Saadi

Thirteenth-century Persian poet, traveler, and Sufi master, born and buried in Shiraz, regarded throughout the Persian-speaking world as the greatest moral poet of the language. After more than thirty years of wandering — through Damascus, Aleppo, the Hejaz, North Africa, and as far as India — he returned to Shiraz and composed the Bostan (The Orchard, 1257) and the Gulistan (The Rose Garden, 1258), two of the most beloved books in Persian literature. The Gulistan in particular blends prose anecdote with verse epigram, and its couplet Bani Adam — "the children of Adam are limbs of one body" — adorns the entrance hall of the United Nations in New York.