Abu Abdullah Rudaki

'The poet of Samarkand'

The 12th-century scholar al-Sam'ani recorded his full name as 'Abu Abdullah Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Rudaki, the poet of Samarkand', and placed his birth in Rudak, a village in Samarkand's hinterland. In the 20th century the writer Sadriddin Ayni, drawing on texts and local tradition, identified his home as Panjrud in the upper Zarafshan valley, now in Tajikistan's Panjakent district. He was born around 858.

Al-Sam'ani also notes that Rudaki transmitted hadith from Samarkand's chief judge and other local scholars, which is why many historians believe he studied in the city as a young man. He knew Arabic and the Quran well, and was celebrated as a singer and player of the chang, a kind of harp.

At the Samanid court

His finest years were spent at the court of Amir Nasr II (r. 914–943) in Bukhara, under the patronage of the vizier Abu'l-Fadl Bal'ami. Sources credit him with more than a hundred thousand couplets; about a thousand survive, among them odes, quatrains and fragments of his verse version of Kalila and Dimna.

Nizami Aruzi, himself a Samarkand native, tells the most famous story about him: when Amir Nasr had lingered for years near Herat, his homesick courtiers begged Rudaki to bring him home. The poet sang verses beginning 'The scent of the Muliyan stream comes to me' — and the amir, the tale goes, leapt onto his horse and rode for Bukhara.

Last years and legacy

After Bal'ami's fall in 937 Rudaki lost his place at court and died in poverty in his native village in 940 or 941. Poets of the 10th century already describe him as blind; whether he was born so or blinded in old age is still debated. In the 1950s the anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov examined his grave at Panjrud, reconstructed his face and concluded that he lost his sight late in life.

In 2009 Samarkand unveiled a statue of Rudaki by the sculptor Djalal Mirtadjiev, and one of the city's broad avenues is named after him.