Persian · noun · Nature & the Garden

Gulistaan

गुलिस्ताँ
said gu-lis-taan
also written: Gulistan, gulistaan, gulestan, rose-garden
Meaning

A rose-garden, a flower-garden, a place full of blooming roses.

Literally: rose-garden, land of roses

How Iqbal uses it

The gulistan is the rose-garden or 'land of roses' — twin to the gulshan and immortalised by Sa'di's classic, an emblem of the flourishing, ordered garden and, by extension, of the homeland or the world in flower. Iqbal employs it for the collective garden of a people or a faith: a gulistan that can wither into autumn (khizan) or be reborn, whose flowers must do more than merely bloom and fall.