The Impact of Ashaeri's Thoughts on Saadi's Golestan

Rational theology (Kalam) in the sense of providing arguments on revealed verses and their interpretation was not popular for some reasons during the Rashidin Caliphs period. However, due to the rationalistic feature of Islam and the availability of well-educated scholars, Islamic theology was developed as to oppose the non-monotheistic thoughts and led to the emergence of the three theological sects; Ashaereh, Motazeleh and Imamieh. From among the three sects, Asaereh became predominant for some reasons and its dominance in Persian literature has continued in some forms up to the present time. A survey of Ashaereh’s thoughts reveals similarities with Iranshahri’s thoughts. It can be claimed that some aspects of the Ashaereh’s thoughts as realized in Moulavi, Saadi, Hafez and Nezami have been affected by the Iranshahri’s thoughts. The present paper is an attempt to examine the degree of the impact of Asheri’s thoughts on Saadi’s Golestan though it is considered as less affected by these thoughts. The reason is that Golestan lacks attention to issues such as vision of God, the contingency or pre-existence of Quran and the world, committing of deadly sins and the like. Golestan is not the outcome of thoughts of a dogmatic theologian jurist but it is rather the reflection of Ashaeri’s thoughts on education and morality. The hypothesis made in the present paper can be supported by the samples taken from the book itself.