quality:corruption
Background

Little information is available about Rudaki's life, much which has been reconstructed from his poems. He lived during the era of the Samanid Empire (819–999), under which New Persian literature began to develop and flourish. Of Persian stock, Rudaki was born in c. 858, in the village of Banoj (Panjrud), located in the Rudak area between Samarqand and Bukhara. Rudaki's blindness is implied by the writings of early poets such as Daqiqi (died 977), Ferdowsi (died 1020/25), Abu Zura'ah al-Mu'ammari (fl. 10th-century) and Nasir Khusraw (died after 1070). The historian Awfi (died 1242), even says that Rudaki was born blind, but this has been questioned by some modern scholars, due to the expressive picture of nature given by Rudaki in his writings.

Besides being a poet, Rudaki was also a singer and musician. Since the era of Sasanian Iran (224–651), poems were commonly carried out as songs used in music. Under the Sasanians, the official, religious and literary language was Middle Persian. Following the Muslim conquest of Iran, the language entered a new phase, known as New Persian. However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk, commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khurasan. During this period, New Persian was known as darī or parsī-i darī.