Gulistan or flower garden / Sadi ; translated with an essay by James Ross and a note upon the translator by Charles Sayle.

  • Saʻdī. Gulistān. English
Date:
[between 1900 and 1999?]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Gulistan or flower garden / Sadi ; translated with an essay by James Ross and a note upon the translator by Charles Sayle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a I can never seek the patronage of another, who have been the nurtured child of thy bounty.’' In the first year of Atabak Toklah’s reign, or A.H. 571, A.D. 1194, Sadi was born at Shiraz, the capital of Pars, or Persia proper ; and the epithet of Shirazi applies equally to him and Hafiz, as much honoured natives of that Dar u’lilom, or seat of learning. Dowlat Shah says that his proper name was Moslih u’d-din, or the Umpire of the faith ; but he was better known afterwards by that of Shaikh Sadi Shirazi: Shaikh properly signifying the head of an Arabian tribe; and among Mussulmans it was anywhere con- ferred upon a senior, who commanded the love and esteem of his neighbours from authority, age, genius, or piety; and, on account of the two last virtues, is among the Persians more especially applied to Nizami and Sadi; and it is no small compliment that though the former is the senior and, next to Firdausi, the best Persian heroic poet, yet Sadi is appropriately called the Shaikh ! Again Sadi, or Saadi, signifying felicity, is his Tokhullus, or poetical name, and was, according to Dowlat Shah, given to him by Atabak Saad-bin- Zungi. This is probable; but he is wrong in saying that Sadi was born in that prince’s reign. This mode of appellation a writer in the East does not affect till he has established his character as a poet, when, after being confirmed to him, like a title of nobility, by some sovereign prince, he takes the first opportunity of introducing his Tokhullus into the Shah-bayit, or last stanza of a ghazal, or other poem, and
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