خلاصه ماشینی:
SA'Dl'S VISIT ·To SOMNATH1 IN the long array of the Persian poets aud men of letters Sheikh Sa'di of Shiraz is too well-known to need any introduction in the East and the VVest.
In the course of his travels Sa'di visited Khorasan, Tartary, Balkh, Kashghar, Ghazna, the Punjab, Somnath, Gujrat, Yemen, the Hijaz and other parts of Arabia, Abyssinia, Palestine, Syria, especially .
" The credibility of this story has been called 'in question by oriental scholars like Shams-ul-Ulernas Maulana Hali and Shibli in their biography of the poet, 1 and also by Kramers in his notice of the poet in the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2 in which he remarks that the story has many intrinsic improbabilities.
The learned author of Shi'rol-'Ajam after making a few remarks, goes on to say:-· " Sa'di was after all a forei~er and a new-comer and could not have observed anything in its true perspective, as is usually the case with European tourists, who, after their short stay in India, write down superficially in their travels and Indians on their perusal are at a loss to understand of what country's romance they are reading.
Recently, a Ew-opean scholar, Mr. Reuben Levy, Reader in Persian in the University of Cambridge, while writing about Sa'di's adventure at Somnath, after speculat• ing on the apocryphal character of the story, is prompted to believe at least in Sa'di's visit to India.