Tomb of Saadi

Garden mausoleum of the great Persian poet

Saadi (c.1210–1291) spent decades travelling before returning to Shiraz, where he wrote the Gulistan and Bustan — works that shaped Persian prose and poetry for centuries. His mausoleum, in gardens slightly north of the city centre, has a quieter atmosphere than the Hafez tomb. Many Iranians briefly touch the tombstone as they pass.

Saadi reportedly asked for this inscription on his tomb: "From the tomb of Saadi, son of Shiraz — the perfume of love escapes — thou shalt smell it still one thousand years after his death."

things to do sight
A story
Saadi travelled for thirty years through the Islamic world — Damascus, Baghdad, the Hejaz — before returning to Shiraz in middle age to write the Gulistan and Bustan. He claimed to have been captured by Crusaders near Tripoli and put to work digging trenches until a Syrian merchant ransomed him; whether or not the story is literally true, it gave Persian readers a picture of a writer whose advice had been earned the hard way.