Saadi Shirazi

Saadi was born in Shiraz, Iran, according to some, shortly after 1200, according to others sometime between 1213 and 1219.[6] In the Golestan, composed in 1258, he says in lines evidently addressed to himself, "O you who have lived fifty years and are still asleep"; another piece of evidence is that in one of his qasida poems he writes that he left home for foreign lands when the Mongols came to his homeland Fars, an event which occurred in 1225.[7] Saadi was a Sunni Muslim.[8]

Saadi Shirazi whose family were from religious scholars, lost his father when he was a child. Then he was under the guardianship of his maternal grandmother.[9] He narrates memories of going out with his father as a child during festivities.

After leaving Shiraz he enrolled at the Nizamiyya University in Baghdad, where he studied Islamic sciences, law, governance, history, Persian literature, and Islamic theology; it appears that he had a scholarship to study there. In the Golestan, he tells us that he studied under the scholar Abu'l-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi (presumably the younger of two scholars of that name, who died in 1238).[10]

In the Bustan and Golestan Saadi tells many colourful anecdotes of his travels, although some of these, such as his supposed visit to the remote eastern city of Kashgar in 1213, may be fictional.[11] The unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Khwarezm and Iran led him to wander for thirty years abroad through Anatolia (where he visited the Port of Adana and near Konya met ghazi landlords), Syria (where he mentions the famine in Damascus), Egypt (where he describes its music, bazaars, clerics and elites), and Iraq (where he visits the port of Basra and the Tigris river). In his writings he mentions 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 its 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 to Mecca and Medina.[12] 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 he was forced to live in desolate areas and met caravans fearing for their lives on 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.

Saadi Shirazi is welcomed by a youth from Kashgar during a forum in Bukhara.

Saadi mentions honey-gatherers in Azarbaijan, fearful of Mongol plunder. He finally returns to Persia where he meets his childhood companions in Isfahan and other cities. At Khorasan Saadi befriends a Turkic Emir named Tughral. Saadi joins him and his men on their journey to Sindh where he meets Pir Puttur, a follower of the Persian Sufi grand master Shaikh Usman Marvandvi (1117–1274).[13]

He also refers in his writings about his travels with a Turkic Amir named Tughral in Sindh (Pakistan across the Indus and Thar), India (especially Somnath, where he encounters Brahmans), and Central Asia (where he meets the survivors of the Mongol invasion in Khwarezm). Tughral hires Hindu sentinels. Tughral later enters service of the wealthy Delhi Sultanate, and Saadi is invited to Delhi and later visits the Vizier of Gujarat. During his stay in Gujarat, Saadi learns more about the Hindus and visits the large temple of Somnath, from which he flees due to an unpleasant encounter with the Brahmans. Katouzian calls this story "almost certainly fictitious".[14] Saadi says:[15][16]

Saadi came back to Shiraz before 1257 CE / 655 AH (the year he finished composition of his Bustan). Saadi mourned in his poetry the fall of Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad's destruction by Mongol invaders led by Hulagu in February 1258.

When he reappeared in his native Shiraz, he might have been in his late forties. Shiraz, under Atabak Abubakr ibn Sa'd ibn Zangi (1231–60), the Salghurid ruler of Fars, was enjoying an era of relative tranquility. Saadi was not only welcomed to the city but was shown great respect by the ruler and held to be among the greats of the province. Some scholars believe that Saadi took his nom de plume (in Persian takhallos) from the name of Abubakr's son, Sa'd, to whom he dedicated the Golestan; however, Katouzian argues that it is likely that Saadi had already taken the name from Abubakr's father Sa'd ibn Zangi (d. 1226).[17] Some of Saadi's most famous panegyrics were composed as a gesture of gratitude in praise of the ruling house and placed at the beginning of his Bustan. The remainder of Saadi's life seems to have been spent in Shiraz.

The traditional date for Saadi's death is between 1291 and 1294.[10]

Saadi distinguished between the spiritual and the practical or mundane aspects of life. In his Bustan, for example, spiritual Saadi uses the mundane world as a spring board to propel himself beyond the earthly realms. The images in Bustan are delicate in nature and soothing. In the Gulistan, on the other hand, mundane Saadi lowers the spiritual to touch the heart of his fellow wayfarers. Here the images are graphic and, thanks to Saadi's dexterity, remain concrete in the reader's mind. Realistically, too, there is a ring of truth in the division. The Sheikh preaching in the Khanqah experiences a totally different world than the merchant passing through a town. The unique thing about Saadi is that he embodies both the Sufi Sheikh and the travelling merchant. They are, as he himself puts it, two almond kernels in the same shell.

Saadi's prose style, described as "simple but impossible to imitate" flows quite naturally and effortlessly. Its simplicity, however, is grounded in a semantic web consisting of synonymy, homophony, and oxymoron buttressed by internal rhythm and external rhyme.

Chief among works influenced by Saadi is Goethe's West-Oestlicher Divan. Andre du Ryer was the first European to present Saadi to the West, by means of a partial French translation of Gulistan in 1634. Adam Olearius followed soon with a complete translation of the Bustan and the Gulistan into German in 1654.

In his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel wrote (on the Arts translated by Henry Paolucci, 2001, p. 155–157):

Pantheistic poetry has had, it must be said, a higher and freer development in the Islamic world, especially among the Persians ... The full flowering of Persian poetry comes at the height of its complete transformation in speech and national character, through Mohammedanism ... In later times, poetry of this order [Ferdowsi's epic poetry] had a sequel in love epics of extraordinary tenderness and sweetness; but there followed also a turn toward the didactic, where, with a rich experience of life, the far-traveled Saadi was master before it submerged itself in the depths of the pantheistic mysticism taught and recommended in the extraordinary tales and legendary narrations of the great Jalal-ed-Din Rumi.

Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia's most celebrated poets, quotes Saadi in his work Eugene Onegin, "as Saadi sang in earlier ages, 'some are far distant, some are dead'."[34] Gulistan was an influence on the fables of Jean de La Fontaine.[18] Benjamin Franklin in one of his works, DLXXXVIII A Parable on Persecution, quotes one of Saadi's parables from Bustan, apparently without knowing the source.[35] Ralph Waldo Emerson was also interested in Saadi's writings, contributing to some translated editions himself. Emerson, who read Saadi only in translation, compared his writing to the Bible in terms of its wisdom and the beauty of its narrative.[36]

The French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot's third given name is from Saadi's name. It was chosen by his father, Lazare Carnot, because of his great interest in Saadi and his poems.

Voltaire was thrilled with his works, especially Gulistan; he enjoyed being called "Saadi" as a nickname among his friends.

U.S. President Barack Obama quoted the first two lines of this poem in his New Year's greeting to the people of Iran on March 20, 2009, "But let us remember the words that were written by the poet Saadi, so many years ago: 'The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence.'"[37]

In 1976, a crater on Mercury was named in his honor.[38]

Saadi Shirazi's commemoration day

Annually, on April 21 (Apr. 20 in leap years) a crowd of foreign tourists and Iranians gather at Saadi's tomb in order to mark the day.[39][40]

This commemoration day[41][42] is held on the 1st of Ordibehesht, the second month of the Solar Hijri calendar (see Iranian calendar),[43][44][45] the day on which Saadi states that he finished the Golestan in 1256.

• 
  Saadi's mausoleum in Shiraz, Iran
• 
  Mosaic in his mausoleum
• 
  Tomb of Saadi in his mausoleum
• 
  Tomb of Sheikh Saadi by Eugène Flandin, 1851
• 
  Tomb of Saadi by Pascal Coste, 1867
• 
  Tomb of Saadi from sky, April 20, 2014
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  Tomb of Saadi's entrance, April 20, 2014
• 
  The entrance part of Saadi's tomb, Sep 18 2017
• 
  Inside tomb of Saadi-Shirazi, 18 December 2016

• List of Persian poets and authors
• Persian literature in the West
• Islamic scholars
• Tomb of Anarkali

• Browne, E.G. (1906, reprinted 1956). Literary History of Persia, volume 2: From Firdawsí to Sa'dí. Cambridge University Press.
• Chopra, R.M., "Great Poets of Classical Persian", Sparrow Publication, Kolkata, 2014, (ISBN 978-81-89140-75-5)
• Homerin, Th. Emil (1983). "Sa'di's Somnatiyah". Iranian Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1/2 (Winter - Spring, 1983), pp. 31–50.
• Ingenito, Domenico (2020). Beholding Beauty: Sa'di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry. Brill.
• Katouzian, Homa (2006). Sa'di, the Poet of Life, Love and Compassion (A comprehensive study of Sa'di and his works). 2006. ISBN 1-85168-473-5
• Southgate, Minoo S. (1984). "Men, Women, and Boys: Love and Sex in the Works of Sa'di". Iranian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 413–452.
• Wickens, G.M. (1985), The Bustan of Sheikh Moslehedin Saadi Shirazi (English translation and the Persian original). 1985. Iranian National Commission for Unesco, No. 46
• Rypka, Jan (1968). History of Iranian Literature. Reidel Publishing Company. OCLC 460598. ISBN 90-277-0143-1
• Thackston, W. M. (2008). The Gulistan of Sa'di. (Bilingual. English translation, Persian text on facing page). ISBN 978-1-58814-058-6

• Ingenito, Domenico (2020). Beholding Beauty: Sa'di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry. Brill.
• J.N. Mattock, "The Early History of the Maqama," "Journal of Arabic Literature", Vol. 25, 1989, pp 1–18

• Quotations related to Saadi at Wikiquote
• Works by or about Saadi at Wikisource
• Media related to Sa'di at Wikimedia Commons
• Iran Chamber Society information: Persian Language & Literature: Saadi Shirazi
• Works by or about Saadi Shirazi at Internet Archive
• Works by Saadi Shirazi at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) (in English)
• The Bustan of Saadi 1911 English edition by A. Hart Edwards
• The Gulistan of Sa'di
• The Bustan of Saadi, English translation, 74 p., Iran Chamber
• Pictures of Sa'di's Tomb in Shiraz
• (in English and Arabic) "Verses in Persian and Chaghatay" featuring work by Sa'di, c. 1600
• (in English and Arabic) Ghazal by Sa'di
• News story about United Nations "Bani Adam" carpet
• Photograph of the carpet containing Saadi's Bani Adam presented to the United Nations
  • cf. Payvand News Aug. 24, 2005
• Bani Adam recited in Persian by Amir H. Ghaseminejad
• Introduction to the Golestan recited in Persian by Hamidreza Mohammadi