SADI, SriEmu MUSLIM ADDIN, one of the most celebrated Persian poets, was b. at S:iiraz, about the year 1184. Little is known of the circumstances of his life. His f tiller's name was Abdallah, and he was a descendant of Ali, Mohammed's son-in-law; ititwithstanding his noble lineage, however, he held but an insignificant position. &ICH was early left fatherless. He received his education in science and theology at Bagdad, all from here lie undertook, together with his master, his first pilgrimage to Mecca; a plITritnage which he subsequently repeated no less than 14 times. Ile traveled for it great number of years, and is said to have visited parts of Europe, Barbary, Abyssinia. E;ypt, Syria. Palestine, Armenia, Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, Tartary, Afghanistan, and inlia. Near Jerusalem, "where," he says, "I associated with the brutes," lie was taken prisoner by the crusaders, not while fighting against them, but while practicing religious austerities in the desert. He was ransomed for ten dinars by a merchant of Aleppo, who recognized him, and .gave him his daughter in marriage: this union, how ever, did not prove happy. He married a second time, and lost his only son from that marriage. The latter part of his life Siad spent in retirement near his native town, and he died, at a very old age, in 699 tr., or 1263 A.D.; according to others, however, he did not die until 1231 or 1292 A.D. In person he is described as havingbeen of rather insig nificant appearance, short, slim, and spare, nor is there much to be said for his personal prowess. His was a contemplative, pious, and, so to say, philosophical disposition. The years of his retirement from life he occupied in composing those numerous works which have made hint justly famous through east and west. Although European critics would hardly be inclined to indorse to the full the judgment passed upon him by his country men, that lie was "the most eloquent of writers, the wittiest author of either modern or ancient times, and one of the four monarchs of eloquence and style," yet there is no doubt that this "nightingale of thonsand songs" is deservedly held among the foremost masters of poetry, and that he fully merited the honors showered upon him by princes and nobles, bOth during his lifetime and after his death. A magnificent mausoleum,
with a mosque and college attached to it, was erected in his honor at the gates of Shiraz, and the people, who soon wound a halo of legend around his life, flocked thither in pilgrimage; and so carefully is his tomb guarded, that when visited by col. Franklin in 1787. it was in the KWIC state as when Sadi was buried.
The catalogue of his works comprises 22 different kinds 'of writings in prose and verse, in Arabic and in Persian, of which glutzels and loassidas (odes, dirges) form the predominant part. The most celebrated and finished of his works, however, is the Gulls tan, or rose-garden; a kind of moral in prose and verse, consisting of eight chap ters, on kings, dervishes, contentment, taciturnity, love and youth, decrepitude and out age, education, and the duties of society, the whole intermixed with a number of stories, maxims, philosophical sentences, puns, and the like. Next to this stands the Boston, or tree-garden, a work somewhat similar to the Gnlistan, hut in verse, and of a more relig ious nature. Third In rank stands the Pend-Nameh, or book of instructions. Elegance and simplicity of style and diction form the chief charm of Sadi's writings. In wit he is not inferior to Horace, with whose writings he, according to one source, may not have been unacquainted, since he is said to have known Latin. The first complete edition of his works, called the Salt-cellar of Poets, by Harrington, was published in Calcutta, 1791 95, and has been reprinted since by native presses in India. The Gulistan, first edited with a Latin translation by Gentius (Amsterdam, 1651), has been reprinted very fre quently, and has been translated into a number of European tongues, into English chiefly by Gladwin, Ross, and Eastwik. The Boston was first published complete in Calcutta, 1828 (Vienna, 1858), and has likewise been translated into other languages.