Saʿdi’s Bustanبوستانِ سعدی

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.