Saadi

Timeline

1. 1226–1230Shiraz · Fars ProvinceSaadi received a traditional Islamic education in his native Shiraz, studying Arabic, Persian literature, and religious sciences, laying the linguistic and intellectual foundations for his later poetry and prose, and developing an ambition to travel and study afar.
2. 1230–1256Damascus · DamascusAfter leaving Shiraz, Saadi travelled through India, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, and elsewhere, experiencing war, imprisonment, and exile, broadly engaging with all levels of society and accumulating rich life experience that provided vivid material for his later moral literature.
3. 1256–1291Shiraz · Fars ProvinceIn his later years Saadi returned to Shiraz, successively completing the narrative poem Bustan and the prose collection Golestan, expounding worldly wisdom and moral instruction through parables, anecdotes, and lyric poetry, becoming classics of Persian literature; he died in Shiraz around 1291.