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Sa'di (Abu-Muhammad Muslih al-Din bin Abdallah Shirazi)
Abu-Muhammad Muslih al-Din bin Abdallah, known to posterity as Sa'di, is remembered as one of the central figures of classical Persian letters. Born around 1210, most likely in Shiraz in the region historically known as Persia, and dying around 1292, he lived through one of the most turbulent centuries of the medieval Middle East. His reputation rests chiefly on his mastery of both elegant Persian prose and supple verse, and on a moral vision that joined worldly wisdom with spiritual insight.

Early Life and Education
Little is firmly documented about Sa'di's childhood, but later sources consistently place his origins in Shiraz, a city with a lively culture of learning and piety. He is often associated with study in Baghdad, then a leading center of scholarship. Reports connect him with the celebrated Nizamiyya college and with Sufi networks, especially those influenced by the eminent guide Shihab al-Din Umar al-Suhrawardi. Whether or not every detail of these affiliations can be verified, Sa'di's mature works clearly display training in theology, ethics, rhetoric, and the adab tradition of cultivated letters.

Travel and Formation
Sa'di's writings present him as a tireless traveler who sought knowledge and experience across the Islamic world. He refers to journeys through Iraq and Syria, time spent in Anatolia and Egypt, and pilgrimages to the Hijaz. These travels, framed as both quest and instruction, furnish the locales, characters, and dilemmas that animate his tales. He situates anecdotes in places marked by shifting powers, from Ayyubid and early Mamluk domains to regions affected by Crusader garrisons, and he dwells on encounters with merchants, mendicants, jurists, and rulers. One oft-repeated episode in his own storytelling involves capture and hardship in the Levant; whether strictly historical or a literary device, such scenes serve his ethical purpose: to show the instability of fortune and the need for patience and compassion.

Return to Shiraz and Major Works
Sa'di is closely linked to the court of the Salghurid Atabaks of Fars, particularly Abu Bakr ibn Sa'd ibn Zangi and his son Sa'd II. He took the pen name Sa'di in their honor, and he dedicated his major books to them. Around the late 1250s, he produced his two best-known works. The Bustan (The Orchard), composed in rhymed couplets, is a compendium of moral narrative: chapters on justice, beneficence, love, humility, and contentment unfold through parables that balance piety with shrewd counsel. The Gulistan (The Rose Garden), written largely in finely cadenced prose interspersed with verse, offers brief tales, maxims, and portraits of society that are at once humorous, satirical, and humane. Together they exemplify a Persian style in which clarity and brevity carry ethical weight.

Beyond these, Sa'di composed lyric ghazals, panegyrics, didactic odes, and epigrams, in Persian and in Arabic. His ghazals often explore the registers of love and longing, while his didactic poems and prose praise justice and expose hypocrisy. The range of tone is wide: from gentle irony to stern rebuke, from devotional fervor to urbane wit.

Themes, Style, and Ethic
Sa'di's central moral concerns are pragmatic without being cynical. He insists on justice from rulers, charity and modesty from the prosperous, and endurance from the afflicted. He condemns cruelty, vanity, and pretension, yet he also highlights the limits of human knowledge and the need for mercy in judgment. His aphoristic craft distills complex experience into compact lines that became proverbial across Persianate societies. The cadence of his prose and verse makes his insights memorable, and his characters, dervishes, judges, gatekeepers, kings, and beggars, embody his conviction that dignity and folly are distributed across all stations of life.

Historical Context
The century of Sa'di's life encompassed the Mongol advance into the Islamic heartlands and the fall of Baghdad in 1258. Hulegu Khan's campaigns ended the Abbasid caliphate, and the new Ilkhanid order reshaped the political map of Iran and Iraq. Within Fars, however, prudent accommodation helped spare Shiraz the worst devastation. Sa'di's praise for Abu Bakr ibn Sa'd suggests the value he placed on temperate rule in an age of upheaval. His contemporaries included figures such as Jalal al-Din Rumi, whose mystical verse was transforming Persian poetry in Konya, and the Sufi exemplar Shams al-Din Tabrizi, renowned for igniting Rumi's inspiration. While Sa'di's path and temperament differ from theirs, their shared time underscores the vitality and diversity of the era's intellectual life.

Reception and Influence
From early on, Sa'di's works were read in courtly circles and humble schools alike. The Bustan and Gulistan became handbooks of conduct and eloquence for administrators, judges, and students across Iran, Anatolia, Central Asia, and South Asia. The Gulistan's blend of prose and verse made it a favored text for instruction in style and ethics, and its stories were copied, glossed, and memorized for centuries. Beginning in the early modern period, selections were translated into European languages, and his reputation spread further as an exemplar of concise moral reasoning joined to graceful writing. His statements on the kinship of humankind, the duties of hospitality, and the dangers of arrogance resonated across cultures and periods.

Later Years and Death
Sa'di appears to have spent his later years in or near Shiraz, recognized by patrons and readers as a master of eloquence and counsel. He is said to have continued composing shorter pieces and revising earlier collections while receiving visitors seeking advice. Tradition places his burial in Shiraz, where his memory would be honored by later generations; he is often cited as a literary forebear by poets who came after him. He died around 1292, leaving a body of work that survived far beyond the dynasties and courts to which it was first addressed.

Legacy
Sa'di's enduring stature rests on an art that makes ethical reflection vivid, portable, and humane. He wrote not to withdraw from the world but to improve conduct within it, instructing rulers to temper force with mercy and reminding ordinary people to balance aspiration with restraint. By grounding universal values in concrete scenes and spare language, he gave later readers, scholars, officials, merchants, and travelers, tools to think with. The figures around him, from patrons such as Abu Bakr ibn Sa'd and Sa'd II to distant contemporaries like Rumi and statesmen who maneuvered before Mongol power, form the backdrop to a career in which literature became a public service. In that service, Sa'di remains a touchstone for clarity of speech and breadth of sympathy in Persian literature and beyond.

Our collection contains 3 quotes who is written by Sa'Di, under the main topics: Love - Tough Times - Humility.