Sykes' History of Persia Vol 2 (pdf) - Heritage Institute

2 30 HISTORY OF PERSIA CHAP.
This ode he sent to the Prince with the following remarks :
" Never have more beautiful words been uttered, nor ever
will be. Would that I could go to Rum and rub my
face in the dust at his feet !
"
Jalal-u-Din founded the order of Mevlevi, or
"Dancing Dervishes," whose performances are one of
the sights of Constantinople and certainly constitute a
fantastic side of Sufiism.
Sadi. Persians differ
among themselves on most
questions, but they agree that the great province of
Iran is Fars, and that among its chief claims to greatness
is that it
produced the two poets celebrated for all
time as Sadi and Hafiz. Musharrif-u-Din, known as
Sadi, owing to his having received the protection of Sad
bin Zangi, mentioned in Chapter LIII., is deservedly the
favourite poet in Persia, owing
to his catholic tastes and
the fact that he is intensely human. Unlike Attar and
Jalal-u-Din, he was not passionately devout, but was halfworldly,
half-devout. He was not one of the essentially
mystical poets, having no visionary strain, and he adopted
some of their forms rather as a vehicle of thought and
expression than in order to preach Sun doctrines.
Born towards the close of the twelfth century of our
era, Sadi was left an orphan
at an early age,
as we know
from his pathetic reference to the fact in the Bustan,
which runs :
Caress not and kiss not a child of thine own
In the sight of an orphan neglected and lone.
If the orphan sheds tears, who his grief will assuage ?
If his temper should fail him, who cares for his rage ?
O see that he weeps not, for surely God's throne
Doth quake at the orphan's most pitiful
moan !
Upon
his father's death he studied at the renowned
Nizamia College at Baghdad for a while, and then made
a journey to distant Kashgar, the date of which, from a
reference made by the poet, can be fixed approximately
at A.D. 1210. His travels were indeed extraordinarily
wide, ranging from India, where he had a grim adventure
with a priest
in the temple at Somnath, to Palestine, where