Sufism

Sanai's Hadiqat al-Haqiqa (The Walled Garden of Truth) was the first great Persian mystical epic to shape Attar and Rumi after him

Sanai's long didactic poem set the template that Attar and Rumi would later build on, establishing the mystical masnavi as a major form of Persian literature.

Sanai of Ghazna (d. c. 1131) composed Hadiqat al-Haqiqa, The Walled Garden of Truth, as an extended didactic poem in the masnavi form, interweaving ethical instruction, mystical teaching, anecdote, and satire across its many chapters. Later Sufi biographers credit this work as the first major Persian mystical epic of its kind, establishing a literary model that Attar's Conference of the Birds and Rumi's Masnavi would later inherit and expand. Sanai wrote initially as a court poet before undergoing a spiritual reorientation that turned his poetic skill toward religious subjects, a biographical arc that itself became a recognizable pattern for later Sufi poets. His influence is less about any single doctrine than about form: he proved Persian verse could carry sustained mystical instruction at epic length, opening the path for the two poets most responsible for popularizing Sufi ideas worldwide.

Hadiqat al-Haqiqa