Tehran - Sheikh Saadi, full name in English, Muslih-ud-Din Mushrif-ibn-Abdullah (1184 – around 1291) is one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is recognized not only for the quality of his writing, but also for the depth of his social thought.

A native of Shiraz, Persia, Shiekh Saadi left his native town at a young age for Baghdad to study Arabic literature and Islamic sciences at Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad (1195-1226).

Following the invasion of Mongols, the unsettled conditions of Persia led him to wander abroad through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. During his lifetime, Saadi had also the chance to travel to India and Central Asia. He sat in remote teahouses 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, learning, honing his sermons, and polishing them into gems illuminating the wisdom and foibles of his people.

When he got back to his native city, Shiraz, he was almost an old man. At that time, under the reign of Atabak Abubakr Sa’d ibn Zangy (1231-60), Shiraz, was in a state of relative tranquility. Saadi was not only welcomed to the city, but was also respected highly by the ruler and enumerated among the greats of the province. In response, Saadi took his nom de plume from the name of the local prince; Sa’d ibn Zangi, and composed some of his most delightful panegyrics as an initial gesture of gratitude in praise of the ruling house and placed them at the beginning of his Bostan. He seems to have spent the rest of his life in Shiraz.

His best known works are the Boostan written in 1257(The Orchard) and the Golestan in 1258 (The Rose Garden). The Boostan is a composition of stories and maxims each representing a flower of this garden. Boostan is famous due to its eloquence of style, clear language, moral guidance and counseling through the art of poetry. Saadi himself describes this book as: I traveled in many regions of the globe and passed the days in the company of many men. I reaped advantages in every corner, and gleaned an ear of corn from every harvest. I regretted that I should go from the garden of the world empty-handed to my friends, and reflected: “Travelers bring sugar candy from Egypt as a present to their friends. Although I have no candy, yet have I words that are sweeter. The sugar that I bring is not that which is eaten, but what knower of truth take away with respect…”

The Golestan is mainly in prose and contains stories and personal anecdotes. The text is interspersed with a variety of short poems, containing aphorisms, pieces of advices, and humorous reflections. 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.

Sa’adi is mainly recognized as the first Persian poet to employ the lyric to illustrate the principles and problems of love. Saadi’s work has been translated by a number of major Western poets. For Western students the Boostan and Golestan have a special attraction; but Saadi is also remembered as a great panegyric and lyricist, 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 Qasa’id (Odes). 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, has made him one of the most typical and lovable writers in the world of Iranian culture.

Saadi distinguished between the spiritual and the practical or mundane aspects of life. In Boostan, for example, spiritual Saadi uses the mundane world as a spring board to propel himself beyond the earthly realms. The images in Boostan are delicate in nature and
soothing. On the other hand, in Golestan, 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 Shaykh preaching in the Khaniqah experiences a totally different world than the merchant passing through a town. The unique thing about Saadi is that he embodies both the Sufi Shaykh and the traveling 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 these works 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 Golestan in 1634. Adam Olearius followed soon with a complete translation of the Boostan and the Golestan into German in 1654. Ralph Waldo Emerson was also an avid fan of Saadi’s writings, contributing to some translated editions himself.

Saadi died in his hometown of Shiraz. From the very early days after his death, Saadi’s tomb in Shiraz became a place of pilgrimage to lovers of poetry and literature. “The tomb of Saadi of Shiraz will scent of love, even a thousand years after his death”, this line of poetry composed by Saadi, has been inscribed on the gate leading into the garden surrounding the tomb, welcomes all those who enter to pay homage to this master of the Persian poetry and literature.

Since 1996, every year 21st of April is celebrated as Commemoration Day of Sa’adi, founder of Shiraz literary wave, with presence of a large number of intellectuals, writers, poets and his disciples in city of Shiraz, where his tomb is located and many other cities both inside and outside the country. According to Kourosh Kamali Sarvestani, head of Center for Sa’adi Studies, this year some special programs and lectures is being organized by this center with cooperation of National Library and Achieve of Iran, Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Organization of Fars province, Islamic Culture and Relations Department of Fars province, the Endowments and Charity Affairs Organization of Fars province, and non-governmental high education Institute of Hafiz Shiraz.

One of his more famous quotes is, “Whatever is produced in haste goes easily to waste.” Another famous poem focuses on the kinship of mankind.

The same poem is used to grace the entrance to the Hall of Nations of the UN building in New York City, with this call for breaking all barriers:

All human beings are in truth akin,
All in creation share one origin;
When fate allots a member pangs and pain,
No ease for other members then remains;
If, unperturbed, another’s grief canst scan,
Thou are not worthy of the name of man.

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(pi) Source: CHN