Rudaki

Background

Little information is available about Rudaki's life, much which has been reconstructed from his poems. He lived during the era of the Samanid Empire (819–999), under which New Persian literature began to develop and flourish. Rudaki was born c. 858. Ahmad Sam'ani gives his birthplace as Rudak (Rōdhak), a suburb of Samarqand, where he also died. The Tajik writer Sadriddin Ayni identified Rudaki's birthplace as the village of Panjrud (or Panjrudak), in the former Panjakent District of Tajikistan (in the jamoat of Rudaki). Rudaki's blindness is implied by the writings of early poets such as Daqiqi (died 977), Ferdowsi (died 1020/25), Abu Zura'ah al-Mu'ammari (fl. 10th-century) and Nasir Khusraw (died after 1070). The historian Awfi (died 1242), even says that Rudaki was born blind, but this has been questioned by some modern scholars, due to the expressive picture of nature given by Rudaki in his writings.

Besides being a poet, Rudaki was also a singer and musician. Since the era of Sasanian Iran (224–651), poems were commonly carried out as songs used in music. Under the Sasanians, the official, religious and literary language was Middle Persian. Following the Muslim conquest of Iran, the language entered a new phase, known as New Persian. However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk, commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khurasan. During this period, New Persian was known as darī or parsī-i darī.

Career

By the age of eight, Rudaki had reportedly memorized the Qur'an and was skilled in poetry. He was instructed on how to play the chang by a prominent musician named Abu'l-Abak Bakhtiar. In his early years, Rudaki became a popular figure due to his fine voice, skill with poetry and playing the chang. Surviving biographical information connects Rudaki with the Samanid amir (ruler) Nasr II (r. 914–943) or with his vizier Abu'l-Fadl al-Bal'ami (died 940). However, according to literary scholar Sassan Tabatabai, Rudaki had apparently already joined the Samanid court under Nasr II's father and predecessor Ahmad Samani (r. 907–914). Tabatabai states that this is proven in a poem by Rudaki, where he tries to comfort Ahmad Samani after the death of his father Ismail Samani in 907.

Rudaki's career at the Samanid court is regarded as the most important part of his life. The role of a court poet was more than just entertaining others, and was an essential aspect of the Persian court. According to the first Sasanian king Ardashir I (r. 224–242), a poet was "part of government and the means of strengthening rulership." Besides applauding the suzerain and his domain, a poet was also expected to give advice and moral guidance, which meant that Rudaki was most likely experienced in that field as well. Rudaki's success was largely due to the support of his primary patron, Bal'ami. The latter played an important role in the blooming of Persian literature in the 10th century. Bal'ami regarded Rudaki as the best amongst Persian and Arab poets.

Rudaki was a close friend to his student Shahid Balkhi, a leading poet and scholar of the Samanid realm. Following Shahid Balkhi's death in 936, Rudaki wrote an elegy for him. Rudaki's career started to decline following the downfall of Bal'ami in 937. He soon fell out of favour with the amir and was dismissed from the court. Rudaki thereafter lived his last years in poverty, dying blind and alone in his hometown in 940 or 941.

The French Iranologist Gilbert Lazard considered Rudaki's first successor to have been Abu-Shakur Balkhi, who composed many mathnavis, notably the Afarīn-nāma.

Legacy and assessment

Rudaki is considered to have been the first major poet to write in New Persian. Although he was predated by other poets who wrote in New Persian, such as Abu Hafs Sughdi (died 902), most of their work has not survived. In Iran, Rudaki is acknowledged as the "founder of New Persian poetry" and in Tajikistan as the "father of Tajik literature", both claims which according to the Iranologist Richard Foltz are not contradictory. Rudaki's life is depicted in the 1957 Soviet film A Poet's Fate, directed by Boris Kimyagarov and written by Satim Ulugzade (died 1997). The following year, the latter wrote a play focused on Rudaki, entitled Rudaki, which was the first Tajik biographical drama.

The 1100th anniversary of Rudaki's birth was commemorated by Iran and the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1958, who together held a conference which was joined by several eminent Iranian and Tajik academics. It was during this period that Rudaki's reputed burial place in Panjrud, near Panjakent, Tajikistan, was discovered using the research of Tajik scholar Sadriddin Ayni. The Soviet archaeologist and anthropologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov (died 1970) dug out and analyzed Rudaki's remains, which he used to recreate the latter's face on a sculpture. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rudaki started to become a stronger representation of Tajik identity and also reinforced their ties to the rest of the Persian-speaking world.

According to Nile Green, Rudaki "heralded a new era for Persian letters." The Iranologist François de Blois states that Rudaki "was the most celebrated Persian poet prior to Ferdowsi." Following his death, Rudaki continued to remain a highly popular figure for around two centuries, until the Mongol period, where he became unpopular amongst the poets of that time who favoured a "highly mannered style" of poetry. However, he had not been forgotten, as demonstrated by the attribution of his name to the Pseudo-Diwan-i Rudaki, called "one of the notorious literary frauds" by de Blois. Scholars such as Hasan ibn Luft Allah al-Razi in the 17th century and Reza-Qoli Khan Hedayat in the 19th century easily recognized that the Pseudo-Diwan-i Rudaki was mostly composed of poems by Qatran Tabrizi (died after 1088), while the rest were already-known poems of Rudaki that had been mentioned in tadhkiras (biographical dictionaries).

During the 19th century, Rudaki experienced a resurgence in popularity along with other ancient Khorasani poets, whose plain and straightforward style was reevaluated. In the 20th century, Rudaki's qasida "Bu-ye ju-ye Mulian" (The fragrance of Mulian Creek) was set to music by Ruhollah Khaleqi and performed as a duet by the famous vocalists Marzieh and Gholam-Hossein Banan. The song is said to have been commissioned by the Iranian government for Radio Tehran and was one of two songs that "dominated" radio programmes and record sales in the years following the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, which restored the political power of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. According to Peyman Vahabzadeh, the song "literally celebrates the return of Mohammed Reza Shah to power" using Rudaki's words, which called on the Samanid emir to return to Bukhara from Herat.