Roudaki Samarqandi

Iranian Poet

Ja’afar Roudaki was born in the third century in Roudak, a village in Samarqand (now a city inTajikistan). As a young man, he started composing poem and adopted “Roudaki” as his pseudonym. He is the first poet that composed a perfect Persian poem. Many great Iranian poets like Farrokhi, Mo’azzi and Onsori had praised him.

Roudaki had got a pleasant voice and played harp well. For this reason, he had an important position in Nasr–bin–Ahmad Samani’s Court (301-331Qamari [1]). The wealth he had earned there has been unique and no other poet had gained it.

Roudaki was blind and some of his contemporary poets indicated to this. A number of them considered him born blind, but some believed that he turned blind in the last years of his life. Actually it is his precise descriptions that reveals once he was able to see. For example he compared the beloved’s tooth to raindrops and the dawn star. It is clear he had seen the white color and small size of tooth, rain drop and dawn star.

Roudaki composed many lyrics, odes, elegies and quatrains. He put “Kelileh and Demneh” [2] into verse and had some Mathnavi in various measures. Unfortunately all of them were lost except some elegies, odes and quatrains that aren’t more than 500 verses.

He died in 329 Qamari in his birthplace.