Saadi was born in Shiraz, Iran, according to some, shortly after 1200, according to others sometime between 1213 and 1219.J.A. Boyle (1977), "Review of: Morals Pointed and Tales Adorned: The Būstān of Sa'dī by Sa'dī, by G. M. Wickens". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Vol. 40, No. 1. Boyle writes: "It is not clear on what authority Wickens states 'with reasonable confidence' that Sa'di was born c. 1200. In an article published as long ago as 1937, the late Abbas Eghbal demonstrated that the poet's birth must fall somewhere between 610/1213-14 and 615/1218-19. See the Sa'dī-nāma ed. Ḥabīb Yaghma'ī, Tehran 1316/1937-8, 627-45, (especially 640-10)." In the Golestan, composed in 1258, he says in lines evidently addressed to himself, "O you who have lived fifty years and are still asleep"; another piece of evidence is that in one of his qasida poems he writes that he left home for foreign lands when the Mongols came to his homeland Fars, an event which occurred in 1225.Katouzian, Sa'di, p. 11 Saadi was a Sunni Muslim.
