Simurgh
c. 500 BCE – 1600 CEattested
Iranian plateau
- Iranian
Enormous benevolent bird, old enough to have seen the world destroyed three times, who raises an abandoned child in the Shahnameh and later becomes a Sufi image for God.
Known for
- immense age and wisdom
- healing feathers
- the birds who become God
Dates are estimates. A great deal of what this atlas covers is only datable to within a century.