Birds Dying in the Air
“I saw birds dwelling in the air. They were eating their daily bread and dying in the air. Then I passed that place and saw a sea that was floating in the air. Its name was Fate (qaziya).”1
The birds are dying because of the sea collapsing itself onto the sky, causing the birds to surrender to fate and eat bread that is poisoned by the polluted seawater.
The militarization of birds in Islamic literature is rooted in their position between the earthly sky and the sea, where the sky is the plane of celestial orders and the sea is the plane of fate.
What happens when the birds which should be obeying heavens’ orders of violence start dying mid-air?
Abrahah shares the name of a bird, and built a church, when birds die their sounds become church bells. Abraha is a militarized bird, the orders coming from another heaven, a dying heaven.
Christiane Gruber (trans.), The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Devotional Tale, (London: I.B. Tauris 2010)