Abu Mohammad Moshrefoldin Mosleh ebn Abdollah ebn Mosharraf,[a]}}[1] better known by his pen name Saadi (/ˈsɑːdi/;[2] سعدی|Saʿdīⓘ}}, IPA: [sæʔˈdiː]), also known as Saadi of Shiraz (سعدی شیرازی, Saʿdī Shīrāzī; born 1210; died 1291 or 1292), was a Persian poet and prose writer[3][4] of the medieval period.

[6][10] Although his own writings, particularly the Bustan and Gulistan, contain many supposedly autobiographical memories, many of these are historically unlikely and are likely made up or cast in the first person for rhetorical effect.

In sources, his entire name—which consists of his given name, honorific (laqab), agnomen (kunya), and patronymic—is spelled in several differing ways.

[6] The oldest known source to mention his full name is the Talḵiṣ al-majmaʿ al-ādāb fi moʿjam al-alqāb ("Summary of the gathering of refinements concerning the lexicon of honorifics") by Ibn al-Fuwati (died 1323).

In a letter dated 1262, he asked Saadi for samples of his Arabic poetry and mentioned his full name as "Muslih al-Din Abu Muhammad Abd-Allah ibn Musharrif."

[6] His pen name "Saadi" is unambiguous as it appears frequently in his work and acts as his signature in all of his ghazals (amatory poem or ode).

Probably around 1223/24, when Sa'd I was briefly deposed by Ghiyath al-Din Pirshah, Saadi, still a teenager, left for Baghdad to continue his education there.

[6] The Iranian scholar Badiozzaman Forouzanfar has found notable parallels between Saadi's teachings and those of Sufi master Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi, suggesting that they were possibly associated.

The Iranologist Homa Katouzian examined the data and came to the conclusion that while Saadi was probably in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula, it was unlikely that he ever made it as far east as Khorasan, India, or Kashgar.

Following an impulsive and alcohol-influenced uprising by Saljuk Shah ibn Salghur, the Mongols killed him, formally handing over power to Abish Khatun, Sa'd II's youngest daughter.

According to Losensky; "None of these works can be considered panegyrics in the usual sense of the word, since they consist mostly of counsel and warnings concerning the proper conduct of rulers."

The poems Saadi wrote to Shams al-Din Husayn Alakani, the longtime chief of the chancery in Shiraz, are less cautionary in tone.

Saadi's encounter with the two Juvayni brothers and the Ilkhanate ruler Abaqa (r. 1265–1282) at Tabriz, which took place on his way back from a pilgrimage to Mecca, is the subject of two treatises that are frequently found in his collected works (although they were not written by him).

A collection of qit'a (monorhyme poetry) poems named the Sahebiya in honor of Shams al-Din Juvayni is also present in a few of Saadi's earlier writings.

[6] A brief qasida to Majd-al-Din Rumi—who worked as an administrative officer in Shiraz under the Ilkhanate ruler Arghun (r. 1284–1291) between 1287 and 1289—is seemingly the last dateable poetry by Saadi.

Safa, drawing from the Tarikh-i guzida written in 1330 by Hamdallah Mustawfi—which is the earliest surviving reliable narrative—as well as other sources from the 14th century, concludes that Saadi died a year earlier, between 25 November and 22 December 1291.

[6] The German cartographer and explorer Carsten Niebuhr visited the tomb of Saadi in 1765, writing that "This building is very dilapidated, and will likely collapse unless some rich Mohammedan takes pity on it and has it repaired."

It consists of stories aptly illustrating the standard virtues recommended to Muslims (justice, liberality, modesty, contentment) and reflections on the behavior of dervishes and their ecstatic practices.

The text is interspersed with a variety of short poems which contain aphorisms, advice, and humorous reflections, demonstrating Saadi's profound awareness of the absurdity of human existence.

In the Bustan, Saadi writes of a man who relates his time in battle with the Mongols:[14] In Isfahan I had a friend who was warlike, spirited, and shrewd....after long I met him: "O tiger-seizer!"

We urged on our Arab steeds like a cloud, and when the two armies encountered each other thou wouldst have said they had struck the sky down to the earth.

[21] Musa Anwar, comparing these poems to those of Arabic-speaking poets of Saadi’s time, believes that they hold a respectable position and are valuable in terms of content and structure.

The above version with yekdīgar "one another" is the usual one quoted in Iran (for example, in the well-known edition of Mohammad Ali Foroughi, on the carpet installed in the United Nations building in New York in 2005,[26][27] on the Iranian (500 rials) coin since 1387 Solar Hijri calendar (i.e. in 2008),[28] and on the back of the 100,000-rial banknote issued in 2010); according to the scholar Habib Yaghmai is also the only version found in the earliest manuscripts, which date to within 50 years of the writing of the Golestan.

[29] Some books, however, print a variation banī ādam a'zā-ye yek peykar-and ("The sons of Adam are members of one body"), and this version, which accords more closely with the hadith quoted below, is followed by most English translations.

Alongside it are the wonderful words of that great Persian poet, Sa’adi": All human beings are members of one frame, Since all, at first, from the same essence came.

This version was delivered by Bowinn Ma, Minister of State for Infrastructure, British Columbia, Canada, in the BC Parliament.

Its simplicity, however, is grounded in a semantic web consisting of synonymy, homophony, and oxymoron buttressed by internal rhythm and external rhyme.

Andre du Ryer was the first European to present Saadi to the West, by means of a partial French translation of Gulistan in 1634.

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 ...

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'.