A01422 - Saadi Shirazi, The 13th Century "Master" of Persian Poetry Who Wrote "The Rose Garden"

 Saadi Shirazi, better known by his pen name Saadi but also known as Sadi of Shiraz (b. 1209 or 1210, Shiraz, Atabegs of Fars [Iran] ; d.  December 9, 1291 or 1292, Shiraz, Ilkhanate [Iran]), was a Persian poet and prose writer of the medieval period. He is recognized for the quality of his writings and for the depth of his social and moral thoughts.

Saadi is widely recognized as one of the greatest poets of the classical literary tradition, earning him the nickname "The Master of Speech" or "The Wordsmith" or simply "The Master" among Persian  scholars. He has been quoted in the Western traditions as well.  Saadi's master opus, Bustan (The Orchard), has been ranked as one of the 100 greatest books of all time by The Guardian. 

Saadi (Shaykh Muslih al-Din Sa‘di) (Musharrif al-Din bin Muslih Sa‘di) (Abu Muhammad Musharrif al-Din Muslih ibn Abd Allah Shirazi) (Sa'di) (Abu-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Din bin Abdallah Shirazi) (Musharrif al-Din ibn Muṣlih al-Din) was born in 1209 or 1210 in Shiraz, which is today in Iran.  He lost his father, Muṣliḥ al-Din, in early childhood.  Later he was sent to study in Baghdad at the renowned Neẓamiyeh College (Nizamiyya University), where he acquired the traditional learning of Islam. 

The unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Khwarezm and Persia (Iran) led Saadi to wander for thirty years abroad through Anatolia (where he visited the Port of Adana and near Konya where he met with ghazi landlords), Syria (where Saadi observed the famine in Damascus), Egypt (where Saadi described Egypt's music, bazaars, clerics and elites), and Iraq (where Saadi visitsed the port of Basra and the Tigris river). In his writings, Saadi mentioned the qadis, muftis of Al-Azhar, the grand bazaar, music and art. At Halab, Saadi joins a group of Sufis who had fought arduous battles against the Crusaders. Saadi was captured by Crusaders at Acre where he spent seven years as a slave digging trenches outside the Crusaders' fortress. He was later released after the Mamluks paid ransom for Muslim prisoners being held in Crusader dungeons.

Saadi visited Jerusalem and then set out on a pilgrimage -- a hajj -- to Mecca and Medina. It is believed that he may have also visited Oman and other lands in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. 

Because of the Mongol invasions, Saadi was forced to live in desolate areas and met caravans fearing for their lives on the once-lively silk trade routes. Saadi lived in isolated refugee camps where he met bandits, Imams, men who formerly owned great wealth or commanded armies, intellectuals, and ordinary people. While Mongol and European sources (such as Marco Polo) gravitated to the potentates and courtly life of Ilkhanate rule, Saadi mingled with the ordinary survivors of the war-torn region. He sat in remote tea houses late into the night and exchanged views with merchants, farmers, preachers, wayfarers, thieves, and Sufi mendicants. For twenty years or more, he continued the same schedule of preaching, advising, and learning, honing his sermons to reflect the wisdom and foibles of his people. Saadi's works reflect upon the lives of ordinary Iranians suffering displacement, agony and conflict during the turbulent times of the Mongol invasion.

After three decades of wandering, when Saadi returned to his native Shiraz, he was middle-aged. He appears to have spent the rest of his life in Shiraz.

Saadi took his nom de plume from the name of a local atabeg (prince), Saʿd ibn Zangi. Saʿdi’s best-known works are the Bustan (The Orchard), dated 1257, and the Gulistan (The Rose Garden), dated 1258. The Bustan is entirely in verse (epic meter) and consists of stories aptly illustrating the standard virtues recommended to Muslims (justice, liberality, modesty, contentment) as well as of reflections on the behavior of dervishes and their ecstatic practices. The Gulistan is mainly in prose and contains stories and personal anecdotes. The text is interspersed with a variety of short poems, containing aphorisms, advice, and humorous reflections. The morals preached in the Gulistān border on expediency—e.g., a well-intended lie is admitted to be preferable to a seditious truth. Saadi demonstrates a profound awareness of the absurdity of human existence. The fate of those who depend on the changeable moods of kings is contrasted with the freedom of the dervishes.

For Western students the Bustan and Gulistan have a special attraction.  However, Saadi is also remembered as a great panegyrist and lyricist and as the author of a number of masterly general odes portraying human experience and also of particular odes such as the lament on the fall of Baghdad after the Mongol invasion in 1258. His lyrics are to be found in Ghazaliyat (“Lyrics”) and his odes in Qaṣaʿid (“Odes”). Six prose treatises on various subjects are attributed to him; he is also known for a number of works in Arabic. The peculiar blend of human kindness and cynicism, humor, and resignation displayed in Saadi’s works, together with a tendency to avoid the hard dilemma, make him, to many, the most widely admired writer in the world of Iranian culture. 

In the Bustan, Saadi writes of a man who relates his time in battle with the Mongols:

In Isfahan I had a friend who was warlike, spirited, and shrewd....after long I met him: "O tiger-seizer!" I exclaimed, "what has made thee decrepit like an old fox?"

He laughed and said: "Since the days of war against the Mongols, I have expelled the thoughts of fighting from my head. Then did I see the earth arrayed with spears like a forest of reeds. I raised like smoke the dust of conflict; but when Fortune does not favor, of what avail is fury? I am one who, in combat, could take with a spear a ring from the palm of the hand; but, as my star did not befriend me, they encircled me as with a ring. I seized the opportunity of flight, for only a fool strives with Fate. How could my helmet and cuirass aid me when my bright star favored me not? When the key of victory is not in the hand, no one can break open the door of conquest with his arms.

The enemy were a pack of leopards, and as strong as elephants. The heads of the heroes were encased in iron, as were also the hoofs of the horses. We urged on our Arab steeds like a cloud, and when the two armies encountered each other thou wouldst have said they had struck the sky down to the earth. From the raining of arrows, that descended like hail, the storm of death arose in every corner. Not one of our troops came out of the battle but his cuirass was soaked with blood. Not that our swords were blunt—it was the vengeance of stars of ill fortune. Overpowered, we surrendered, like a fish which, though protected by scales, is caught by the hook in the bait. Since Fortune averted her face, useless was our shield against the arrows of Fate.

One enduring tribute to Saadi resides in the United Nations building in New York City. In the building the largest carpet to adorn the wall of the United Nations is a gift from the people of Iran. The carpet, installed in 2005, hangs in a meeting room inside the United Nations building Alongside it are the wonderful words of the great Persian poet, Saadi:

All human beings are members of one frame,
Since all, at first, from the same essence came.
When time afflicts a limb with pain
The other limbs at rest cannot remain.
If thou feel not for others misery
A human being is no name for thee. 

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Browne, E.G. (1906, reprinted 1956). Literary History of Persia; Cambridge University Press. 

Chopra, R.M. (2014). "Great Poets of Classical Persian"; Sparrow Publication, Kolkata, 

Esposito, John L. (1998). The Oxford History of Islam;  Oxford University Press.

Ingenito, Domenico (2020). Beholding Beauty: Sa'di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry; Brill.

Jenkins, Everett, Jr. (1999). The Muslim Diaspora: A Comprehensive Reference to the Spread of Islam in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, Volume 1, 570-1500; Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Company, Inc.

Khan, Muhammad Mojlum (2008).  The Muslim 100: The Lives, Thoughts and Achievements of the Most Influential Muslims in History; Leicestershire, United Kingdom: Kube Publishing Ltd.

Lapidus, Ira M. (2014).  A History of Islamic Societies; New York City, New York, Cambridge University Press. 

Miles, Jack (general ed.) (2015).  The Norton Anthology of World Religions, New York City, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Rypka, Jan (1968). History of Iranian Literature; Reidel Publishing Company. 

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saadi_Shirazi

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sadi

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/08/books.booksnews

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