Cairo in Chicago: Cairo Street at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. István Ormos (Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 2021). Pp. 462. $120.00 cloth, $96.00 e-book. ISBN: 9782724707663

Abstract

recommend the book to students of Persian, Middle Eastern, and medieval studies as it has many virtues, ranging from an aesthetic, mystical, and performative analysis of Saʿdi’s poetry to novel discussions of Saʿdi’s understudied facetious corpus, and a fascinating discussion on love and desire, and poetry’s indispensable role in society. Saʿdi is a complex and central poet in the constellation of the Persian literary, ethical, and moral universe. Anecdotes from his Rose Garden and Orchard (Būstān) as well as many lines of his poetry and his adages have become part of the Persian language. Saʿdi’s definition of the ethics of desire, love, lust, and beauty and his Machiavellian codes of behaviour have become part and parcel of Persian culture. For instance, Saʿdi justifies lying for the best interest of a person or, as Ingenito phrases it, truth has a “relative nature ... in the face of ... beneficial falsehood” (p. 135). Saʿdi defends the proposition that being rich is better than living in poverty like a renunciant dervish. Ingenito’s multilayered analyses of Saʿdi as a convoluted medieval intellectual deserves much praise. His painstaking and complex monograph is a must for anyone interested in Persian medieval art, literature, and culture.