RUDAGI (d. 954). Farid-eddin Mohammed 'Abdallah, the first great literary genius of modern Persia, was born in Rudag, a village in Transoxiana, about 87o-900. Most of his biographers assert that he was totally blind, but the accurate knowledge of colours shown in his poems makes this very doubtful. The fame of his accomplishments reached the ear of the Samanid Nasr II. bin Ahmad, the ruler of Khurasan and Transoxiana (913-42), who invited the poet to his court. Of the 1,300,000 verses attrib uted to Rudagi, there remain only 52 kasidas, ghazals and rabaeis ; of his epic masterpieces we have nothing beyond a few stray lines in native dictionaries. But the most serious loss is that of his translation of Ibn Mokaffa's Arabic version of the old Indian fable book Kalilah and Dirnnah. Fragments are preserved in the Persian lexicon of Asadi of Tus (ed. P. Horn, Gottingen, 1897).
There is a complete edition of all the extant poems of Rtidagi, in Persian text and metrical German translation, together with a biographical account, based on forty-six Persian mss., in Dr. H. Ethe's "Rudagi der Samanidendichter" (Gottinger Nachrichten, 1873, PP. 663-742) ; see also his "Neupersische Literatur" in Geiger's Grundriss der iranischen Philologie (ii.) ; P. Horn, Gesch. der per sischen Literatur (1901), p. 73 ; E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, i. (1902) ; C. J. Pickering, "A Persian Chaucer" in National Review (May 2890).