Pub­lisher: Global Schol­arly Pub­li­ca­tions (with the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety for Iran­ian Cul­ture)
For­mat: Paper
ISBN: 1 – 59267-061-x

Read what peo­ple have said about Selec­tions From Saadi’s Bustan.

Read some sam­ple poems.

Con­tact me with ques­tions about Selec­tions From Saadi’s Bustan.

(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 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.)

Ben­jamin Franklin, Pla­gia­rism and the Para­ble Against Per­se­cu­tion: How Saadi’s Bus­tan Came To America

Some­time between 1757 and 1762, at a party in Lon­don, Ben­jamin Franklin asked his host for a copy of the Bible so he could make a point in a con­ver­sa­tion he was hav­ing about tol­er­ance. When the book was brought to him, he opened it near the begin­ning so that it would look like he was read­ing from Gen­e­sis and “read” (actu­ally, he extem­po­rized, though his audi­ence was not aware of it) the fol­low­ing text:

And it came to pass after these things, that Abra­ham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun. And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the wilder­ness, lean­ing on a staff. And Abra­ham arose and met him, and said unto him, “Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise early on the mor­row, and go on thy way.”

But the man said, “Nay, for I will abide under this tree.”

And Abra­ham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went into the tent, and Abra­ham baked unleav­ened bread, and they did eat. And when Abra­ham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, “Where­fore dost thou not wor­ship the most high God, Cre­ator of heaven and earth?”

And the man answered and said, “I do not wor­ship the God thou speak­est of, nei­ther do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth always in mine house, and provideth me with all things.”

And Abraham’s zeal was kin­dled against the man, and he arose and fell upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the wilder­ness. And at mid­night God called unto Abra­ham, say­ing, “Abra­ham, where is the stranger?” And Abra­ham answered and said, “Lord, he would not wor­ship thee, nei­ther would he call upon thy name; there­fore have I dri­ven him out from before my face into the wilderness.”

And God said, “Have I not borne with him these hun­dred ninety and eighty years, and nour­ished him, and clothed him, notwith­stand­ing his rebel­lion against me; and couldst not thou, that art thy­self a sin­ner, bear with him one night?”

And Abra­ham said, “Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his ser­vant; lo, I have sinned; lo, I have sinned; for­give me, I pray thee.” And Abra­ham arose, and went forth into the wilder­ness, and sought dili­gently for the man, and found him, and returned with him to the tent; and when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him away on the mor­row with gifts.

And God spake again unto Abra­ham, say­ing, “For thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hun­dred years in a strange land; but for thy repen­tance will I deliver them; and they shall come forth with power, and with glad­ness of heart, and with much substance.”

This “Para­ble Against Per­se­cu­tion” would become one of Franklin’s best-known and most-anthologized pieces of writ­ing, used in every­thing from grade school read­ers to man­u­als on trans­la­tion. Its ori­gins, how­ever, would result in accu­sa­tions of pla­gia­rism. Bishop Jeremy Tay­lor had told pre­cisely the same story, nearly one hun­dred years ear­lier, as the con­clu­sion to his book, Dis­course On The Lib­erty Of Proph­esy­ing. Once this fact was known, Franklin’s ene­mies and detrac­tors lost no time in sug­gest­ing that he had stolen the story from Tay­lor. For his part, Tay­lor claimed to have found the story in a Jew­ish book, but no one was able to find the story in the Torah or the Tal­mud or any other book of tra­di­tional Jew­ish learn­ing, and so the ques­tion of whether Tay­lor had been entirely hon­est in cit­ing his source also arose. Finally, in the early 1800s, Taylor’s source was found in a text pub­lished in 1651 by a man named George Gen­tius. The pur­pose of Gen­tius’ book was to con­vince the lead­ers of his com­mu­nity to be more tol­er­ant of the Jews, lead­ing them to Christ (which, of course, every­one at that time wanted to do) more through kind­ness than coer­cion. As a way of illus­trat­ing his over­all the­sis, Gen­tius told in his epis­to­lary ded­i­ca­tion the same story that Tay­lor and Franklin told, attribut­ing it to some­one named “Sadus,” though with­out nam­ing Sadus’ reli­gion or nation­al­ity. So it was not unrea­son­able for Tay­lor to think that Sadus was Jew­ish and that the story had orig­i­nally come from a Jew­ish book.

Sadus, how­ever, was not Jew­ish; he was Saadi, the thir­teenth cen­tury Per­sian poet, and the story Gen­tius and then Tay­lor and then Franklin told came orig­i­nally from Saadi’s mas­ter­piece, Bus­tan. (Inter­est­ingly, in a par­al­lel nar­ra­tive involv­ing Franklin’s Para­ble and its source, Frances Glad­wyn, who had trans­lated Saadi’s work into Eng­lish, pub­lished a piece in a 1789 issue of The New Asi­atic Mis­cel­lany point­ing out that Franklin’s para­ble and Saadi’s poem told almost iden­ti­cal sto­ries.) There are some small dif­fer­ences between Franklin’s ver­sion of the tale and my trans­la­tion of Saadi’s orig­i­nal, but the core of the story is clearly the same. The poem is the first in the chap­ter called “Justice.”

Don’t Knot The Rope Of Generosity

I’ve heard that once a week went by
when no one wan­der­ing the world
stopped at the tents of Allah’s Friend,
whose prac­tice was to eat his meals
only at the proper time
unless a poor or home­less per­son
came to his door. So he stood out­side
his tent and looked around. At the edge
of the val­ley he saw a man whose hair
age had pow­dered white, sit­ting
bent and lonely in the desert
like a wil­low. Abra­ham
called out his warmest wel­come, “Light
of my eyes! Please, honor the salt
and bread of my table! Eat with us!”
Rec­og­niz­ing Abra­ham for who he was,
the old man sprang to his feet,
eager to accept the invi­ta­tion.
Abraham’s atten­dants gave
the lowly guest a seat of honor,
called for the table to be set,
and took their own seats; but when
they said together “In God’s Name…”
no words escaped the old man’s mouth.
Abra­ham spoke, “I do not see in you
the pas­sion and sin­cer­ity of faith
that men of your age usu­ally express.
Aren’t we obliged each time we eat
to thank the One who filled our plates?”
The old man answered, “I will not speak
of God except as I have learned to do
from my teach­ers. I am Zoroastrian.”

Once God’s favored mes­sen­ger found out
the des­ti­tute old man was just a gabr,
he chased him like a stray dog from the tent.
(The pure of heart can­not abide such filth!)
But then, from Heaven, the voice of God’s reproof
came down, “Dear Friend! I have fed this man,
and given him his life these hun­dred years,
but you, in a sin­gle moment, were filled with hate.
Why refuse him hos­pi­tal­ity
just because he bows before a fire?”
Don’t knot the rope of gen­eros­ity
just because you find, in this per­son, fraud
and deceit; in that one, trick­ery and cunning.

Saadi was born in the city of Shi­raz some­time in the early 13^th cen­tury. The Sufis claim him as a Sheikh, though whether he was in fact a prac­tic­ing Sufi is some­thing that schol­ars of his work seri­ously doubt. No one, how­ever, dis­putes that he was deeply sym­pa­thetic to Sufi ideals. Saadi was known as a trav­eler, though our under­stand­ing of the extent of this trav­els has changed over time, and travel is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant fram­ing device, in nar­ra­tive and metaphor­i­cal terms, to appear in Bus­tan. Indeed, the intro­duc­tory poem presents the book as a gift he is bring­ing his fel­low cit­i­zens on his return to Shi­raz from a trip abroad. Read­ing the book is itself a kind of jour­ney, one that takes you back and forth between the exter­nal world (the first two chap­ters are called “Jus­tice” and “Gen­eros­ity”) and the inter­nal one (there are chap­ters called “Humil­ity,” “Con­tent­ment” and “Grat­i­tude,” for exam­ple). One of the most remark­able aspects of my expe­ri­ence trans­lat­ing Bus­tan was dis­cov­er­ing just how apt so many of Saadi’s poems are in our cur­rent polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, both national and inter­na­tional. Here, for exam­ple, are the first few lines of the first poem of the chap­ter called “Jus­tice.” No mat­ter where you stand on the polit­i­cal spec­trum, it’s hard not to see in these lines advice that today’s rulers would do well to take to heart.

I’ve heard that with his dying breaths Nushir­van
advised his son Hor­muz on how to rule:
“Guar­an­tee the poor their peace of mind.
Do not allow your priv­i­lege to bind you.
None who call your king­dom home will be
at peace if priv­i­lege is all you live for.
No judge will find a shep­herd inno­cent
who slept and let the wolf among the sheep.
Go! Stand guard! Pro­tect their impov­er­ished lives.
The crown you wear would not exist with­out them.
A tree, my son, is nour­ished through its roots.
Just so, a monarch draws his kingdom’s strength
through those he rules. Do not betray their trust
unless you have to; you’ll find your­self root­less.”

What Peo­ple Have Said About Selec­tions From Saadi’s Bustan

Selec­tions from Saadi’s Bus­tan has not been reviewed. Until it is, I am going to place here a copy of the blurb Bob Hol­man wrote for the book. It is, of course, writ­ten in the tone of unqual­i­fied praise that blurbs are sup­posed to be writ­ten in, but it also por­trays pretty accu­rately the nature of the book’s con­tent, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion. Whether or not I have suc­ceeded in bring­ing Saadi into Eng­lish in a way that does him the kind of jus­tice Hol­man claims for me is a ques­tion that will only be answered by oth­ers, over time.

Hav­ing the Bus­tan in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion will finally allow Saadi to take his place beside Rumi and Hafiz and com­plete the Divine Trin­ity of Per­sian poetry. To take on the task of trans­lat­ing this work is like tak­ing on the Bible, or the Quran – the Bus­tan is first, huge, sec­ond, filled with sub­tle and hid­den wis­dom, and third, affords no real prece­dent. Richard Jef­frey New­man is an explorer here, trav­el­ing in the far reaches of Mus­lim mys­ti­cism. His text reads clear, story-filled, delight­ful, strik­ing just the right bal­ance between con­tem­po­rary and clas­sic. What shines through is Newman’s depth of under­stand­ing: there is a wis­dom in these pages that makes them sacred, yet there is also a sys­tem of ethics that makes them a How To for the Soul, and to tease out these mean­ings requires a mas­ter trans­la­tor. In the front mat­ter of the book, New­man makes a bril­liant analy­sis of his peers who have been busily trans­lat­ing Rumi and Hafiz as if the mean­ing of words didn’t mat­ter, only the magic of the dance. Clearly, this method of freestyling would never do with Saadi, and we’re for­tu­nate to have this extra­or­di­nary work in our hands as the author meant it. Should Newman’s rig­or­ous method­ol­ogy be applied to Rumi and Hafiz – and I hope it will be – I believe we will be able to approach ecstasy on its own terms, not their trans­la­tors’. Hav­ing a con­tem­po­rary trans­la­tion of the Bus­tan is an impor­tant step in Muslim-US rela­tions, a mile­stone in lit­er­ary history.

Sam­ple Poems

And Heaven Let The Oys­ter Do Its Work

God, who is pure, cre­ated you from dust;
like dust, there­fore, prac­tice humil­ity.
Don’t be greedy; do not con­sume the world;
and even if you’re most unsat­is­fied,
don’t lose con­trol. You’re made from dust, not fire.
When fire lifted its head in arro­gance,
dust threw itself, help­less, to the ground,
and since one was arro­gant and the other hum­ble,
the for­mer was made into demons; the lat­ter, humans.

A drop of rain fell slowly from a cloud.
Shamed by the sea’s appar­ent end­less­ness
it said, “Where there’s an ocean, who am I?
If such vast water exists, I do not!”
But while it held itself in such con­tempt,
an oys­ter took it in and cher­ished it,
and heaven let the oys­ter do its work
until the drop became a kingly pearl.
It rose so high because it first bowed low,
bang­ing at non-being’s door
until at last it came to be.

❖

With As Good An Eye

I’ve heard the story told that Dar­ius,
whose lin­eage is blessed, rode off one day
far from his hunt­ing entourage and saw,
run­ning towards him through the pas­ture, a man.
“A foe I have not seen before,” the king
decided. “I’ll nail him to the ground with this,”
and he placed a poplar arrow in his bow.

“Lord of Iran and Tur!” the man cried out.
“May the evil eye never fall upon you!
I am your sta­ble mas­ter, here to serve you!”

The man’s voice brought the shah’s mem­ory
back to the name that went with his face, “You
were fool­ish to run at me like that.” A smile
played across the royal lips. “An angel
pro­tected you. The bow­string was nearly
to my ear.”

The sta­ble mas­ter also smiled,
“Because you’ve treated me so well, I won’t
with­hold advice from you that you should hear:
It nei­ther makes us safe nor com­mands
respect if the king can­not dis­tin­guish
ene­mies from friends. Your high posi­tion
car­ries this respon­si­bil­ity:
that you should rec­og­nize each one who serves you.
You’ve seen me many times at court, and we
have talked about your horses and their graz­ing.
How then does it come to be that now,
when I have rushed to serve you here, with love,
you see mor­tal dan­ger in my approach?
If you ask me, O my king, I can bring
from a herd of one hun­dred thou­sand horses
the sin­gle beast you want to ride that day.
This detailed knowl­edge dri­ves my herds­man­ship.
Tend your own flock with as good an eye!
Dis­or­der will bring ruin to this land
if its emperor can­not out­think a shepherd.”

❖

Bet­ter You Should Kiss Us With A Pun

As I and some com­pan­ions roamed the desert,
we heard talk of a man in Outer Byzance
whose roots dug deep in clean soil, whose learn­ing
and whose trav­els, at least by rep­u­ta­tion,
com­pelled us to visit him. When we arrived,
he kissed us each on our head, our hands and our eyes
and seated us with dig­nity and honor.
Then he sat down him­self. His wealth — ser­vants,
fields, fancy clothes — sur­rounded us, but he,
like a fruit­less tree, was not a gen­tle­man.
The fire beneath his pot stayed cold through­out.
He did not sleep and did not sit to rest,
pro­claim­ing the tahlil all night, recit­ing
the tas­bih. We also stayed awake till dawn.
Hunger did not let us close our eyes.
In the morn­ing, he girded his loins, opened his door
and labored once again at the gra­cious
kiss­ing he’d starved us with the night before.

A sweet and pleas­ant man who trav­eled with us
said, “Bet­ter you should kiss us with a pun:
Instead of your fair wel­come, poor men pre­fer
the hearty fare of a full table. Don’t
take my shoes to make me feel at home.
Give me bread. Use the shoes to hit me
on the head.”

True men become pre­em­i­nent
by giv­ing lav­ishly. They do not keep
the night alive with empty-hearted prayers.
(Those who do are like the Tar­tar sen­tries,
scan­ning the night with ever watch­ful eyes,
while in their hearts noth­ing lives.) To be
a gen­tle­man is to be gen­er­ous,
which means pro­vid­ing food: words express­ing
hos­pi­tal­ity are head­less drums.

❖

Death Alone Puts Out The Fire

I recall a night when my eyes just wouldn’t close,
and I heard a moth say­ing to the can­dle,
“It’s right for me to burn: I am the lover;
but tell me, why are you weep­ing and burn­ing?”
The can­dle replied, “My friend, you silly thing,
don’t be naïve: I’ve lost my sweet com­pan­ion,
honey, and since Shirin aban­doned me,
like Farhad, grief’s flames scorch me head to foot.”
As the can­dle spoke, her pain ran in rivers
down her yel­low cheeks, “You are a fraud;
you have no busi­ness lov­ing. You lack courage;
you can’t stay still; you fly from a sin­gle flame,
half-baked, while I remain till all of me
is prop­erly done. Love’s blaze may have singed
your wings, but look at me, from top to bot­tom
I am burn­ing.” The can­dle debated like this
while the men gath­ered around it, and when the night
was only partly gone, one among them,
with a pari’s face, put the can­dle to death.
Then it said, smoke swirling at its head,
“Love, my boy, ends just like that. You’ll learn,
if you’re a lover, that death alone puts out
the fire.”

Don’t shed tears at the grave of some­one
thus mur­dered by a friend; rejoice instead
that the friend accepted him. If you’re infected,
don’t cleanse your mind of love’s sick­ness. Rather,
like Saadi, cleanse your­self of all
other pur­pose. A true lover will fight
a storm of stones and arrows to reach his goal.
Beware! Don’t try to sail that sea! You’re warned!
But if you go, give your­self to the storm.

❖

Accept That You Have Nei­ther Gold Nor Silver

A honey seller whose smile was sugar-sweet,
ignit­ing hearts through­out the sell­ing day,
and who him­self, with girded loins, was sweet
as sugar cane — he had more cus­tomers
than flies; and if, just sup­pose, he’d held up
poi­son, they’d have taken it from him
like nec­tar. Now, in a lazy fel­low watch­ing
the honey-seller at his busi­ness, jeal­ousy
was grow­ing, and so, the next day, he too
went from town to town to sell his wares.
Honey was on his head, but vine­gar
was on his face. He wan­dered far, cry­ing
from street to street, but not a sin­gle fly
set­tled on the sweet­ness he tried to sell.
Night fell and he hadn’t earned a penny,
so he sat him­self dejected in a cor­ner,
his face a sinner’s on hear­ing God’s judg­ment,
his brow a prisoner’s locked up on a feast day.
His wife teased him play­fully, “A sour-faced
man gives bit­ter honey.”

An ugly tem­per
takes a man to hell; a hand­some nature
guar­an­tees you par­adise. Go!
It’s bet­ter to drink warm water from the bank
of an irri­ga­tion ditch than the cool rose water
sold by a man with a cur­dled face. It is
for­bid­den to taste the bread of a man who folds
his eye­brows like a table­cloth. My friend,
don’t make life harder than it has to be.
A ran­cid tem­pera­ment will bring bad luck.
Accept that you have nei­ther gold nor sil­ver.
Can’t you, like Saadi, at least have a pleas­ant tongue?

❖

Only With Earth

I’ve brought back from Basra a true won­der!
You’ll never guess what it is! A story sweeter
than the ripest Basra date: A few of us,
dressed in the patched cloaks of the just, walked past
the edge of a date-plantation. One of us,
a man degraded by his glut­tony,
intent on stuff­ing his gut with all he could eat,
cinched his robe tight around his waist and climbed
one of the trees, from where he fell, land­ing
hard on his neck. Not every load of dates
exists to be con­sumed or car­ried off.
“Sack-belly” ate, ill-fated as he was,
and died. The vil­lage leader caught up with us
and asked, his voice harsh with accu­sa­tion,
“Who killed this man?” I said, “Don’t speak to us
like that. The wretch’s belly pulled him down
from the branch!” The man whose heart is shut tight
pos­sesses an expan­sive gut. The belly
binds your hands and chains your feet; it’s slave
rarely wor­ships God. It’s true the locust
is noth­ing from head to foot but belly.
Still, the small-bellied ant can pull him
by the leg. Now go! Make your insides pure.
Your belly will be truly filled only with earth.