In Farid al-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds, the tale of the fool who falls into the water uses his large, burdensome beard as an allegory for the ego (nafs). When advised to discard what appears to be a 'nosebag' weighing him down, the fool admits that the burden is his own beard. The poem explicitly compares this clinging ego to the internal tyrants 'Pharaoh and Haman,' illustrating that the self-absorption symbolized by the heavy beard threatens to drown the seeker and must be fought vigorously on the spiritual path.