Statue of Persian poet Rudaki in Rudaki Park in Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Wikipedia: Abū 'Abd Allāh Ja'far ibn Muḥammad al-Rūdhakī (Persian: ابوعبدالله جعفر بن محمد رودکی; born c. 859, Rudaki, Khorasan—died 940/941), better known as Rudaki (رودکی), and also known as "Adam of Poets" (آدمالشعرا), was a Persian poet regarded as the first great literary genius of the Modern Persian language. Rudaki composed poems in the modern Persian alphabet and is considered a founder of classical Persian literature. His poetry contains many of the oldest genres of Persian poetry including the quatrain, however, only a small percentage of his extensive poetry has survived. As it seems, Rudaki was the first person to combine different roles that were yet distinguishable entitles in the 9th century royal court: musician, poet and declaimer/reciter, and copyist. Rudaki was born in 859 in Rudak (Khorasan), 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 having been born blind. His accurate knowledge and description of colors, as evident in his poetry, renders this assertion very doubtful. 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. Over the years, Rudaki amassed great wealth and became highly honored. Some feel he deserves the title of "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, which is 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.
Size: 7360px × 4912px
Location: Rudaki Park, Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Photo credit: © Bert de Ruiter / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: adam, arc, bert, capital, city, classical, de, dushanbe, empire, fountain, horizontal, khorasan, landscape, literature, park, persian, poem, poet, poetry, poets, rudaki, ruiter, samanid, splash, splashing, statue, tajik, tajikistan, town, transoxiana, travel, water
