the works of thinkers like Nizam al-Mulk, political power is framed as a trust where the ruler’s legitimacy is contingent upon his adherence to divine justice (Marlow 2023, p. 295). The counsel narrative becomes the primary medium through which divine commandments are translated into ethical virtues—justice, mercy, humility, and compassion—that regulate both the conduct of the ruler and the ethical life of the subject (Lambton 1962). The narrative does not merely describe these virtues; it enacts them, staging the encounter between the divine call and the subject’s response as an ethical experience. In other words, the fairy tale does not tell the ruler to be just; it immerses him in a narrative experience where justice becomes the only possible response to what he has witnessed.

By utilizing metaphorical fiction rather than normative prescription, this tradition creates a liminal space where the most sensitive truths about power can be articulated safely and memorably.5 In this sense, the fairy tale functions as the ark of speech, a primordial safeguard that gathers and preserves the essence of truth within language, much like the first ark of naming that protected beings before the deluge (Chrétien 2004a, p. 5). By shielding the sacred commandment within the parable, the narrative creates a mystical bridge that invites the sovereign to an encounter with the ineffable.

The fairy tale serves as a constitutive discursive site that safeguards the sacred within a timeless structure and transmutes the literal world into a revelatory ground for ethical and political critique, manifesting acute social and political tensions (Totibadze 2019, p. 920). In Islamic didactic literature, the fairy tale functions not as a tool for masking reality, but as a stage for lifting the veil that hides the truth.6 The mystical narrative acts as a conduit between Truth and reality—moving beyond the mere maintenance of equipoise (Lambton 1962, p. 119) toward an ethical demand that restructures the subject’s very existence.

The potency of the fairy tale is fundamentally anchored in its constant invocation of the Divine, transmuting political authority into a sacred dialogue. A primary example is found in The Tales of Marzuban, where the dialogues between the prince Al-Marzuban and his advisors on just governance illustrate how truth is constructed through a collaborative discursive process7 (Lang 1970; Levy 1959). This discursive process is deeply rooted in the quranic nature of the work, wherein political counsel is framed not merely as secular advice but as a worldly manifestation of scriptural exhortation. By consistently invoking the moral paradigms of the Divine speech, The Tales of Marzuban transforms the collaborative search for truth into a collective endeavor to align the sovereign’s conduct with the sacred mandates of justice and mercy. In this regard, the narrative ensures that the rulers’s authority is not a self-derived power, but a responsibility grounded in justice and compassion. This is especially evident in the episode where access to the ruler is institutionalized for the oppressed: “Any person who had been the victim of an injustice or who had suffered humiliation might seize the cord and shake the bells, the ringing of which would announce to the king’s hearing the presence of a petitioner” (Levy 1959, p. 163). Here, royal authority is legitimized through responsiveness to suffering. Justice and mercy become the sacred conditions of rulership rather than optional virtues anchored in a Quranic ethos that transcends administrative utility. Similarly, Kalila and Dimna serves as more than a simple fable collection; it acts as a guidebook for rulers by translating complex administrative wisdom into a moral framework accessible through allegory (London 2008) functioning as a central element of the Abbasid intellectual project. This narrative logic is illustrated in “The Story of the Traveller and the Goldsmith” in which the king asks the philosopher to whom a ruler ought to show beneficence. Rather than delivering a prescriptive answer, the philosopher responds with an allegorical tale in which a traveller’s gratitude and a goldsmith’s treachery are weighed before the king—translating the abstract imperatives of justice and loyalty into a lived moral encounter (Kalila and Dimna or Fables of Bidpai 1885, pp. 204–7).

This transition from raw power to a layered system of ethical life is further deepened in Attar’s Conference of the Birds where the element of consent is staged within a mystical theater. The narrative opens with a collective recognition of the necessity for sovereign order, as the birds lament that “all nations in the world require a king” and conclude that “only a kingdom can be justly run,” thereby framing the search for the Simurg as a foundational quest for justice (F. a.-D. Attar 1984, pp. 35–36). The journey itself enacts an epistemological progression toward the ultimate truth. Across seven valleys the birds are led by the Hoopoe through trials that dismantle worldly attachments and cultivate patience, perseverance, and surrender, staging the inner prerequisites of just rule as a lived experience rather than a stated ideal. Consequently, the text suggests that political legitimacy is inextricably linked to the ruler’s metaphysical maturity, for as the Hoopoe cautions, the attainment of the Simorgh is a goal that “belongs to those who discipline the soul” (F. a.-D. Attar 1984, lines 1051–68). The Tooti-nameh adds a unique dimension to this dynamic by positioning the parrot as the bearer of wisdom and the guardian of ethical life. As the parrot itself declares though I appear in your sight nothing but a handful of feathers, yet, through the power of wisdom and knowledge, I can soar above the sky (Qādirī 1801, p. 12). The parrot’s storytelling functions as a continuous call that warns of the social destruction caused by the abuse of power, reminding the listener that whosoever not reflect on the event, will repent of it (Qādirī 1801, p. 79). This positions the bird as a discursive mediator who bridges the transient speech of the state with the eternal Truth of the Divine. Also, the text itself affirms in its portrait of the just ruler as one that is “just and equitable, affectionate to his subjects, and kind to strangers”. The ruler’s existence causes, and will secure, the prosperity of the kingdom, and the happiness of his people (Qādirī 1801, p. 30). By doing so, the narrative transforms the act of listening into a moment of ethical response. The ruler’s power is no longer an isolated force but an echo of the divine call, a resonance that binds governance to its sacred source.

Collectively, these fairy tales demonstrate that justice is the earthly manifestation of the Divine decree, establishing political authority through a constant negotiation of mercy and truth. This process constructs a mystical regime of truth—understood here not in Foucauldian terms but as the divinely anchored order through which virtues regulate political life—where virtues serve as the regulatory medium for political morality (Birkan 2020, p. 15), anchoring the circular relationship between power and truth within a transcendent and eternal order. The ethical response to this mystical call is what distinguishes the true seeker from those who dismiss the narrative as mere legends of the ancients (asatir al-awwalin). In the Quranic semantic field,8 this dismissal represents an ontological deafness to the divine address. Rather than providing a static list of virtues, the narrative constructs a dynamic landscape where the exercise of power is staged. This process compels the sovereign to transcend the outer layer to encounter the truth hidden within and shifts political action from a mundane technique to a spiritual manifestation.

4. The Regulatory Function of Narrative: Justice, Hikmah, and Counsel

The regulatory function of the fairy tale is most prominently operationalized in Kalila and Dimna, particularly in the narrative of “The Lion and the Ox”. In this fable, the jackal manipulates the lion king into turning against his trusted companion the ox through calculated slander, staging the catastrophic consequences of a ruler who abandons wise counsel for suspicion and intrigue. Rather than being a mere literary device, the Lion’s eventual punishment of the Ox represents the catastrophic failure of political power when it is misled by evil counselors and severed from the Truth. The narrative suggests that human greed and fickleness can only be restrained through an administration grounded in wise counsel, shifting the perception of morality from an external abstraction toward an internal awareness. By embedding these cautionary lessons within the education of King Dabshalim, the work demonstrates that the ideal of truth is not an external abstraction but is constructed through the tale itself. Consequently, the fairy tale acts as a maieutic process, forcing the sovereign to confront his own ignorance and attain the mystical maturity necessary for just governance (Beydeba 2011, p. 325; Kalila and Dimna or Fables of Bidpai 1885, p. 214; The Fables of Bidpai 1819, p. 339). In this context, the narrative does not merely describe justice; it facilitates a spiritual encounter where the ruler’s response to the divine call is no longer a formal obligation but a lived ethical reality.

Within the siyasatnama tradition, a crucial distinction is maintained between the technical art of governance and the deeper concept of hikmah (wisdom). In this mystical context, hikmah is conceptualized not merely as administrative knowledge, but as the ontological perfection of the human soul, a transformative journey through theoretical and practical truths that align the spirit with the Divine (Tusi 1964, p. 81). This distinction suggests that a ruler’s success is contingent upon an epistemological alignment with moral maturity, serving as a universal call to maturity for both the ruler and the ruled. The pursuit of mundane happiness is replaced by a discipline of resignation9 and the taming of insatiable desires as a direct response to a divine demand.

The catastrophic dangers of failing to attain this internal awareness are allegorically depicted in The Tales of Marzuban, particularly in the fable of “The Jackal and the Donkey”. In this narrative, the donkey’s misinterpretation of an inherited book of advice symbolizes the failure that arises when political power possesses the speech, the literal form, but lacks the hikmah to decode its underlying Truth. The jackal exploits this epistemological gap, illustrating how greed and lust are not merely personal flaws but discursive enemies that destabilize the truth necessary for governance. As Zirak, the wise counselor in the tale, articulates, the accumulation of worldly power without spiritual grounding is as ephemeral as the “dome of bubbles” (Levy 1959, p. 136).

The fairy tale constructs a spiritual subjectivity, where the role of the subject is primarily established through the discipline of listening. Engagement with the narrative is not merely an aesthetic choice but an epistemological requirement; as illustrated in the Tooti-nameh, the refusal to heed the tale’s speech is synonymous with a deafness to the Divine Call. This necessity of being an active listener establishes the groundwork for the tale to unfold as a transformative process, where the subject’s silence becomes the primary mode of ethical response, allowing the hidden truth to resonate within the soul.

The capacity for judgment possessed by a wise ruler, aided by inspiration from the unseen realm, functions as a manifestation of a higher truth that remains inaccessible to the common individual. Consequently, the ruler is positioned as the soul of the world, acting as the metaphysical anchor that guides the nation toward righteousness and hikmah. In The Tales of Marzuban, this political authority is further depicted as a divine endowment: rulers are described as the chosen of the Creator and the children of the Provider, their authority distributed at the moment when the gifts of Fate are allotted. The king is further likened to the refulgent sun whose disposition shapes the very character of his people, since as long as God does not withdraw the good fortune which he has granted to a people, he will not twist the reins of a king’s care away from them (Levy 1959, pp. 18–20). This dual relationship, the ruler’s accountability to the Divine and the people’s loyalty to the king, positions power as a collective trust rather than a personal privilege, as the Tooti-nameh affirms in its portrait of the just ruler whose existence causes, and will secure, the prosperity of the kingdom, and the happiness of his people (Qādirī 1801, p. 30). In this intricate process of legitimation, the fairy tale is the principal mediator, providing the symbolic language necessary to negotiate the delicate balance between earthly governance and the sacred commandment.

A mystical power relationship emerges between the storyteller and the listener, where the act of narration itself becomes a site of discursive authority. In this sacred encounter, the power of speech is the arbiter of truth, shaping the reality it conveys. When the discursive limits of formal politics are reached, the storyteller steps in to fill the ontological void, utilizing the metaphorical flexibility of the fairy tale to navigate the hidden imperatives of truth. As Zipes observes, this tradition often functions as an anti-authoritarian medium, allowing those who are socially oppressed to speak truth to the unjust (Zipes 2019, p. 225). In the Islamic didactic tradition, this is operationalized through the storyteller’s ability to define the criteria of ethical rule, transforming the fairy tale into a resilient sacred shield against the abuse of power. By positioning the storyteller as the custodian of the Speech, the narrative ensures that the sovereign’s authority remains perpetually subject to the judgment of a truth that transcends the mere mechanics of the state.

5. Beyond Speech: Love and Silence in Sufi Narrative

The Sufi narrative operates within the broader genealogy of the Siyasatnama tradition, yet it transcends purely individual mysticism by functioning as an ethico-political critique that interrogates the ethical values and governance of its era. Works like the Ilahi-nama and Conference of Birds share with the Siyasatnama tradition a common ethical–pedagogical grammar: both deploy allegorical narrative to orient the subject toward a higher moral and spiritual order. Yet where the Siyasatnama directs this orientation toward the responsible exercise of worldly power, the Sufi narrative ultimately leads the subject to renounce it—transforming the language of counsel into an existential summons to abandon the very sovereignty it once sought to perfect. While the perceived lack of a linear telos in these works is sometimes characterized as a muddled progression (Hamid 1999, p. 28), this structural non-linearity is a deliberate discursive strategy—one that mirrors the complex, non-linear journey toward truth and exposes the injustices of the material world, transforming the reader’s subjectivity through ethical manifestation.

While speech is traditionally lauded as the faculty that aligns humanity with the divine through its permanence, in the Sufi tradition, it represents only a preliminary stage of hikmah. Maturity is reached not through the accumulation of words, but through the internal transformation that Rumi posits as a higher ontological state. This suggests that speech is only valuable insofar as it carries one to hikmah; otherwise, it remains merely a veil. Attar’s assertion that “the human being is hidden under its tongue” (F. Attar 2017, p. 128) reinforces this semiotic distinction, separating the possessors of truth from those trapped in the surface of speech. In this framework, speech is a necessary religious threshold, yet the goal is to transcend speech to reach the heart as the site of unmediated belief.

The constitutive function of speech is vividly manifested in Attar’s Ilahi-nama, specifically in the tale of a King and his sons. The narrative, wherein the sons request symbolic manifestations of worldly power ranging from sexual desire and alchemy to the ring of Solomon, serves as a stage for the systematic negation of desire. The King’s authority is exercised through a specific discursive technique: he utilizes the mystical flexibility of the fairy tale to transform the refusal that seems paternal into an ontological call. Rather than a simple administrative or authoritative prohibition, he employs these narratives to legitimate the rejection of worldly desires by grounding them in hikmah. By framing the sons’ diverse ambitions as impediments to spiritual maturity, the King’s speech functions as the final arbiter between ephemeral power and transcendent truth. Each rejected desire reinforces the central leitmotiv of the Persianate Sufi tradition: the inherent insignificance of the material world. However, this insignificance does not imply a total rejection of life; rather, the world is framed as a necessary path that must be traversed and navigated. Consequently, the fairy tale emerges as a secret-laden declaration, where the Sufi narrative guides the believers toward a divine path that transcends the limitations of worldly desires (F. a.-D. Attar 1976, Discourse I, pp. 30–45).

In the Sufi narrative, the listener is guided toward the annihilation of the self. This transition presents a new level of existence, freeing the subject from worldly imperfections and situating the subject at a threshold of spiritual purification. In Conference of Birds, which chronicles the quest of a flock of birds through seven perilous valleys—representing the stations of the soul—to find their sovereign, the Simurg, the fairy tale is repurposed as a liminal site for ontological purification. Guided by the Hoopoe, who is the mystical mentor, the birds represent the human soul’s arduous journey toward the annihilation of the self (F. a.-D. Attar 1984, pp. 31–37). Consequently, the fairy tale as speech, once a means of ethical regulation, reaches its discursive boundary, giving way to a silence that implies the ineffability of ultimate truth. This shift from speech to silence represents an epistemological transition from external, mediated knowledge to direct, inner realization. Fairy tales are the initial pedagogical stage while the ultimate truth lies beyond the constraints of language, aligning with the Sufi emphasis on the ineffability of divine knowledge.

Sufi silence is not the absence of meaning, but an active experience of truth that transcends the verbal artifice of the fairy tale, inviting the reader into a realm where fictions are no longer necessary: “In the name of Him whose kingdom is unending, in describing whom the speech of the wise is reduced to dumbness” (F. a.-D. Attar 1976, p. 1). This Sufi unspeakable bears a striking parallel to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic boundary in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein famously posits that ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics lie outside the logical structure of language: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (Wittgenstein 1960, proposition 7). However, while Wittgenstein’s silence is an analytical result of the logical limits of language, Sufi silence is a transformative process. For Rumi, silence is not the endpoint of a logical argument but the active threshold of inner purification—the point at which the seeker ceases to speak about truth and begins to inhabit it.

Silence in Sufism is far from passive withdrawal; rather, it actively denies legitimacy to a disordered world. This silence, however, does not signify a rejection of life, but rather an understanding of the world as a necessary path: “The world is like a caravanserai with two doors: entering by one door thou passest out through the other (…) Thou art sunk in heedless sleep and knowest of nothing; thou shalt die whether thou wilt or not” (F. a.-D. Attar 1976, p. 3). In this framework, transcending worldly desires is not a negation of existence, but an ontological realization of life as a divine path to be traversed rather than inhabited. Within this journey, the attempt of the individual subject to judge the external world is revealed as an ultimate futility; to judge is to remain trapped within the constructs of language and fiction. The true transformation occurs when the subject ceases to judge the world as an external object and instead experiences it as a crossing to be completed in silence and nothingness.

Rumi uses the fairy tale not for an end but a call for silence, as a linguistic bridge built to navigate the ineffability of the divine truth. This bridge is designed to be crossed and then discarded. As Rumi suggests in the Dīvân-ı Kebîr, truth is often veiled in “thousands of tales and deceits” (Rumi 2003, verse 3174; 2007a, p. 486). While speech as fiction is necessary to capture the attention of the animalistic side of the soul (Rumi 2000, p. 106), its goal is to lead the receiver to the threshold of the unutterable. This paradox is most vividly operationalized in the Masnavī through the recurring motif of the parrot, characterized by its capacity for speech (as an imitator) yet saved by its embrace of silence (death) (Rumi 2004, 1:19-line 249). The parrot’s speech is the symbol of the self, maintained through imitation; however, salvation is achieved not by the continuation of speech but through a symbolic death. The parrot’s silence is a sign of the mystical transformation arising from the dissolution of the self. The tale, therefore, is a self-extinguishing discourse; it employs the artifice of language only to prove that language is a cage. At the climax of such narratives, speech does not merely end; it is intentionally surrendered.

Rumi’s recourse to the fairy tale is a strategic necessity; speech is required to lead the subject to the threshold of the unspoken. However, the efficacy of the speech is contingent upon the receptivity of the listener. Rumi compares the fairy tale to a husk and its inner truth to the kernel (Rumi 1925a, pp. 3455–60; 2007b, pp. 511–12). Without the power of judgment which Rumi equates to the faculty of reason yet elevates through the concept of faith, the recipient remains a child who exchanges a precious pearl for an apple. In this context, faith is not merely a theological assent but an active, mystical tool of judgment that allows the seeker to penetrate the surface of the narrative. To further clarify this distinction between the authentic and the imitative, Rumi utilizes the metaphor of the foot: a valuable, truth-bearing narrative is likened to an actual foot, whereas a worthless or imitative story is compared to a wooden foot, a crafted emulation that mimics the form of the original but lacks its vital essence. Distinguishing the living reality from its wooden imitation requires a wisdom that is synonymous with faith. This discernment is a mystical necessity, as evidenced in the divergent perceptions of Moses and Pharaoh regarding the nature of reality. For Rumi, faith is the primary faculty of spirit that allows one to see the truth behind the illusion. Drawing on the Mosaic allegory of the rod and the serpent, Rumi posits that truth and sorcery appear identical to the unperceptive eye of Pharaoh, who lacked insight, while Moses, possessed of discernment, could distinguish divine truth from mere sorcery (Rumi 2000, p. 264; 2020, p. 224). Consequently, the fairy tale functions as a testing ground for maturity; it is a pedagogical laboratory where the wise seeker must navigate the world’s absurdity and the narrative’s ludicrous forms to discover the hidden mystery enfolded within. By refining the listener’s capacity for discrimination, the fairy tale prepares the seeker for the ultimate transition from the mediated word to the unmediated silence of truth.

6. Love, Faith, and the Dissolution of the Self

In Sufi thought, the center of this mystical encounter is love. Sufi love is understood not as an emotional bond but as the primary medium through which divine truth is realized and transmitted. As Chittick shows, for Rumi love belongs not to the theoretical but to the experiential dimension of Sufism; it “has to be experienced to be understood,” and for that very reason it exceeds the limits of articulated thought and discursive explanation (Chittick 1983, p. 194). Love appears as a transformative power that dissolves the self and pulls the subject into the heart of truth, since the reality disclosed through it cannot be grasped within the conceptual categories of the mind, but only through an inward transfiguration of the subject. In this sense, truth is not merely known but realized in the experience of divine love. Corbin’s account of the man of light clarifies this inner transformation further: the mystical path involves the growth and liberation of an inner being through stages of ascent and the transmutation of the senses into suprasensory senses, so that truth is no longer approached as an external object of knowledge but as an inwardly lived unveiling (Corbin 1994, p. 80). The cessation of speech therefore does not mean the disappearance of truth; on the contrary, it marks the point at which truth passes from verbal mediation into direct realization. Thus, the fairy tale becomes a discourse that transcends itself, and speech yields its place to the transient but immediate experience of love.

Love is the catalyst that most sharply distinguishes the Sufi ethical attitude from that of the siyasatnama tradition. In siyasatnama texts, ethical behavior is inextricably linked to the preservation of divine justice and the maintenance of earthly order. The ruler’s conduct is framed as a sacred responsibility to uphold God’s cosmic balance, rendering the speech of these narratives inherently didactic; they function as mystical calls to truth, instructing the subject to align their actions with a normative, divine framework. Conversely, the Sufi narrative shifts the foundation of ethical action from these external mechanisms of regulation toward a profound transformation rooted in divine love. Rather than reinforcing a personal subjectivity, the fairy tale facilitates the dissolution of the individual self and the transcendence of ego-based existence. Through an encounter with divine majesty, the narrative catalyzes an effacement of the ego, establishing love as the primary internal spring of conduct. Unlike the siyasatnama’s reliance on speech to regulate behavior, the Sufi fairy tale signals the very limits of speech. It does not call to truth through the medium of the speech; instead, it invites the seeker to move away from linguistic mediation toward the sanctuary of silence. In this mystical context, ethical life emerges not from adherence to an external code, but from the transcendence of the self and a surrender to the unspoken.

Sufi ethics is grounded not in fear of punishment or hope of reward, but in a love directed toward God for God’s own sake. As Mojaddedi explains, many Sufis regarded love of God as the means of overcoming the root problem of one’s own self, rather than piety and asceticism (Rumi 2004, p. xii). Rumi’s Masnavi draws a sharp distinction between genuine divine love and instrumental devotion—between loving God for His own sake and loving God simply for what He bestows (Rumi 2004, p. 170). The ethical problem, therefore, is not merely insufficient devotion, but the persistence of self-interest within devotion itself. In this sense, Sufi love requires the seeker to move beyond attachment to benefit, status, and recompense. As Chittick notes, “This carnal self (nafs) is Hell (…) to put out the fires of hell a man must pass away from self” (Chittick 2005, p. 85). This suggests that Sufi ethics begins where calculative religiosity ends: one turns to God neither for heavens nor out of dread of hell, but through a love that undoes the self’s possessive motives and reorients the subject toward the Divine as the only true end.

This reorientation toward the divine as the sole end is vividly illustrated in the Ilahi-nama. Even the delights of heaven are ultimately subordinated to the vision of God rather than valued as ends in themselves. In the tale of a young man possessed the knowledge of God, its told that: “(…) all the houris will utter cries of delight at seeing him yet the scene does not culminate in their enjoyment, for from every window the young man will look straight out behold his God there/A thousand doors will open all the time and crowds will enter by every door/But in every crowd of men and women he will see only his God” (F. a.-D. Attar 1976, p. 68). This suggests that even heavenly rewards are displaced by a higher mystical orientation in which divine presence eclipses all created goods. The inward world is described as a realm no longer reached through ordinary mediation, since intermediaries are absent there: “Since thy heart is ablaze here with love of Him, how shalt thou burn in the fire of hell?” (F. a.-D. Attar 1976, p. 142).

The danger of worldly attachment is further allegorized in the story of the “Deceitful Tailor” in Masnavi where the act of storytelling is subverted to serve as a distraction from the truth. Just as the tailor’s jests distract the client from his tightening coat, worldly distractions prevent the subject from noticing the tightening of existence. The tailor’s final warning, “If I jest any more, the coat will be too tight”, exemplifies the Sufi imperative to abandon futile speech before the garment of life is irreversibly compromised. This orientation is understood not only as knowledge but as a turn toward divine love. In this sense, the fairy tale itself becomes the deceitful tailor’s coat, a narrative garment that must be abandoned before existence is irreversibly tightened around the self, enabling the dissolution of the ego and reorienting the spirit toward the Absolute (Rumi 1925b, pp. 1708–20; 2007b, p. 706).

Rumi presents this transition from fiction to truth as a mystical experience through the Socratic metaphor of maieutic. The storyteller acts as a midwife who facilitates the painful but necessary birth of the enlightened soul through the narrative: “Until the mother’s womb with pain feels torn/There is no way her baby can be born” (Rumi 2007c, p. 147). This birth signifies the emergence of not only divine love but also the hikmah. Once hikmah is birthed, the narrative necessarily withdraws. While the discourse of the tale provides the requisite persuasion to endure the ordeal of this spiritual delivery, it must reach its conclusion the moment the baby is born. At this juncture, the personal self reaches its definitive limit and enters a state of silence, a sanctuary where the fictional boundaries between the narrator, the listener, and the truth are finally dissolved.

The ultimate destination of this silence is Nothingness (fana). In Sufi mysticism, nothingness is the realization that the ego and the material world are mere illusions. Attar describes this state as a vast unity where worldly signs lose all meaning and multiplicity is subsumed into a praiseworthy void: “Put yourself behind you. For without yourself you’re completely We! If you’re not there, then you’re there completely. If you reach nothingness, then you’re completely (praiseworthy)” (Ritter 2013, p. 607). In this absolute silence, truth is no longer constructed through the mediated speech of the fairy tale; it is manifested through the absence of the self. Maturity is not a conceptual achievement but an existential one, the realization that patience and silence are not merely virtues but the very abode of truth. Speech must eventually be abandoned. The Masnavi itself serves as the most profound evidence of this surrender. Rumi ends his magnum opus without finishing; the final story remains incomplete. By stating that his speech has “fallen asleep” Rumi performs the very silence he preaches. It is not a failure of storytelling, but a success of reaching the truth. As the speech ends and the tale concludes, the seeker arrives at a truth that exists as a circle within a circle. The fiction has served its purpose; the baby is born, and the midwife’s counsel is no longer required. The state of silence is the state of nothingness, the ultimate return to the source where speech, life, and the tale finally converge into the Absolute.

7. Conclusions

This article has argued that Islamic fairy tales function as a mystical medium of Speech, a discursive form that does not merely transmit ethical content but stages the very encounter between the divine call and the human response. In both traditions, the fairy tale operates as a threshold: a narrative structure that places the subject before a truth exceeding the boundaries of ordinary language and compels an existential response. In the siyasatnama tradition, this threshold is crossed through ethical action. The fairy tale translates divine commandments into the virtues, justice, mercy, humility, and compassion that regulate the conduct of both ruler and subject, framing governance not as a secular technique but as a sacred responsibility. Speech is the ark that gathers and preserves truth within language, ensuring that power remains perpetually answerable to something beyond itself. In the Sufi tradition, the same ethical–pedagogical grammar is deployed toward a fundamentally different end. The fairy tale does not call the subject to perfect sovereignty but to transcend it. It transforms the language of counsel into an existential summons that dissolves the very self-governance once sought to refine. Speech becomes a threshold to be crossed, language a cage to be surrendered, so that the seeker may enter the transformative silence in which divine love becomes possible. This silence is not a withdrawal from the world but its deepest traversal: an ontological reorientation in which ethical life is enacted not through the exercise of power but through its radical renunciation in love. These traditions are not as separate as they appear: one seemingly worldly, the other transcendent. In both, mystical transcendence does not suspend ethical life but enacts it most deeply. The counsel at the heart of the siyasatnama and the silence at the end of the Sufi tale are not opposites but two inflections of the same imperative: that the human being, addressed by a truth that exceeds it, must answer with the whole of its existence.