Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1082810 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 243 pages

Customer Reviews

Wonderful book that deserves to be better known
While the Mathnawi of Rumi is pretty much well known to the west (sadly to some extent for the wrong reasons) and popular amongst many of the "supermarket spirituality" school of thought largely due to re-prints and miss prints of Nicholson's great translation the Gulistan and Bostan of Shaikh Said are sadly very little known.

The book in many ways is similar to the Mathnawi in that in a prose style, it is a collection of moral stories, wise words and tales. It is not something you would pick up and read from start to finish but rather refer to and contemplate upon. Anyone familiar with Eastern books of wisdom (or even say for example Aesop's Fables or Canterbury Tales) will appreciate this book.

The translation is a little dated but well done and easy to read and follow. This book was once a popular study guide in the East (at a time when wisdom was something that was favoured and cherished) It comes with a biography of Shaikh Sadi and a little background to the book. It does come with an introduction by Idrees Shah (of what value that is make up your own mind. I for one am a little tired of his 'anti Turk' introductions to books he has published with his name on the front as though he wrote them or translated them himself) The one benefit however with books published by Shah is that they are fairly cheap!