Sadi's Scroll of Wisdom
by Arthur N. Wollaston
This rare book – separate from the widely-available Gulistan and Bustan – is a small volume of poetry embodying precepts which would do no discredit to the philosophy of the 21st Century CE. Concise and elegant, the work is most popular throughout the length and breadth of the Persian-speaking East.
In addition to beauty of diction, it is written in a metre which flows in easy cadence, and fixes the words of the poem on the mind. Hence the lines are committed to memory to an extent that is probably not surpassed by any work in the Persian language. Lines from Sadi’s poems are still commonly used in conversations by Iranians today.
