Rudaki Artist Bio

Abū ‘Abd Allāh Ja’far ibn Muḥammad Rūdakī (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.

His poems are written in a simple style, having optimism and charm, but as he gets close to end of his life, a touching melancholy gets developed in his poetry. A sample of his poetry, translated into English

Look at the cloud, how it cries like a grieving man
Thunder moans like a lover with a broken heart.
Now and then the sun peeks from behind the clouds
Like a prisoner hiding from the guard.
The high frequency of Shu’ubiyya thoughts in Rudaki poems is to such an extent that he can be seen as a comprehensive representative of Shu’ubiyya thoughts among Persian-language poets. He has relied more on those thoughts that the foundations of Shu’ubiyya thoughts were established over, like: racial equality; freedom of Iranians; honoring the rich historical and social background including legendary, mythical, and national heroes that Arabs were naturally lacking them, purposeful revival of feasts and ceremonies of pre-Islamic era, scientism, rationalism, and emphasis on human free will, all of which under a circumstance that Baqdad was dominated by Ashʿarians, and also emphasis on vinosity and hedonism as an Iranian practice that had remained from pre-Islamic era. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.