A study of Newly-attributed Verses to Rudaki Samarghandi in Halimi’s Dictionary (Sharh Bahr al-Gharraib)

In the vast field of Persian literature, prominent figures such as Mirzayev, Braginsky and Saeed Nafisi, before the other scholars, outshone others in research on the poems of Rudaki, the father of Persian poetry. It was the invaluable efforts made by these magnanimous researchers in collecting Rudaki’s poetries that paved the way for further investigations. Considering some of Rudaki’s verses that are exemplified in dictionaries and the fact that some of these dictionaries have remained unnoticed by researchers and also taking into account the existence of new verses, various written forms, and attribution of some of his verses to other poets and vice versa, in this research we study one such dictionary under the title of Sharh Bahr al-Gharraib or Loqat Halimi. The writers have found a more complete text than the one applied by Nafisi through two manuscripts of this dictionary. In this research, the attribution of some verses to this poet has been studied with presentation of several findings

A Study on Some Verses Attributed to Rudaki based on a Few Old Sources

Abu Abdullah Rudaki's Divan is one of the most important poetry Divans in the Khorasan area, from which only some scattered verses have remained in the ancient texts and manuscripts. With great effort, the late Saeed Nafisi managed to collect many of Rudaki's poems from various texts and provided a brief Divan from this highly productive poet. He used such dictionaries as Saha'a al-Fors, Asadi Tussi's Loghate Fors, and also rhetorical books such as Tarjoman al-Balaghah, and al-Mu'ajm. While praising the efforts of this respected scholar, the present paper tries to unveil and remove two shortcomings in his work so as to take a further step towards a reliable version of Rudaki's poetry. The two shortcomings are as follows: first, there are verses by Rudaki in these sources that have not been recorded in Nafisi's Divan. Second, by citing the putative sources, Nafisi has attributed some verses to Rudaki, while investigations made it clear that such verses do not belong to him but to other well-known poets. Considering the importance of research in the poetry of Khorasan, especially Rudaki's poetry, it is attempted to collect verses which are not included in Nafisi's Divan, introduce new verses by Rudaki, and reject wrong attributions by referring to the printed books and several manuscripts in this paper