Sádi, a celebrated Persian poet, born at Shiraz, of noble lineage, but born poor; bred up in the Moslem faith; made pilgrimages to Mecca no fewer than 15 times; spent years in travel; fell into the hands of the Crusaders; was ransomed by a merchant of Aleppo, who thought him worth ransoming at a cost; retired to a hermitage near Shiraz, where he died and was buried; his works, both in prose and verse, are numerous, but the most celebrated is the “Gulistan” (the rose-gardens), a collection of moral tales interlarded with philosophical reflections and maxims of wisdom, which have made his name famous all over both the East and the West (1184‒1291).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de * Sadler, Sir Ralph