stylistic:tone, linguistic:paraphrasing, information:classification
Legacy and assessment

Rudaki is considered to have been the first major poet to write in New Persian. Albeit he was predated by other poets who wrote in New Persian, such as Abu Hafs Sughdi (died 902), most of their work has not survived. In Iran, Rudaki is acknowledged as the "founder of New Persian poetry" and in Tajikistan as the "father of Tajik literature", both claims which according to the Iranologist Richard Foltz are not contradictory. Rudaki's life is depicted in the 1957 film of A Poet's Fate, written by Satim Ulugzade (died 1997). The following year, the latter wrote a play focused on Rudaki, entitled Rudaki, which was the first Tajik biographical drama.

The 1100th anniversary of Rudaki's birth was commemorated by Iran and the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1958, who together held a conference which was joined by several eminent Iranian and Tajik academics. It was during this period that Rudaki's burial place in Panjrud was discovered. The Soviet archaeologist and anthropologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov (died 1970) dug out and analyzed Rudaki's remains, which he used to recreate the latter's face on a sculpture. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rudaki started to become a stronger representation of Tajik identity and also reinforced their ties to the rest of the Persian-speaking world.

According to Nile Green, Rudaki "heralded a new era for Persian letters." The Iranologist Francois de Blois states that Rudaki "was the most celebrated Persian poet prior to Ferdowsi." Following his death, Rudaki continued to remain a highly popular figure for around two centuries, until the Mongol period, where he became unpopular amongst the highly skilled poets of that time. However, he had not been forgotten, as demonstrated by the attribution of his name to the Pseudo- Diwan-i Rudaki, called "one of the notorious literary frauds" by de Blois. Scholars such as the 17th-century Hasan ibn Luft Allah al-Razi and 19th-century Reza-Qoli Khan Hedayat both easily recognized that the Pseudo- Diwan-i Rudaki was mostly composed of poems by Qatran Tabrizi (died after 1088), while the rest were already-known poems of Rudaki that had been mentioned in tadhkiras (biographical dictionaries).

During the 19th-century, Rudaki experienced a resurgence in popularity along with other ancient Khurasani poets.