About Sa'di
Sheikh Sa‘di (in Persian: سعدی, full name in English: Muslih-ud-Din
Mushrif-ibn-Abdullah) (1184 - 1283/1291?) 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.
Biography
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).
The
unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Persia led him to wander
abroad through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. He also refers in his work to
travels in India and Central Asia. Saadi is very much like Marco Polo who
traveled in the region from 1271 to 1294. There is a difference, however,
between the two. While Marco Polo gravitated to the potentates and the good
life, Saadi mingled with the ordinary survivors of the Mongol holocaust. 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 reappeared in his native Shiraz he was an elderly man.
Shiraz, under Atabak Abubakr Sa'd ibn Zangy (1231-60) was enjoying an era of
relative tranquility. Saadi was not only welcomed to the city but was 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 works
His best known works are the (Bostan) in 1257(The Orchard) and the (Gulistan) in
1258(The Rose Garden). The Bostan is entirely in verse (epic metre) and consists
of stories aptly illustrating the standard virtues recommended to Muslims
(justice, liberality, modesty, contentment) as well as of reflections on the
behaviour of dervishes and their ecstatic practices. The Golestan 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. 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 Bostan
and Golestan have a special attraction; but Saadi is also remembered as a great
panegyrics 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, make him, to many, the most typical and
lovable writer in the world of Iranian culture.
Saadi distinguished between
the spiritual and the practical or mundane aspects of life. In his Bostan, for
example, spiritual Saadi uses the mundane world as a spring board to propel
himself beyond the earthly realms. The images in Bostan are delicate in nature
and soothing. In the Golestan, 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 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 Golistan in 1634. Adam Olearius followed soon with a
complete translation of the Bustan and the Golistan into German in 1654. Ralph
Waldo Emerson was also an avid fan of Sa'di's writings, contributing to some
translated editions himself.
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 with this call for breaking all barriers:
|
که در آفرينش ز يك گوهرند |
بنى آدم اعضاء يك پیکرند
|
|
دگر عضوها را نماند قرار |
چو عضوى به درد آورد روزگار |
|
نشاید که نامت نهند ادمی |
تو که از محنت دیگران بیغمی |
|
Of one Essence is the human race,
Thusly has Creation put the Base;
One Limb impacted is sufficient,
For all Others to feel the Mace.
|
Gulistan (English Translation)
Below is an English translation of Gulistan
by Sheikh Muslih-uddin Sa'di Shirazi , Abridged and Translated by by Sir Edwin Arnold, [1899].
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