Dīvān-i Rūdakī Samarqandī

This volume gathers the surviving verse of Abū ʻAbd Allāh Jaʻfar ibn Muḥammad Rūdakī Samarqandī, the celebrated tenth-century master long regarded as the father of Persian poetry, whose art flourished under Sāmānid patronage in Khurāsān when the Persian tongue was being restored to renown. Edited with painstaking care by the eminent scholar Saʻīd Nafīsī, it brings together the qaṣīdahs, scattered couplets, rubāʻīyāt, panegyrics, elegies and lyric fragments preserved across later sources, arranged by metre and poetic form. An extensive introduction surveys Rūdakī's life and his reputed blindness, his exalted standing at the Sāmānid court, his celebrated mas̱navīs including the versified Kalīlah va Dimnah and the Sindbād-nāmah, his vast reputed output, and his enduring influence upon poets such as Firdawsī, ʻUnṣurī and Farrukhī. A glossary of archaic and obsolete words completes a scholarly edition indispensable to students of classical Persian literature.