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Saʿdi’s Bustan (655 AH / 1257 CE) is a didactic poem in the masnavi form, composed a year before the Golestan. It is rich with moral anecdotes and parables on justice and statecraft, charity, love, humility, contentment and acceptance, education, gratitude, repentance, and prayer. The language is fluid and musical (in rhymed couplets), and each tale closes with a practical lesson for personal and social life. The Bustan is typically read alongside the Golestan: the former is entirely verse and systematically arranged in ten books of human virtues, while the latter is melodious prose interwoven with poetry. Together they mirror Saʿdi’s humane, clear-eyed view of ethics, politics, and social conduct.

“Saʿdi’s Golestan” (656 AH / 1258 CE) is a masterpiece of melodious Persian prose: a collection of brief, didactic tales arranged in eight chapters—on the conduct of kings, the ethics of dervishes, the virtue of contentment, the benefits of silence, love and youth, weakness and old age, the impact of education, and the etiquette of companionship. Its style blends rhythmic cadence, concision, parable, and gentle wit, and where needed, graceful verses deepen the meaning. With a soft irony and a humane outlook—from justice and statecraft to personal ethics, love, education, and sociability—Saʿdi turns lived experience into practical lessons. Read in schools for centuries and translated into many languages, the Golestan remains engaging and inspiring for its limpid prose, applicable wisdom, and vivid portrait of life in the seventh Islamic century.

“The Eternal Land” is an expansive narrative of ancient Iran that, in a storytelling prose, traces a blend of myth and history from the eras of the Pishdadians and Kayanids up to the rise of the Achaemenids. Its well-known Persian version is by Zabihollah Mansouri, who, rather than a word-for-word translation, rewrote the account based on the works of Iranologists such as Roman Ghirshman, Marijan Molé, and Ernst Herzfeld. The result is a compelling, readable work with vivid descriptions of rituals, wars, kings, and historical geography—an engaging introduction to the world of ancient Iran for a general audience.

A comprehensive collection of articles introducing notable figures, lands, maps, and cultural heritage of Iran and beyond. This category serves as a reference section for extended information and historical context across the site.