TEHRAN -- The World Conference on the Commemoration of Rudaki will be held from December 21 to 23 in Tehran and Mashhad on the anniversary of his 1150th birthday.

The conference will be held at Tehran’s Rudaki Hall on December 21 and 22 and then in Mashhad, which will host the third and final day of the conference, Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization Public Relations director Mohammad Hossein Barzin mentioned on Tuesday.
The conference has been organized by Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization following an agreement signed between Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.
Scholars and academics from 27 countries will present papers during the conference and 54 diplomatic figures will take part in the event.
Representatives of participant countries will join in the ceremony to be held at the Sadabad Cultural Historical Complex on December 21. The occasion falls on Yalda Night, the last night of the fall season and the longest night of the year, which celebrated annually in Iran.
Books and theses on Rudaki and some manuscripts written by Iranian luminaries will go on display during an exhibit on the sidelines of the conference and Iranian and Tajik musical groups will also hold some performances during the event.
About 250 articles were submitted to the secretariat of the conference out of which 60 articles are from foreign countries including Morocco, Bulgaria, Egypt, Italy, Sweden, Armenia and Lebanon.
Born in the village of Rudak (Panjrud) in Khorasan, now located in present-day Tajikistan, Rudaki (858 - ca. 941) was the first great literary genius of the modern Persian language who composed poetry in “New Persian,” which is written in the Perso-Arabic alphabet script.
Most of his biographers assert that he was totally blind, but his accurate knowledge of colors shown in his poems makes this very doubtful. Of the 1,300,000 verses attributed to him, only 52 elegies, sonnets and quatrains remain.