Sa’di, Moslehoddin

(Saadi)

(ca. 1200–1292)

   Sa’di, one of the most widely read writers in the Muslim world, is the author of two major works, Bustan (The orchard) and Golestan (The rose garden), the latter of which is second only to the KORAN in its popularity among Muslim readers, and was the first Persian text translated into a European language. Like Shakespeare in English, Sa’di’s works are so well known that he is often quoted in everyday speech.

   Sa’di was born in the city of Shiraz in what today is southern Iran. Not much is known about his life, but it is generally accepted that he spent some time studying in Baghdad and probably Damascus. Certainly the knowledge of the Koran, Islamic law and society, and Arabic and Persian literary history evident in his works indicates he was well educated. It is certain that he made pilgrimages to Mecca and probably to Medina more than once, and it can be conjectured from anecdotes he includes in his works that his extensive travels may have taken him as far as Morocco, Abyssinia, Byzantium, and India, and, at one point, put him into contact with European crusaders. He also seems to have become acquainted with wandering Sufi mystical teachers, or “dervishes,” for whom he formed a deep sympathy.

   After some 30 years of travel as a student and a teacher, Sa’di returned to Shiraz in 1256, when he began his writing career. His first important text, Bustan, was completed in 1257, and dedicated to the Zangid caliph of Shiraz, whom he admired for keeping a peaceful and ordered city. The Bustan consists of 4,100 rhymed couplets, and includes a number of stories illustrating the virtues all Muslims were expected to demonstrate.

   Sa’di completed his best-known text the following year: Golestan consists mainly of prose passages interspersed with occasional short lyric poems. The work is in the adab tradition, the ideal of Muslim literature that combines moral instruction with a beautiful and vivid poetic style.Muslims did not consider pure fiction a form of true literature, but found it permissible to include stories, as Sa’di does, to illustrate moral points.

   The Golestan is made up of an introduction followed by eight books, each on a different topic: the first two, “On the Nature of Shahs” and “On the Morals of Dervishes,” focus on those whom Sa’di saw as representing political and religious authority. Stories included in these and the other six books sometimes only loosely or tangentially relate to the subject. Sa’di includes a huge range of topics, from the mystical to the erotic, and gives good, commonsense counsel on proper moral behavior in virtually any given situation.

   Sa’di’s minor works include a few panegyrics in praise of the caliph of Shiraz and other Persian rulers, as well as a series of GHAZALS. Sa’di is probably the first Persian poet to use the ghazal as a vehicle for love poetry.

   After about 1260, the city of Shiraz came under the rule of the Mongols, and Sa’di is thought to have spent the last years of his life in a Sufi religious community in Shiraz.He died in about 1292, at approximately 90 years of age.

   Sa’di’s influence and popularity have been enormous. For centuries Golestan has been the primary text in Persian reading classes. It was translated into Turkish as early as the 14th century, and was translated into German in 1654. French, Latin, Dutch, and English translations soon followed, and the Bustan was translated into English in the 17th century as well. And although in recent years tastes have moved away from it somewhat, for 700 years the Golestan was considered to be the ideal model of prose style in the Persian language.

   Bibliography

   ■ Sa’di, Moslehoddin. The Bostan of Saadi (The Orchard). Translated by Barlas Mirza Aquil-Hussain. New York: Octagon Press, 1998.

   ■ ———.The Gulistan, or Rose Garden, of Sa’di. Translated by Edward Rehatsek. London: Allen and Unwin, 1964.

   ■ ———. Morals Pointed and Tales Adorned: The Bustan of Sa’di. Translated by G. M.Wickens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.