Rudaki

Overview

Rudaki was born in 858 in Rudak (Panjrud), a village located in the Samanid Empire which is now Panjakent, located in modern-day Tajikistan. Even though most of his biographers assert that he was completely blind, some early biographers are silent about this or do not mention him as being born blind. His accurate knowledge and description of colors, as evident in his poetry, renders this assertion very doubtful. He was the court poet to the Samanid ruler Nasr II (914–943) in Bukhara, although he eventually fell out of favour; his life ended in poverty.

At the Samanid court

Early in his life, the fame of his accomplishments reached the ear of the Samanid king Nasr II ibn Ahmad, the ruler of Khorasan and Transoxiana, who invited the poet to his court. Rudaki became his daily companion, amassed great wealth, and become highly honored. It is claimed that he well deserves the title of the father of Persian literature, or the Adam or the Sultan of poets even though he had various predecessors, because he was the first who impressed upon every form of epic, lyric and didactic poetry its peculiar stamp and its individual character. He is also said to have been the founder of the diwan, or the typical form of the complete collection of a poet's lyrical compositions in a more or less alphabetical order, which all Persian writers use even today. He was also a very adept singer and player on the chang (harp).

Rudaki's blindness

The common opinion was that Rudaki was born blind or was blind from his childhood. However, some of early biographies, like Samani and Nezami Aruzi do not emphasis his blindness as natural-born. Ferdowsi just mentions in his Shahnameh that they recited Kelileh o Demneh to him and he rendered it into poem. Also using some of his poems we can see that he had sight:

The contemporary Iranian scholar, Said Nafisi, has a book about Rudaki called Biography, Environment and Time of Rudaki. In pages 394-404, he refers to historical events and references in Persian books and poems, as well as the forensic findings of Russians in early 20th century including Mikhail Gerasimov (who reconstructed Rudaki's face based on his bones found in his tomb, see above picture), concludes that Rudaki and Amir Nasr Samani were Ismailis and there was a revolt against Ismalis around 940, a few years before Rudaki's death. This revolt led to the overthrow of the Samanid king and Rudaki, as his close companion, was tortured and blinded and his back was broken while they were blinding him. After this, Rudaki went back to the small town where he was born and died shortly after that. He was buried there.

Extant works

Of the 1,300,000 verses attributed to him, only 52 qasidas, ghazals and rubais survived; of his epic masterpieces we have nothing beyond a few stray lines in native dictionaries. However, the most serious loss is that of his translation of Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa's Arabic version of the old Indian fable book Kalila and Dimna (Panchatantra), which he put into Persian verse at the request of his royal patron. Numerous fragments, however, are preserved in the Persian lexicon of Asadi Tusi (the Lughat al-Furs, ed. P. Horn, Göttingen, 1897). In his qasidas - all of which are devoted to the praise of his sovereign and friend - unequalled models of a refined and delicate taste, very different from the often bombastic compositions of later Persian encomiasts, have survived. His didactic odes and epigrams expressed in well-measured lines a type of Epicurean philosophy of life and human happiness, and more charming still are the purely lyrical pieces that glorify love and wine.

There is a complete edition of all the extant poems of Rudaki which were known at the end of the 19th century, in Persian text and metrical German translation, together with a biographical account, based on forty-six Persian manuscripts, in Hermann Ethé's Rudagi der Samanidendichter (Göttinger Nachrichten, 1873, pp. 663–742); see also:

Neupersische Literatur in Wilhelm Geiger's Grundriss der iranischen Philologie (ii.

Paul Horn, Geschichte der persischen Literatur (1901), p. 73

E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, i. (1902)

C. J. Pickering, A Persian Chaucer in National Review (May 1890).

More recently, in 1963, Saʻīd Nafīsī identified more fragments to be attributed to Rudaki and has assembled them, together with an extensive biography, in Muḥīṭ-i zindagī va aḥvāl va ashʻār-i Rūdakī.

Poetry

Sample Poetry:

Look at the cloud, how it cries like a grieving manThunder moans like a lover with a broken heart.Now and then the sun peeks from behind the cloudsLike a prisoner hiding from the guard.

Celebrations

For the 1100th anniversary of his birth, the Iranian government published a series of stamps showing his picture. An international seminar was held at Vahdat Hall, Tehran, Iran on 21 December 2008, to mark his 1150th birth anniversary, with President Ahmadinejad and "Culture minister" of Tajikistan in attendance. In this seminar, Rudaki was celebrated as the father of the Modern Persian literature.