Note: As well as being available individually, this item is also included in the Antioch Gate Islamic Golden Age Library on DVDROM, priced £49.95 plus £4 P&P - see our main page for details. To purchase the DVDROM, you may use the electronic PayPal service (press the DVDROM's "Add to Cart" button below):

Or you may post a cheque, Draft Order or Postal Order made payable to Antioch Gate, addressed to:

Antioch Gate

PO Box 14507
Birmingham
B25 9ET
UNITED KINGDOM

Note: The sample page images from the text, shown above, are of deliberately reduced quality

WISDOM OF THE EAST

SADI’S

LONDON

1906

CONTENTS

Introduction – p. 9
Prayer – p. 29
In Praise of Muhammad – p. 30
Address to the Soul – p. 30
In Praise of Generosity – p. 31
Description of Benevolence – p. 32
In Condemnation of Parsimony – p. 33
Description of Humility – p. 34
In Condemnation of Pride – p. 36
On the Excellence of Learning – p. 37
As Regards Avoiding the Society of the Ignorant – p. 38
Description of Justice – p. 40
Condemnation of Oppression – p. 42
Description of Contentment – p. 43
In Condemnation of Avarice – p. 44
Description of Obedience and Worship – p. 46
In Condemnation of Satan – p. 49
In Explanation of the Wine of Affection and Love – p. 50
As to the Nature of Fidelity – p. 52
On the Excellence of Gratitude – p. 53
In Explanation of Patience – p. 54
Description of Rectitude – p. 55
In Condemnation of Lying – p. 56
On the Vicissitudes of Fortune and Differences of Station – p. 57
Against Placing Hope in Created Beings – p. 60

______________________________________

The following summary draws upon various sources, for example:

A Sacred poetry website
An Iran Chamber Societry article on Sadi
A general Iranian website
Another general Iranian website
A Wikipedia article on Sadi
An Iranian literature website

Muslih ud-Din Abu Muhammad Abdullah ibn Mushrif ud-Din Sadi, also called Shaykh Sadi and Sadi Shirazi, was born in Shiraz in or around 1200 CE (according to one source, he was born in 1184 CE, while another gives the year as 1210 CE). He died also in Shiraz, in or around 1292 CE (other sources give the year as 1283 / 1291 CE).

The poet Sadi was one of the greatest figures in classical Persian literature. He lived in a period of major political and social change in the whole of the Middle East (the decline of the Abbasid Empire and the invasion and subsequent wanton destruction by the Mongols). As a result of this, little is known about his life apart from what he wrote in his so-called autobiographical works.

Historians often divide his life into 3 parts. He spent his first 25 years or so studying in various countries, and going to university at Baghdad. During the next 30 years or so, he travelled widely, to India in the east and as far west as Syria. He made pilgrimage to Makkah 14 times, on foot. Finally, Sadi returned to Shiraz where he devoted himself to writing and teaching.

His father, Mushrif-i Shirazi, was a religious man who died when Sadi was in early childhood. With the help of his uncle, Sadi completed his early education in Shiraz. He then left for the Nizamiyyah Academy of Baghdad, where he studied the Arabic language and literature, Islamic sciences, hadith, the Qur'an, and Qur'anic exegesis. Sadi was possibly also a disciple of the Sufi master Shaykh Shihab ud-Din Suhrawardi (1155-1191). Once his university education was complete, Sadi left Baghdad and until 1256 CE, travelled extensively in the Middle East, especially in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Arabia, the various provinces of Iran, plus Asia Minor, Barbary (North Africa), Abyssinia, the eastern Islamic lands, particularly in Turkistan, and he even travelled portions of India. In these days of extended travel, Sadi's wanderings would still not be without repute.

In this respect, Sadi is very much like Marco Polo who travelled in the region from 1271-1294 CE. However, there is a difference, between the two. While Marco Polo gravitated to the potentates and the good life, Sadi mingled with the ordinary survivors of the Mongol storm. He sat in remote teahouses late into the night and exchanged views with merchants, farmers, preachers, wayfarers, Sufi mendicants, etc. For 20-30 years, he continued the same schedule of preaching, advising, learning, honing his sermons, and polishing them into gems illuminating the wisdom of his people. His travels and the gift of acute observation made him a wonderful storyteller. We learn from his own narrative that he was so enraged at the pagan rites practised at the renowned temple of Somnath in Gujarat that he incontinently threw the priest headlong into a well [most likely because of the abuses committed by the priesthood, e.g. setting up idols for every class of human in the caste system, and thereby extorting money from every section of the populace - Sadi speaks out against parsimony in his Scroll of Wisdom].

In North Africa, Sadi was held captive by the Franks and put to work in the trenches of the fortress of Tripoli. One of his nicest autobiographical stories [probably quoted from his Gulistan] tells how he passed from one form of slavery into another: "Weary of the society of my friends at Damascus, I fled to the barren wastes of Jerusalem and associated with brutes [brute beasts, animals], until I was made captive by the Franks [Crusaders], and forced to dig clay, along with Jews, in the fortifications of Tripoli. One of the nobles of Aleppo, my ancient friend, happened to pass that way, and recollected me. He said, 'What a state is this to be in! how farest thou?' I answered, 'Seeing that I could place confidence in God alone, I retired to the mountains and wilds, to avoid the society of man. But judge what must be my situation, now that I am confined in a stall in company with wretches who deserve not the name of men. To be chained by the feet with friends is better than to be free to walk in a garden with strangers.' He took compassion on my forlorn condition, ransomed me from the Franks for ten dinars, and took me with him to Aleppo. My friend had a daughter, to whom he married me, and presented me with one hundred dinars ..."

In or around 1256 CE, Sadi's zeal for travel gave in to his desire to document the fruits of his travels. He returned to his home town of Shiraz which, under Atabeg (Prince) Abu Bakr Sa'd ibn Zangi (reigned 1231-60 CE) was enjoying an era of relative tranquility. When he reappeared in his native Shiraz he was an elderly man. He seems to have spent the rest of his life in Shiraz. Not only was Sadi welcomed to the city, but was respected highly by the ruler and enumerated among the greats of the province. In response, Sadi took his nom de plume from the name of Prince Sa'd ibn Zangi, and composed some of his most delightful panegyrics as a gesture of gratitude in praise of the ruling house, and placed them at the beginning of his Bustan, composed in 1257 CE. Within a year of the composition of Bustan, Sadi authored the Gulistan. After composing the Gulistan in 1258 CE, Sadi went into retirement and was heard of no more. He died of old age in Shiraz, in or around 1292 CE. His tomb in Shiraz is a shrine.

Sadi remains the master of love poetry and one of the greatest poets that Persia has produced. The versatile Sadi scaled heights in Persian lyric poetry as a writer of rare passion. He holds a position in Persian literature, in terms of the power of expression and the depth and breadth of his sensibilities, comparable to that of Shakespeare in English literature. Sadi's sparkling ghazals display a youthful love of life and passion for beauty, be it natural, human, or divine. Sadi's dexterous use of rhetorical devices is often disguised by the beguiling ease of his locution and the effortless flow of his style; his masterly language has been a model of elegant and graceful writing.

Sadi'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. The American poet and Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was also an avid fan of Sadi's writings, contributing to some translated editions himself. Emerson, who read Sadi only in translation, compared his writing to the Bible in terms of its wisdom and the beauty of its narrative.

Sadi is recognized not only for the quality of his writing, but also for the depth of his social thought. He distinguished between the spiritual and the practical or mundane aspects of life. In his Bustan, for example, spiritual Sadi uses the mundane world as a spring board to propel himself beyond the earthly realms. In the Gulistan, on the other hand, mundane Sadi lowers the spiritual to touch the heart of his fellow wayfarers. Here the images are graphic and, thanks to Sadi'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 Khanqah experiences a totally different world than the merchant passing through a town. The unique thing about Sadi 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.

Sadi 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. In a word, he was an accomplished scholar, an excellent master of pure Persian eloquence, an unsullied instructor of Divinity, and a consummate painter of life and manners.

The world honours Sadi today by gracing the entrance to the Hall of Nations in New York with this call for breaking all barriers:

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.

The peculiar blend of human kindness and cynicism, humour, and resignation displayed in Sadi'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 Persian culture. Lines from Sadi's poems are still commonly used in conversations by Iranians today.

______________________________________

Author Bibliography

Sadi wrote on poetry, mysticism, Sufism, metaphysics, logic and ethics. Sadi is remembered as a great panegyrist 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 CE. His lyrics are of the form called Ghazaliyat ("Lyrics") and his odes are in the form called Qasa'id ("Odes"). Sadi's collected works include 65 odes out of which 20 are in Arabic. His odes are dedicated to such diverse themes as spring, Shiraz, didactic matters, and religion. Only 20 of his odes are devoted to either advising rulers or praising them. Sadi also wrote 200 quatrains, 7 elegies, and 737 sonnets.

The works by which Shaykh Sadi - "the nightingale of a thousand songs" is best known are:

● The Bustan (1257 CE; The Orchard) - an exquisite poem embodying moral precepts and rules of life; a book on moral virtues in the form of moralising anecdotes in verse (epic metre), consisting 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 Bustan is comprised of 10 sections of verse, each a dissertation on wisdom, justice, compassion, good government, beneficence, earthly and mystic love, resignation, contentment, and humility.

● The Gulistan (1258 CE; The Rose Garden) - possibly the most widely read book in Persian literature. Well indeed did Eastwick, when publishing a translation of this charming volume, write, "The school-boy lisps out his first lessons in it, the man of learning quotes it, and a vast number of the expressions have become proverbial. When we consider, indeed, the time in which it was written - the first half of the 13th century - a time when gross darkness brooded over Europe - the justness of many of its sentiments, and the glorious views of the Divine attributes contained in it, are truly remarkable."

The Gulistan is mainly in prose and contains stories and personal anecdotes. Themes discussed include the manners of Kings, the morals of dervishes, the preference of contentment, the advantages of keeping silent, as well as youth, old age, and the like. The text is interspersed with a variety of short poems, containing aphorisms, advice, and humorous reflections. The morals preached in the Gulistan border on expediency, for example: a well-intended lie is preferable to a seditious truth.

Copies of both the Bustan and Gulistan were often penned by the masters of calligraphy and sometimes decorated with miniatures of great beauty.

● The Pand Namah, or Scroll of Wisdom - described at the top of this page and immediately after this section.

______________________________________

Peculiarities

The lines of George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824) in his "Lover's Last Adieu" may be quoted as an example of rhythm identical with that of Sadi's Scroll of Wisdom. The two may with advantage be quoted side by side:

"Karima ba bakhsha ya bar halima."

"The roses of love glad the garden of life."

______________________________________

QUOTES

p. 34:

DESCRIPTION OF HUMILITY

O soul! if thou makest choice of humility,
The people of the world will be thy friends.
Humility will augment thy station,
Just as the moon gets light from the sun.
Humility is the source of intimacy,
For exalted will be the dignity of friendship.
Humility exalteth a man,
Humility is a decoration to men of position.
Every one who is human is humble;
Nought becometh a man save magnanimity.

p. 37:

ON THE EXCELLENCE OF LEARNING

Sons of Adam from learning will find perfection -
Not from dignity, and rank, and wealth, and property.
Like a taper one must melt in pursuit of learning,
Since without learning one cannot know God.
A man of wisdom is a student of learning,
For the market of wisdom is always brisk.

[Note the possible influence here from the Illuminationist School of Sadi’s putative teacher of Sufism, Shihab ud-Din Suhrawardi]

p. 54:

IN EXPLANATION OF PATIENCE

If patience is thy helper Thou wilt attain everlasting happiness.
Patience is the attribute of Prophets;
Those who practise religion turn not aside from this direction.
Patience openeth the door of the desires of friends,
For save patience there is no key for them.
Patience giveth thee the desire of thine heart,
For at the hands of mankind thy difficulties are solved.
Patience is best in every case. For in this sentence is much meaning.

Click here to return to the main page