c. 1145 – c. 1221 · Persian Sufi poet and hagiographer of Nishapur
Farid ud-Din Attar was a Persian poet, theoretician of Sufism and hagiographer from Nishapur, best known for The Conference of the Birds and the Memorial of the Saints; he shaped Persian mystical poetry and influenced Rumi directly. His Ilāhī-Nāma (“Book of God”), a poem of roughly 6,500 verses built from anecdotal tales, is where the fable of the king and the consoling ring is recorded. He is a transmitter here, not an author — the adage was already folk material moving through Persian and Jewish storytelling, and no single person can be shown to have coined it.