Publisher: Global Scholarly Publications (with the International Society for Iranian Culture)
Format: Paper
ISBN: 1−59267−037−7
Contact me with questions about Selections From Saadi’s Gulistan.
(Please note: This book is now out of print and, as far as I know, the publisher has no plan to reprint it. If you would like to see a copy of the book, contact me and I will be glad to send you a PDF file of the uncorrected proof. If you would like to see the book reprinted, please go to Global Scholarly Publications’ website, contact Parviz Morewedge, Executive Director, and tell him how you feel.)
Saadi, the 13th century Iranian poet whose books are among the best-loved works of classical Iranian literature, occupies a place in the Iranian Persian not unlike the one occupied by Shakespeare in our own. Gulistan, his most popular work, which was translated into French in the 1660s by Andre du Ryer, provided post-Crusades Europe with its first sympathetic view of the Muslim world. Du Ryer felt that Europe needed to know about a poet whose humanistic values mirrored those of his Enlightenment contemporaries. Since then, Gulistan has been translated into a wide range of languages, including Russian and Japanese, though its most common target language has been English. This is not surprising, given the degree to which the values expressed in Gulistan prefigure many of those that are central to American culture, including respect for the individual, tolerance of others and the need, the right, the obligation to speak truth to power. Saadi’s most famous lines, which are inscribed in the Hall of Nations in the UN building in New York City, come from Gulistan. You might have heard President Obama quote the translation on the UN wall in his Norooz video message to Iran. Here is my translation:
All men and women are to each other
the limbs of a single body, each of us drawn
from life’s shimmering essence, God’s perfect pearl;
and when this life we share wounds one of us,
all share the hurt as if it were our own.
You, who will not feel another’s pain,
you forfeit the right to be called human.
A noble sentiment, one with which few people anywhere would disagree, but it is, as I have given it to you here, taken out of context, and so it lacks some of the bite that it has in the original, where it is the culmination of the following story:
An Arab king who was notorious for his cruelty came on a pilgrimage to the cathedral mosque of Damascus, where he offered the following prayer, clearly seeking God’s assistance in a matter of some urgency:
“The darvish, poor, owning nothing, the man
whose money buys him anything he wants,
here, on this floor, enslaved, we are equals.
Nonetheless, the man who has the most
comes before You bearing the greater need.”When the king was done praying, he noticed me immersed in my own prayers at the head of the prophet Yahia’s tomb. The monarch turned to me, “I know that God favors you darvishes because you are passionate in your worship and honest in the way you live your lives. I fear a powerful enemy, but if you add your prayers to mine, I am sure that God will protect me for your sake.”
“Have mercy on the weak among your own people,” I replied, “and no one will be able to defeat you.”
To break each of a poor man’s ten fingers
just because you have the strength offends God.
Show compassion to those who fall before you,
and others will extend their hands when you are down.The man who plants bad seed hallucinates
if he expects sweet fruit at harvest time.
Take the cotton from your ears! Give
your people justice before justice finds you.All men and women are to each other
the limbs of a single body, each of us drawn
from life’s shimmering essence, God’s perfect pearl;
and when this life we share wounds one of us,
all share the hurt as if it were our own.
You, who will not feel another’s pain,
you forfeit the right to be called human.
In context, in other words, these lines do not merely express a noble and humanistic sentiment; rather, they propose a principle of leadership, of governing, and they are spoken by a man who is relatively powerless to one whose power clearly means more to him than justice. Gulistan is full of stories like this, which makes it a book worth learning from, and which makes Saadi a classical Iranian poet about whom it behooves us to know something.
Sample Poems
from “Adoration and Preamble”
I held in my bath a perfumed piece of clay
that came to me from a beloved’s hand.
I asked it, “Are you musk or ambergris?
Like fine wine, your smell intoxicates me.”
“Till someone set me down beside a rose,”
it said, “I was a loathsome lump of clay.
My companion’s scent seeped into me.
Otherwise, I am only the earth that I am.”
❖
Stories 8 – 10 from Padeshahan — Kings
Story 8
When he was asked what crime his father’s viziers had committed, Hormuzd replied, “None. I put these men in jail because they feared my power without respecting it. I knew that to protect themselves from the capriciousness they saw in me and the harm they thought might come to them because of it, they might try to kill me. So I had no choice. I took the advice of the sages, who said:
‘The power to wipe out a hundred men
should not replace your fear of one who fears you.
Watch when a cat is fighting for its life;
it plucks the tiger’s eyes out with its claws.
To stop the stone the shepherd might throw down
to crush its head, the viper bites, and lives.’”
Story 9
The soldier kneeling before the king gave this report: The fort had been taken; the enemy’s forces were prisoners of war. By his majesty’s good fortune, the entire district was now pacified and subject to his rule.
He was an Arab king, sick with old age and waiting to die. “This message is not for me,” he sighed deeply, “but for my true enemies, the heirs to my throne.”
I’ve lived until the end of my desires,
each one fulfilled according to my wish,
but now I’m old, tired, and I can hear,
in each breath I have left, Fate’s hand striking
Death’s drum in the rhythm of my dying.
The pleasures of my past will not return.
The time I spent on them has realized me
no profit. Eyes, bid this head farewell.
Palm, forearm, the fingers of my hand,
take leave of each other. You who were my friends
come close one last time. This life I leave
leaves in its wake only ignorance.
I have accomplished nothing. Be on your guard.
❖
Story 8 from Darvishan — Darvishes
In response to the praise being heaped upon him by the people he was with, the great man raised his head and said, “I am as I know myself to be.”
You who list my virtues one by one,
please stop, you’re hurting me: The traits you name
are those that all can see. You do not know
the others lying hidden in my heart.
When people look at me, they see a man
who does what’s right, and so I please their eyes,
but underneath that surface I am evil,
and ashamed, and I walk with my head held low.
I am like the peacock, praised for the colors
of his tail, but ashamed of his ugly feet.
❖
Story 20 from Ghena’at — Contentment
The midwinter night had fallen. Not too far away, the king saw a lamp shining in the window of a dehqan’s house. “We will warm ourselves there,” he said, “and return to the hunting party in the morning.” One of the royal advisors, however, insisted that it would be better for the group to make camp on the spot, chasing the cold away with their own fire and sleeping in their own tents. It would be beneath his majesty’s dignity to spend the night in the house of a mere peasant.
While the king was considering the vizier’s words, the dehqan — who had overheard everything — approached the group bearing a tray of food. Bowing low to the ground, the peasant offered this meal to the sultan saying, “It is not that a dehqan’s hospitality would insult the sultan’s dignity so deeply. It is rather that the royal advisors do not want the sultan’s presence to raise the dignity of a dehqan, even for the briefest moment, to a level approaching their own.”
The king was so impressed by the dehqan’s wit that he rejected the vizier’s advice on the spot. The next morning, as he was preparing to leave, the king gave the dehqan a royal robe as a gesture of thanks. The dehqan walked a few steps beside the monarch and, loudly enough so the king’s entourage could hear, recited the following lines:
The sultan’s majesty remained intact
despite this dehqan’s meager offering;
but in the dehqan’s simple heart great joy
is rising, reaching for the morning sun,
the corner of your shadow at my door.
❖
Story 10 from Khamooshi — Silence
The poem failed to impress the leader of the gang of thieves in whose honor it had been written. So he ordered the poet who was reciting it to be stripped of his robe and sent out naked into the world.
As soon as the poet left the leader’s tent, he was attacked from behind by a pack of dogs. He tried to pick up a stone to defend himself, but the stone was frozen to the ground. “You sons of whores!” the poet cried out. “You let your dogs run loose but tie down your stones!”
The thieves’ leader heard these words from inside the tent and laughed. “O philosopher,” he said, “what would you ask of me?”
“Give me my robe,” was the poet’s reply, “if you will make me a present of it.
“Let me leave in peace; I’ll expect no gift.
A man hopes to receive the good he deserves.
From you, I hope for nothing. Just don’t hurt me.”
After hearing these words, the leader decided to have pity on the poet and gave him back his robe, as well as a sheepskin jacket and some money.
❖
Story 19 from Eshgh va Javani — Love and Youth
When the Arab king heard how Majnun had been driven by his love for Laila to forsake everything and wander the desert as a man possessed, he ordered his servants to bring Majnun to him, and when this was accomplished and Majnun was standing before the king in his court, the king reproached him, asking what fault Majnun had discovered in the human soul that he had chosen instead to live like an animal. Majnun replied:
“My closest friends blame me for loving her,
but if they saw her they would understand.
And you, my love, ravisher of my heart,
let your face shine once on those who scold me
and they will miss the lemons in their hands,
and slice their flesh, and bleed for your beauty.
Then they will know the truth and, like Potiphar’s wife, I will be able to say, “This is the one you blamed me for.”
The king was intrigued and ordered Laila to be brought to him. His servants searched the encampments of several Arab families until they found her and brought her into the palace courtyard. The king looked at her for some time, examining her outward form very carefully, but no matter which angle he looked from, all he could see was an ugliness that became more and more despicable to him as he thought about how highly Majnun had praised her. The plainest handmaiden in his harem was more beautiful than the dark woman he saw before him.
Majnun could tell from the look on the king’s face what he was thinking and said, “To perceive Laila’s beauty and the mystery it reveals to those who can see it, you need to look through my eyes.”
If the leaves on the trees ringing this glade
had heard what I heard of the glade’s story,
they would have lamented it with me. Dear friends,
say to this man who does not seem to care,
“Love has not yet wounded you, and so
you cannot know the agony that overflows
Majnun’s heart.” When you do, we’ll share our tales.
Till then there is no point to talk of bees
with someone who has never felt their sting.
Until we live the same experience,
words will show you only its empty shell.
❖
Story 18 from Ta’alim va Tarbiyat — Education
I overheard a rich man’s son and a poor man’s son arguing as they stood near the grave of the wealthier boy’s father. “My father’s coffin,” the rich boy was saying, “has a marble gravestone decorated with a mosaic of turquoise-like gems, and his epitaph has been carved in the most elegant script. Your father’s grave, on the other hand, is nothing more than two bricks pushed together with two handfuls of mud thrown over them.”
The poor son listened quietly. Then he said, “By the time your father gets out from under that heavy stone, mine will already be in paradise.”
An ass walks lightly with a light burden.
Just so, a darvish who carries on his back
nothing but his own poverty will arrive
at death’s gate at ease with the life he’s lived
and with his fate; but a wealthy man, whose life
lacked nothing, will find it hard to die,
for death means leaving luxury behind.
In the end, the prisoner who escapes
with nothing will be happier than a prince
whose wealth lies just beyond the bars of his cage.
❖
#33 from Adab’eh Soh’bat — Principles of Social Conduct
Everyone thinks his own thinking is perfect and that his child is the most beautiful.
I watched a Muslim and a Jew debate
and shook with laughter at their childishness.
The Muslim swore, “If what I’ve done is wrong,
may God cause me to die a Jew.” The Jew
swore as well, “If what I’ve said is false,
I swear by the holy Torah that I will die
a Muslim, like you.” If tomorrow the earth
fell suddenly void of all wisdom
no one would admit that it was gone.
I would be greatly thankful if you kindly send the pdf file
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