TEHRAN -- Tehran is holding an international conference in commemorating the 1150th anniversary of the birth of Rudaki in October.

Sponsored by the Research Center of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO), the conference is organized to review the biography and works of Persian poet Abu Abdullah Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki (858-941).
“Rudaki in Iran and in the world”, “various sources on Rudaki and his works”, “wisdom and philosophy in Rudaki’s works”, “Rudaki and Persian literature”, “aesthetics and art in Rudaki’s works”, and “artistic creativities of Rudaki” are amongst the articles to be reviewed and discussed during the two-day event on October 13 and 14.
The Permanent Missions of Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan to the United Nations Headquarters in New York paid tribute to Rudaki in a ceremony held last month.
Born in Rudak (Panjrud), a village in Khorasan, which is now located in Tajikistan, Rudaki was the first great literary genius of the modern Persian language who composed poems in “New Persian,” which is written in the Perso-Arabic alphabet script.
Most of his biographers assert that he was totally blind, but the accurate knowledge of colors shown in his poems makes this very doubtful. Of the 1,300,000 verses attributed to him, only 52 elegies, ghazals and quatrains remain.