Saadi was born in Shiraz around 1200. He died in Shiraz around 1292. He lost his father in early childhood.
With the help of his uncle, Saadi completed his early education in Shiraz.
Later he was sent to study in Baghdad at the renowned Nezamiyeh College, where he acquired the traditional learning of Islam.

The unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Persia led him to wander abroad through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq.
He also refers in his work to travels in India and Central Asia. Saadi is very much like Marco Polo who traveled in the region from 1271 to 1294.
There is a difference, however, between the two. While Marco Polo gravitated to the potentates and the good life,
Saadi mingled with the ordinary survivors of the Mongol holocaust.
He sat in remote teahouses late into the night and exchanged views
with merchants, farmers, preachers, wayfarers, thieves, and Sufi mendicants.
For twenty years or more, he continued the same schedule of preaching, advising, learning, honing his sermons, and polishing them into gems
illuminating the wisdom and foibles of his people.

When he reappeared in his native Shiraz he was an elderly man.He seems to have spent the rest of his life in Shiraz.

His best known works are the Bostan (The Orchard) and the Golestan (The Rose Garden).
The Bostan is entirely in verse (epic metre) and consists of stories aptly illustrating the standard virtues
recommended to Muslims (justice, liberality, modesty, contentment) as well as of reflections on the behaviour of dervishes and their ecstatic practices.
The Golestan is mainly in prose and contains stories and personal anecdotes.
The text is interspersed with a variety of short poems, containing aphorisms, advice, and humorous reflections.
Saadi demonstrates a profound awareness of the absurdity of human existence.
The fate of those who depend on the changeable moods of kings is contrasted with the freedom of the dervishes.

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