“If our love stories and our literature were to be examined one by one, it would be seen that there has never been a period in which we Turks have not benefited from their countless treasures, their free-spirited and poetic style… It is strange that when Persian literature is mentioned, the first things that come to everyone’s mind are the Persian’s tales of the ney and wine, the rose and the nightingale. Yet, while many wise and moral treasures brought forth by Persian poets remain buried—each one sufficient to forever prove the attention, refinement, and the power and skill of those who speak with literary taste—it is as if these treasures of the East have been exhausted, and a great obsession has arisen in everyone for inclining toward the Western style and the new manner of the West.
Since we have let our national traditions be seized by foreigners in almost everything, almost all the literary themes we now eagerly and imploringly adopt because they excite our ambition and appetite are those taken from the Arabs and Persians, who form the foundation of our literary language.
However, because the West has given these a color and a polish, dressing them in new attire, and because the spiritual innovations and natural beauties that have been distant from our sanctuary of union for years cannot be understood with such a superficial glance, their original owners naturally cannot be found…
Sa'ib, who lived a happy life in the beautiful lands and emerald gardens of Tabriz in the eleventh century and could not escape the envy of even his contemporaries, is a person originally from Tabriz named Muhammad Ali. It is also rumored that he has some Turkish poems. His compiled divan, exceeding twenty thousand couplets, was highly acclaimed in Iran and India, and even among those of taste in the Ottoman Empire, surpassing the Hafizes in proverbs and wisdom…
I had heard during my studies from my master, Hemşinli Hacı Hafız Yusuf Efendi, that there were natural treasures among Sa'ib’s poems. Examining his unprinted divan that came into my possession to the best of my ability, I selected two hundred couplets. To keep Sa'ib’s name alive, I named the book Mücevherât-ı Sâib-i Tebrîzî (Jewels of Sa'ib of Tabriz) and added a translation of the meaning beneath each one…” (M. Hulûsî Karadeniz)