A bower where new-born roses bloom.”

The most important bard of this period was

SĀ’DĪ.

Shaikh Sā’dī, as he is called, was born at Shīrāz,[[267]] while his country was under Turkish rule. He was educated at a college in Bagdad, where he lived until he was sixty-four years of age, when he had obtained an enviable reputation as a poet and orator. In later years, when the Tartar Chief Halāku Khān had overrun the adjacent territory and captured Bagdad, Sā’dī, with many others, was obliged to flee. He visited different parts of Europe, Africa, and even Asia as far as India.

The poet was twice married, but his caustic criticisms upon womankind would indicate that both of these ventures were unfortunate; the last was especially so. He had been living at Damascus, but becoming tired of the society that he found there, he wandered into the desert of Palestine. Here he was captured by the Crusaders, and forced to work in the mud with the Jewish captives, upon the fortifications at Tripoli. A chief belonging to Aleppo found him there, and recognizing him, he paid ten pieces of silver as the poet’s ransom, and carried him to his own home in Aleppo. It appears that the chief had a beautiful daughter, with a temper like a vixen; she had a dower, however, of an hundred pieces of silver, and by a little careful management of her temper and an artful exhibition of her beauty she finally succeeded in marrying Sā’dī. Of course his home was far from being a paradise, and her beauty soon lost its charms for her husband. Upon one occasion she tauntingly asked him, “Are you not the fellow that my father bought for ten pieces of silver?” “Yes,” retorted the poet, “and he sold me to you for an hundred pieces.”

Sā’dī had a son and a daughter, who were the children of his first wife; the son, to whom he was devotedly attached, died in infancy, but the daughter lived to become the wife of the celebrated poet Hāfiz. Sā’dī closed his long life at Shīrāz, where it began, having lived more than a hundred years.[[268]] He is honored as a saint by the Mohammedans, and his tomb called Sādiya, near Shīrāz, is visited by many pilgrims, and is also a resort for European travelers.

THE WORKS OF SĀ’DĪ.

This author was an accomplished linguist, and M. De Tassy[[269]] claims that he was the first poet who wrote verse in the Hindūstānī dialect. He also wrote freely in Arabic as well as Persian. His style is vigorous and unusually simple for a Persian poet, but like all the others, he sometimes indulges in fulsome flattery, and florid description. His largest work is the Diwān, which is a collection of lyric poetry, but it is not so much admired as some of his smaller works. Indeed his lyric poems do not possess the graceful ease of Hāfiz’s songs, but they are full of pathos, and like his other works, they show a fearless love of truth, and a tone of pure morality. Although he was the author of many works, the most popular among European scholars are the Būstān, or Fruit Garden, and the Gūlistān, or Rose Garden, both of which are dedicated to the reigning king.

THE BŪSTĀN.

This is a work consisting of ten chapters of didactic verse, and it teaches lessons of morality and prudence in the form of poetic fable. It has been published in Calcutta, Lahore and Cawnpore, as well as in the capitals of Europe. It has been translated into German, French, English and other tongues, always retaining more or less of the popularity which it still enjoys in its native idiom.