RUDAKI, ABU ʿABD-ALLĀH JAʿFAR b. Moḥammad Samarqandi (b. Banoj, a village in the Rudak area between Samarqand and Bukhara, ca. 243/858; d. Banoj, 329/941), the most celebrated Persian poet of the Samanid period. Rudaki (also written in manuscripts as Rudagi/Rawḏagi or Ruḏagi) excelled at writing qa ṣidas but was also famed for other genres of poetry. Only a small fraction of his work is still extant, with perhaps the greatest loss being his translation in verse of Kalila wa Demna (q.v.).

LIFE

A few details of Rudaki’s personal life have survived, mostly from the contents of his own poetry supplemented by disparate sources: verse citations in dictionaries, brief bio-bibliographical accounts in anthologies, and references in works of later centuries (notably Samʿāni, VI, p. 192). According to Moḥammad Sadid-al-Din ʿAwfi (q.v.; II, p. 6), Rudaki had memorized the Qurʾan in its entirety had already composed well-wrought poetry by the time he was eight years old. He also learned to play the čang  (q.v.) from Abu’l-ʿAbak Baḵtiār (possibly Abu Laʿbak, as surmised by Foruzānfar, 1971, p.18), a famous musician. The combination of these talents enabled him to perform as a minstrel and recite his own poems while playing the čang (ʿAwfi, II, pp. 6-7). Thus, he has often been compared with Bārbad (q.v.), the fabled minstrel of the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II (q.v., r. 590-628).

The Samanid court at Bukhara was a center of cultural patronage for many fields of the arts and sciences, with poets vying with each other in presenting their panegyrics. Some court poets employed rāwis, professional declaimers of poetry who recited their verses in public performances, often with the accompaniment of a musical instrument (on whether Rudaki had a r āwi, see Denison-Ross, 1924, p. 636). Rudaki, supported by the prominent vizier Abu’l-Fażl Moḥammad Balʿami (q.v.), spent most of his life at court in Bukhara, where he became the panegyrist and boon companion of the Samanid amir Naṣr II b. Aḥmad (r. 301-31/914-43), the ruler of Khorasan and Transoxiana. According to Neẓāmi ʿArużi (p. 52, tr. Browne, p. 53), “there was none more honoured of the King’s intimates, and none whose words found so ready an acceptance.”

A frequently cited anecdote, even if partly fictional, demonstrates both the powerful impact of Rudaki’s poetical performance at the Samanid court as well as the considerable financial rewards that ensued (it first appears in Neẓāmi ʿArużi’s Čahār maqāla, pp. 49-54, tr. Browne, pp. 33-36). It relates how one year Amir Naṣr had decided to spend a spring and summer with his entourage in the fertile pastures of Bādḡis (q.v.) near Herat. He was enthralled by the pleasant climate and the verdant landscape there.  It also happened to be a time of peace and prosperity for the realm and the prince felt sufficiently carefree to prolong his enjoyable stay for four years, banishing any thoughts of an imminent return to his residence at Bukhara.  His attendant courtiers, pining for home, beseeched Rudaki to use his influence on the prince and persuade him to return homewards, promising him a reward of five thousand gold coins (dinars) if he succeeded. At an opportune moment, Rudaki plucked at his čang and delivered his panegyric, beginning with a nostalgic recall of the city and the estate on the Muliān stream, bu-ye ju-ye Muliān āyad hami / yād-e yār-e mehrbān āyad hami (“The Jú-yi Múliyán we call to mind, / We long for those dear friends long left behind”). This was followed by an evocation of the imagined imminent and joyful return of the ruler to Bukhara, with the homecoming of the prince depicted in terms of a reunion of the prince and the city like two entities made for each other, the moon in the sky and the cypress in the meadow:

mir m āh ast o Boḵārā asemānmāh su-ye asemān hamimir sarvast o Boḵārā bustānSarv su-ye bustān āyad hami

The Moon’s the Prince, Bukhárá is the sky;O Sky, the Moon shall light thee by and by!Bukhárá is the mead, the Cypress he;Receive at last, O Mead, thy Cypress-tree!

According to the same account, when Rudaki had reached the last verse, the prince was so emotionally overwhelmed that he at once descended from his throne, leapt on a horse, and galloped towards Bukhara, leaving his riding boots behind; and the homesick notables doubled their pledged reward. Neẓāmi ʿArużi (p. 54, tr. Browne, p. 36) adds an anecdote claiming that when Rudaki reached Samarqand on the return, he had four hundred camels to carry his baggage, while ʿAwfi (II, p. 7) claims the poet had two hundred slaves in his service and required four hundred camels to carry his baggage.

The ballad-like simplicity of the poem, with the incremental use of radifs and anaphora, is almost unanimously applauded by contemporary critics, and often cited as a particularly fine example of that inimitable facility and emotional intensity which is the hallmark of the lyrical verses of the early Persian poets. Given that most of the extant poetry of the period has reached us in scattered lines and fragments, the survival of these verses, framed by Neẓāmi ʿArużi’s masterly evocation of the context, no matter how fictional, is another reason for its widespread appeal. Its reception in the past was at times more equivocal, particularly in eras when more florid styles, encrusted with eruditely subtle allusions, became the fashion of the day.  Dawlatšāh Samarqandi (q.v.; d. 900/1438 or 913/1507), for example, writing in the second half of the 15th century, sounds far less enthusiastic when he maintains that discerning observers would find it strange that the Samanid amir should have been so enchanted by such verses. He points out that such a plain, unembellished poem, bereft of elaborate rhetorical flourishes and judiciously sophisticated diction, would find little favor in the courtly circles of his own time. Finally and almost grudgingly, he attributes the success of its first performance to the accompanying music, which must have enhanced its impact. This exception aside, he goes on to agree that Rudaki had otherwise composed excellent verse in several other genres and was highly esteemed and lavishly compensated for his art (Dawlatšāh, p. 32; tr. in Browne, II, pp. 16-17).

Little more can be added to Rudaki’s biography apart from perhaps some disparate facts culled from personal observations in his poetry, though one should be cautious about assuming that the persona of the poet in a poem is a reliable source for information on his or her life. Rudaki’s long introspective qaṣida, a lament on old age, is a case in point (Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, pp. 497-99, ll. 188-221; tr. Jackson, pp. 42-44), which could be taken as evidence of the infirmities and poverty Rudaki endured late in life. The poem begins on a personal note:

Marā besud o foru riḵt har če dandān bud,Nabud dandān, lābal čeraḡ-e tābān bud.

Every tooth, ah me! has crumbled, dropped and fallen in decay!Tooth it was not, nay say rather, ’twas a brilliant lamp’s bright ray;

Rudaki illustrates the ravages of old age as depicted by the loss of his teeth, with a rapid succession of images recalling their former radiant glory: luminescent as a rain drop, pearls, corals, or the morning star; before facing the present and lamenting their loss. As often in Rudaki’s verse, the dramatic shifts in time and focus appear abruptly. The personal concerns give way to several lines of metaphysical meditation on the vicissitudes of fortune before returning once more to his life narrative and a series of nostalgic vignettes of happier times, punctuated by the regular repetition of the nostalgic anaphora š od ān zamāna ke (“gone are the days when”). Finally the curtain drops abruptly, the past— immediate and long gone— gives way to the present and the imperative mood of the final words:

Konun zamāna degar gašt o man degar gaštam;ʿAṣā biār, ke waqt-e ʿaṣā o anbān bud).

Now the times have changed, —and I, too, changed and altered must succumb,Bring the beggar’s staff here to me; time for staff and scrip has come!

ʿAwfi (II, p. 6) asserts that Rudaki was blind from birth, a point disputed by others. However, the precision of his descriptions of nature, bathed in colors, throws doubt on ʿAwfi’s assertion. Based on a few indications in Rudaki’s poems, he may have lost his sight in old age (Ṣafā, I, pp. 373-74). Ferdowsi, in reference to the Rudaki’s versification of Kalila wa Demna in Persian, says that the text was read to him, which may be taken as an indication of his blindness (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, VII, vv. 3509-10; Ṣafā, I, p. 379). Saʿid Nafisi (1895-1966), relying on literary references as well as reports of the 1957 exhumation of Rudaki’s supposed remains, suggested that Rudaki may have lost his eyesight late in life, after a botched cataract operation or perhaps as punishment when his main patron, Abu’l-Fażl Balʿami, was dismissed as vizier in 326/938 in the aftermath of an anti-Ismaʿili revolt and replaced by Abu ʿAli Moḥammad Jayhāni, and Rudaki fell from favor (Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, pp. 404-9).

WORKS

Rudaki is often called “the father of Persian poetry” given that he was the first to excel in multiple genres: panegyric, lyric, elegaic, and didactic. His prolific output in verse is attested in several sources.  Rašidi Samarqandi (last quarter of 5th/11th century), a poet himself, records in a verse that he had counted 13 times 100,000 (i.e., 1.3 million) lines of Rudaki’s poetry (Ṣafā, I, p. 378); whatever may have been the case, only about a thousand verses have reached us.

Carl Herman Ethé (q.v., 1844-1917) was the first western scholar to be interested in Rudaki. In 1873, he published some of his extant poems in “Rûdagî der Sâmânidendichter,” with the Persian text and metrical German translation together with a biographical account based on forty-six Persian manuscripts (Browne, I, pp. 455 ff.), but most of the cited verses belong to Qaṭrān Tabrizi (d. after 462/1070; Denison Ross, p. 609) who lived a century later.  In 1940, the Tajik scholar Ṣadr-al-Din ʿAyni (q.v.; 1878-1954) published Ostād Rudaki, in which he presented 804 verses (362 from qaṣidas, 224 from ḡazals, 154 from maṯnawis and 64 robāʿis; in Braginskiĭ, pp. 384-444). ʿAyni also carried on research to ascertain Rudaki’s place of birth and is credited with having discovered his reputed burial place in Panjrud, near Panjikant in Tajikistan.

Saʿid Nafisi published the first edition of Rudaki’s divān in 3 volumes (Nafisi, 1931-40).  In 1958, A. M. Mirzoev (1908-1976) published 922 verses in the journal Š arqi sur ḵ (no. 4), which also included new verses found in taḏkeras and dictionaries, particularly in Rāduyāni’s Tarjomān al-balāḡa.  While preparing an introduction to his edition of Loḡat-e fors, Paul Horn (q.v.; 1863-1908) noticed a few verses dealing with Kalila wa Dimna and a few lines dealing with One Thousand and One Nights (see ALF LAYLA WA LAYLA). In 1962, Nafisi, after a considerable amount of research, identified still more fragments, for a total of 1047 verses that had been found in anthologies and dictionaries. Among these were some fragments attributed to Rudaki that actually belonged to the divān of Qaṭrān Tabrizi (see Epinette). Nafisi removed these and added an extensive biography of Rudaki in his second edition of Rudaki’s divān, entitled Moḥit-e zendagi va aḥvāl va ašʿār-e Rudaki (1962).

Several Iranian scholars continued Nafisi’s research, including Ḵalil Ḵaṭib Rahbar (1995), who compiled an edition with commentary of 482 couplets, as well as Badiʿ-al-Zamān Foruzānfar (q.v.; 1971, pp. 335-58) and ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Zarrinkub (q.v.; 1984, pp. 214-19). In 1964, Iosef Braginskiĭ published a complete divān of Rudaki, along with Russian metrical translations by V. V. Levik and S. I. Lipkin, based on the verses that had been published by Nafisi and by Mirzoev. Jaʿfar Šeʿār and Ḥasan Anwari in 1994 published a select anthology (gozida) of his poetry in 1994 (for a list of works on Rudaki, including these, see Rādfar).

In Rudaki’s poems, erotic love, wine-drinking, and nature are elegantly intermingled.  They have all the hallmarks of the “Khorasani School” of Persian poetry as described in length by Moḥammad Jaʿfar Maḥjub (q.v., 1924-96) in his critical study, Sabk-e ḵorāsāni dar šeʿr-e fārsi (1966). Nafisi recognizes him as a master of panegyrics (p. 597). In the fragments of the extant maṯnawis, Rudaki adopted different meters (motaqāreb, ḵafif, ramal, and hazaj; Ṣafā, I, p. 380).  Unfortunately, there is not enough material to form a critical appraisal of them: just two or three lines of Sendbād-nāma, and about 120 verses of Kalila wa Demna. Rudaki is said to have composed three or four other maṯnawis (Dawrān-e āftāb, ʿArāʾes al-naffās, Tāj al-maṣāder; see Yāḥaqqi, 2009, p. 418).  His elegies are all subtle, while didactic odes and epigrams express in well-measured lines a kind of Epicurean philosophy of human life and human happiness.

Particularly charming are Rudaki’s lyrical pieces glorifying love and wine.  His most famous qaṣida, beginning mādar-e mey rā bekard bāyad qorbān / bačča-ye u rā gereft o kard be zendān (“You should sacrifice the grape / seize her child, and put it in prison”; text in T āriḵ-e Sistān, p. 317, tr. Gold, p. 259), has been a subject of study (Denison-Ross, 1926; Brookshaw) and is regarded as a model of qaṣida composition. Its introductory section (nasib), devoted to love, nature, and wine-drinking, is very original and a truly masterful description of the wine-making process with all the technical details; so too is its praise of the wine, of its color (red like coral or ruby), its fragrance (that of the red rose or ambergris), but above all, of its virtues. The long panegyric (madḥ) consists of the description of a banquet of the prince and gives an idea of its munificence; the prince is sitting amidst the nobles, while a multitude of young and beautiful Turkish pages (the wine servers [sāqi]) are passing the cup around, a theme soon adopted by the Ghaznavid poets.  Then comes a deluge of compliments to the prince, his patron, comparing him to Alexander the Great for his power and to Plato and Socrates for his wisdom, followed by other compliments designed to incite the prince’s generosity (for the complete text of the poem, see Tāriḵ-e Sistān, pp. 317-23, tr. Gold, pp. 259-64).

Rudaki’s praise of wine figures in other verses as well. By drinking it, the avaricious become generous and the low-born turn into nobility (mey āzāda padid ārad az bad aṣl; Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 499, l. 222). Wine banishes sorrow and brings joy, so Rudaki recommended it in an elegy written to console the Samanid amir Aḥmad b. Esmāʿil on the death of his father Esmāʿil b. Aḥmad in 295/907 (text in Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 511, l. 524; tr. Tabatabai, p. 28; with a variant half-line in Bayhaqi, p. 798, tr. Bosworth and Ashtiany, II, p. 289).

Tā beškani sepāh-e ḡamān bar delĀn beh ka mey biāri o begsāri.

To defeat the grief’s army at your heartYou should call for wine and drink it.

In other qaṣidas, Rudaki celebrates Nowruz (q.v.) in an enthusiastic manner, once again comparing parts of human beings and elements of nature; spring rejuvenates nature and man too (text in Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 492-93 ll. 36, 46, 49; tr. Tabatabai, p.100):

Āmad bahār ḵorram bā rang o buy-e ṭib…

A lush spring has arrived, colorful and effervescent…,

Lāla miān-e kešt beḵandad hami ze dur…

On the meadow, a distant tulip smiles…,

Aknun ḵorid bāda o aknun ziyid šād

Now, drink wine. Now, be happy.

Rudaki is the most celebrated ḡazal (q.v.) writer of his time, and ʿOnṣori (q.v.; Divān, pp. 247-50) praises him, saying he could not reach Rudaki’s perfection in that genre: ḡ azal Rudakivār niku bovad / Ḡazalhā-ye man Rudakivār nist (“a ḡ azal should be like those of Rudaki / My ḡazals are not as good as Rudaki’s”). Rudaki was also praised by other poets such as Farroḵi Sistāni and Moʿezzi Nišāburi (qq.v.), and the vizier Abu’l-Fażl Balʿami considered him without equal among the Arab and Persian poets (Farroḵi, pp. 15, 401 Amir Moʿezzi, Divān, qa ṣ āʾed nos. 142, 285, 380, 485; Samʿāni, VI, p. 192; Ṣafā, I, pp. 376-77;).

In the Persian ḡazal, love is the reigning passion, and the concept of beauty very conventional.  Rudaki left an impact on every Persian poet, and many poets tried to imitate him.  Thanks to him, the ḡazal was enriched with expressive emotions and became luxuriant in meters.  He is considered as a pioneer for ḡazal composers.  With a relative simplicity of language, the scope would be widened to include scenes of wine-drinking, praise of wine, and fresh descriptions of nature; the beauty of the beloved would be described in a very conventional manner: she/he is like an idol ( bot [q.v.]), moon-faced (māh-ru), the eyes are two narcissi, the cheeks are tulips.  Most of these images became staples of Persian classical poetry.  They would be adopted by the poets of the Ghaznavid period (e.g., ʿOnṣori, Manučehri, Farroḵi), and later on by Omar Khayyam (q.v.) in his Robāʿiāt, Hafez (q.v.), etc. After Rudaki, the ḡazal became an increasingly important form of Persian poetry dealing with erotic and romantic love, sometimes given to mystical interpretations.

The few elegies (mar ṯiya) remaining from Rudaki reveal his aptitude in that genre too.  In the opening couplet of the elegy on the death of Esmāʿil b. Aḥmad mentioned earlier, Rudaki tries to console his patron Aḥmad b. Esmāʿil in very simple and delicate words (text in Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 511 l. 514):

Ey ān ke ḡamgeni o sezāvāri;V’andar nehān serešk hami b āri.

O thou who are grieved and have a right to be;Thou who rain tears in secret.

In the moving elegy on the death of the poet Šahid Balḵi (d. 325/937), his close friend, Rudaki expresses, at the same time, both sorrow and anguish at his own situation (text in Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 504 ll. 317-18, tr. Tabatabai, p. 32):

Kārvān -e Šahid raft az piš,V’ān-e mā rafta gir o miandiš.Az šomār-e do čašm yek tan kam,V’az šomār ḵerad hazāran biš.

Šahid’s caravan has left before ours,Believe me, ours will also leave.Count the eyes, there is one pair less,Measure the wisdom, thousands less.

Rudaki is thought to be the first to have composed poems in the quatrain (robāʿi) form (for the origin of the robāʿi; see Homāʾi; Šafiʿi Kadkani, Elwell-Sutton), where the poet’s talent in expressing emotional feelings and ideas are briefly reflected; the capacity of expressing, in a few lines and in a very delicate taste, the beauty of the beloved (e.g., in the verse ey az gol-e sorḵ rang berbuda o bu / rang az pey-e roḵ r o buda bu az pey-e mu ‘You have stolen the color and scent of the rose, color for the cheeks and scent for the hair’; Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 516, l. 624), the pains and sorrows of love, the intensity of the jealousy so that the lover would prefer to be in hell.

Rudaki’s sense of wisdom and knowledge has its roots in Zoroastrian culture; thus, referring to his patron, he says (Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 497, l. 153, tr. Tabatabai, p. 10):

Hamčo moʿammāst faḵr o hemmat-e u šarḥ;Hamčo abestāst fażl o sirat-e u zand.

It’s a puzzle, describing his grace and will:He is the Avesta in wisdom, the Zand in essence…

He also sometimes emulated the andarz (q.v.) literature and gave advice (e.g., take action, don’t sit idle for too long, even though yours sacks of gold reach the moon).  At other times, he sounded like a thoughtful philosopher, as in be sarā-ye sepanj mehmān rā /del nahādan hamišegi na ravāst (“In this transient abode, it is unwise to feel settled and secure”; text in Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 493, l. 65) or mehr mafkan bar in sarā-ye sepanj / kin jahān pāk bāziyi niranj (“Don’t be fond of this transient life / This world is a deceiving game”; text in Nafisi, Mo ḥiṭ, p. 495, tr. Tabatabai, pp. 80-81).

Celebrations.  In 1958, Iran and Tajikistan celebrated the 1100th anniversary of Rudaki’s birth and organized a conference with the participation of a number of notable Iranian and Tajik scholars. It was in conjunction with this event that the site of Rudaki’s grave was identified and the remains exhumed and examined by the forensic anthropologist M. M. Gerasimov (1907-70), who made a bust reconstructing the poet’s features, prior to the construction of the Rudaki mausoleum there (Amonov; Moroz). After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Rudaki became an increasingly potent symbol of Tajik identity as well as the connection of the Tajiks to the larger Persian-speaking world. In 2008, Tajikistan, with the support of Iran, Afghanistan, and Kazakhistan, proposed that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Afghanistan, Iran, and Kazakhistan, commemorate the 1150th anniversary of Rudaki’s birth, and the ceremony was accordingly held on 18 June 2008 (https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2008-06-18/remarks-commemoration-ceremony-1150th-anniversary-birth-rudaki). That same year, an international ceremony and seminar was held at Vahdat Hall in Tehran with the participation of the presidents of the republics of Tajikistan and Iran, the head of the Culture Ministry of Tajikistan, and some thirty scholars, and the academic proceedings were published (Baygdeli). ʿAbd-al-Ḡafur Ārzu and the Foreign Ministry of Afghanistan convened a Rudaki congress in Kabul, and its proceedings were published (Ārzu). Another conference was organized in November 2008 at the Suleimanov Institute of Oriental Studies in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with the proceedings published in 2017 (Abdullo). Also in 2008, the central park in Dushanbe was renamed for Rudaki, with a monumental statue of him replacing the statue of Lenin previously on the site.