In Farid al-Din Attar's 'The Conference of the Birds', the duck represents the seeker who is hindered by an obsession with external cleanliness and religious ritualism (zuhd). The duck's excuse for refusing the journey is its inability to leave the water, which it perceives as the only site of its sanctity and ritual perfection. The Hoopoe refutes this by explaining that while water cleanses the body, the soul's journey toward the Simorgh requires a different kind of purification—one involving the 'fire' of spiritual longing and the abandonment of comfortable, formalist attachments.