TEHRAN -- Tajik Iranologist Safar Abdullah is convinced that Persian orthography will surely once again return to Tajikistan. Currently, a modified Cyrillic alphabet is employed in Tajikistan.

“Persian contemporary poetry is rendered into Cyrillic via the Tajik multimedia and Tajik people are quite familiar with it, but this does not cover other regions in the Middle East,” he told the Persian service of Mehr.
“I believe this must be improved from the foundation, that is, Persian script must be revived in Tajikistan. Thereafter there would be no differences among the Persian speaking countries,” he said.
“Iranian classic poets are also known among the Tajik nation, and they are more familiar with writer Sadeq Hedayat among the contemporary writers. Mahmud Dowlatabadi, Nader Naderpur, Forugh Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri and Simin Behbahani come next in order of familiarity.
He continued, “This is because their poetry is unique. I am a researcher residing in Kazakhstan. I love Persian literature and wrote my thesis on national epics in Persian contemporary poetry.
“I carried out my research on Iran’s contemporary poetry spanning the time of Nima (father of Iran’s blank verse) until the victory of the Islamic Revolution on poets like Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, Ahmad Shamlu, Sohrab Sepehri and Hushang Ebtehaj. They are really unique,” he added.
“When the 1917 communist revolution took place in Russia and afterwards in the Middle East, they were determined to unify the Russian nation and the first thing was to distance nations from their own national culture.
“This was mostly done to promote a unified Russian culture. They imposed Russian script on people, but because of rich culture and civilization of Persia and that the Persian language was rooted deeply in people’s hearts, the language was never forgotten.
“I regard losing Persian script the worst catastrophe for the people of Tajikistan and I sincerely hope Persian script will return to our country soon,” he concluded.
Photo: A page from a rare version of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the Persian national epic