The greatest ethical and worldly-wise poet of Iran. Shaikh Sadi came to Baghdad from Shiraz and studied and lived there till 1226. While in Baghdad, there lived a well-known Sufi Shaikh Shihabuddin Suharwardi, of whose unselfish piety, Sadi made mention in his first major work Bostan. Between 1226 and 1256, Shaikh Sadi travelled widely and visited Central Asia, India, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia and Morocco. In 1256, after his return to Shiraz he completed Bostan a collection of poems on ethical subjects. And in 1258 he completed his Gulistan, a collection of moral stories in prose interspersed with grains of wisdom and always evidencing a practical train of thought. His knowledge of the world added much to his cosmopolitan views and thought. He sometimes, sounded Machiavellian as was evident from his famous adage that 'An expedient falsehood is preferable to a mischievous truth'. He preached a 'This-Worldliness' with only a moderate fatalism and he disapproved of extreme piety. Shaikh Sadi was born in Shiraz, and he took his poetical pseudonym of Sadi from his patron Sad Bin Zangi, the ruler of Iran.