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| The Fire of Love آتش عشق سعدی Iran Poetry |
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A love poem of Sa'di read by: Bahman Solati
The fire of love آتش عشق سعدی Iran Poetry
Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī (1184 1283/1291?), better known by his pen-name as Saʿdī (Persian: سعدی) or, simply, Saadi, was one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is recognized not only for the quality of his writing, but also for the depth of his social thoughts.\
A native of Shiraz, his father died when he was an infant. Saadi experienced a youth of poverty and hardship, and left his native town at a young age for Baghdad to persue a better education. As a young man he was inducted to study at the famous an-Nizzāmīya center of knowledge (1195-1226), where he excelled in Islamic Sciences, law, governance, history, Arabic literature and theology.
The unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Khwarzim and Iran led him to wander for 30 years abroad through Anatolia (he visited the Port of Adana, and near Konya he met proud Ghazi landlords), Syria (he mentions the famine in Damascus), Egypt (of its music and Bazaars its clerics and elite class), and Iraq (the port of Basra and the Tigris river). He also refers in his work about his travels in Sind (across the Indus and Thar with a Turkic Amir named Tughral), India (especially Somnath where he encountered Brahmans) and Central Asia (where he meets the survivors of the Mongol invasion in Khwarezm).
He also performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina and also visited Jerusalem[1]. Saadi traveled in those regions from 1271 to 1294, due to the Mongol onslaught he lived in desolate areas met caravans fearing for their lives on once lively silk trade routes, he lived in isolated refugee camps where he met Bandits, Imams, men who formerly owned great wealth or commanded armies, intellectuals and ordinary people. Saadi clearly seems to have learned Psychology and Psychoanalysis from those experiences and encounters. While Mongol and European sources (such as Marco Polo) gravitated to the potentates and the good life of Ilkhanate rule, Saadi mingled with the ordinary survivors of the Mongol onslaught. He sat in remote teahouses late into the night and exchanged views with merchants, farmers, preachers, wayfarers, thieves, and Sufi mendicants. For twenty years or more, he continued the same schedule of preaching, advising, learning, honing his sermons, and polishing them into gems illuminating the wisdom and foibles of his people. His life clearly reflects upon the lives of ordinary Muslims, who suffered displacement, plight, agony and conflict, during those turbulent times.
Saadi was also among those who witnessed first-hand accounts of its destruction by Mongol Ilkhanate invaders led by Hulagu during the Sack of Baghdad in the year 1258. Saadi was captured by Crusaders at Acre, he later spent 7 years as a slave digging trenches outside its fortress. He was later released after the Mamluks paid ransom for Muslim prisoners that were being held in Crusader dungeons.
When he reappeared in his native Shiraz he was an elderly man. Shiraz, under Atabak Abubakr Sa'd ibn Zangy (1231-60) was enjoying an era of relative tranquility. Saadi was not only welcomed to the city but was respected highly by the ruler and enumerated among the greats of the province. In response, Saadi took his nom de plume from the name of the local prince, Sa'd ibn Zangi, and composed some of his most delightful panegyrics as an initial gesture of gratitude in praise of the ruling house and placed them at the beginning of his Bustan. He seems to have spent the rest of his life in Shiraz.
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