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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
No genuine collection of Rūdakī's poems is known to exist to-day, and in the following article I have attempted to indicate how much of the poetry of Rūdakī has been preserved and how much has been wrongly attributed to him in the Persian Anthologies. Although one of the founders of modern Persian poetry, and the author of a poetic version of Kalīla wa Dimna, Rūdakī's works seem unaccountably to have disappeared at an early date. For although Asadī the Younger in his Lughat-i-Furs quotes more lines from Rūdakī than from any other poet, and although the Persian Farhangs abound in citations of single lines, the anthologists of the sixteenth century already complain that Rūdakī's poems are hard to come by.
page 610 note 1 Rāḥat uṣ-Sudūr wa Ayat us-Surūr, a history of the Seljuqs, by Ar-Rāwandi, , edited by Iqbāl, Muḥammad. E. J. W. Gibb Memorial. New Series, vol. ii, 1921Google Scholar. This work was completed at the beginning of the thirteenth century of our era.
page 610 note 2 Facsimile published by the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial (vol. xx, 1913), fol. 262.
page 611 note 1 On fol. 92, a, under 
we read : Binj-i-Rūdak is the same as Quṭb-i-Rūdak. Abū Sa'd al-Idrīsī says Rūdakī was buried there, and that he had visited his tomb.
page 612 note 1 The well-known Taḍkiras place his death variously between a.h. 330 and 343.
page 612 note 2 Chahār Maqāla, Persian Text, E. J. W. Gibb Memorial (xi, 1, 1910), pp. 125–6 of Persian notes.
page 612 note 3 It was Zhukovski, in his fine monograph on Anvarī, who first called attention to the rāwīs of Persian poets. See Browne's, Literary History of Persia, vol. ii, p. 373Google Scholar.
page 612 note 4 See also Nöldeke, , Das Iranische Nationalepos (Leipzig and Berlin, 1920, p. 27)Google Scholar. Firdawsī also had a special copyist (nassākh) by name ‘Alī Daylam.
page 614 note 1 Shiblī Nu‘mānī in his Shi‘r ul-‘Ajam says that the quatrain beginning 
(No. 37 of Ethé) could never have been written in Rūdakī's day. Yih hargiz Rūdakī kī zamān kā kalām nahīn ho sakta.
page 614 note 2 Asadī's, Neupersisches Wörterbuch, ed. Horn, Paul (Berlin, 1897)Google Scholar.
page 614 note 3 Al-Mu‘jam fī Ma‘āyīrī ash‘ār-il-‘Ajam, edited by Muhammad, Mirza and Browne, E. G., E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, vol. x, 1909Google Scholar.
page 614 note 4 I myself owe this indication to my very learned Persian friend, Mr. Taqīzāda.
page 615 note 1 The three MSS. I have been able to consult are A. B.M. Or. 3317, B. B.M. Or. 2879, and C. a MS. in the possession of Professor B. G. Browne, which he kindly placed at my disposal. This MS. was formerly in the library of Riẓā Qulī Hidāyat, who has written many notes and additional verses in the margin.
page 615 note 2 Copie de Roudeki, ancien poète Persan, d'après un manuscrit d'Ali Qouli Mirza. Ce manuscrit se trouve aujourd'hui (1890) à la Bibliothèque de la Mosquée du Sepeh Salar à Teheran. (It has been bound as The Divan of Ḳatarān.)
page 616 note 1 Schefer was the first European scholar to call attention to the poems of Qaṭrān, and he explains that he first became acquainted with them from a copy made in 1841 from an early manuscript of Qaṭtrān's Dīvān preserved in Shiraz.
page 616 note 2 See Saleman, , “Bericht über die Ausgabe des Mi'jar i Jamali” : Mélanges Asiatiques, St. P., 1888, p. 469Google Scholar.
page 617 note 1 Riẓā Qulī says this confusion led some to suggest that Rūdakī used “Qaṭrān” as takhallus or poet name !
page 617 note 2 These notes are written by Bahman ibn ‘Abdullah Mīrzā ibn Fath ‘Ali Shāh, a learned author and bibliophile, better known as Bahā ud Dowlah. See Rieu, Suppl. Pers. MSS., p. 138.
page 619 note 1 Munajjim Bashi in the printed edition gives “Dahsūdān”, while some MSS. of Qaṭrān read “Hastūdān”.
page 619 note 2 Or. 3537. See also Majma‘ ul-Fuṣaḥā, vol. ii, p. 38.
page 620 note 1 I refer to this collection as T. Lith. A description of its contents will be found below (p. 633).
page 636 note 1 It is also included among the half dozen qaṣidas which the compiler of the Maykhāna regarded as genuine (see above, p. 620).
page 636 note 2 Shams-i-Fakhrī of Ispahān compiled a dictionary (a.d. 1344) in the course of which he himself composed verses to illustrate the use of words.
page 639 note 1 The pages refer to the Calcutta printed edition. The blanks on p. 219 have been supplemented from B.M. Or. 1.
page 643 note 1 As Professor Browne has pointed out, various opinions have been held among the Persians regarding the quality of this little poem. While it calls forth the highest praise from no less a man than Ni
amī ‘Arūẓī, it meets with the severest criticism at the hands of Dawlat Shāh. (See Literary History of Persia, vol. ii, pp. 15–17.)
The fact that this poem is attributed to Rūdakī by the author of the Chahār Maγāla, is perhaps a sufficient guarantee of its authorship, though curiously enough Minhāj-i-Sirāj, the historian, writing only one hundred years later (a.d. 1260) attributes it to a much later poet, namely Amīr Mu‘izzī, whose patron was the Seljuqid Sultan Sanjar. (See Raverty's translation of the Ṭabaqāt-i-Nāṣirī, pp. 153, 154.)
That ‘Awfī should not have quoted these famous lines in his Lubāb ul-Albāb, is possibly due to the fact that, like Dowlat Shah, he did not admire them, though such considerations did not prevent Dowlat Shah quoting them. These verses are also quoted by Ḥamdullah Mustawfī in his afar Nāma. (See B.M. MS. Or. 2833, fol. 264b.)
page 644 note 1 Nos. 5, 8, 11, 15, 25, 30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 40, 48, 49, 50, 51, and 52. I have not taken into consideration the rubā‘iyyāt which have been attributed to Rūdakī, seeing that this form of verse is notoriously given to wandering from author to author. There is, however, one complete quatrain among the quotations in the Lughat-i-Furs, though it has been split up into two separate citations in order to illustrate the words 
, a crow, and 
, an oil-press.
which may be freely rendered :—
My son, we mortals are the sport of Fate:
We are the sparrows, Death the bird of prey.
As every flower fades : or soon or late
Beneath Death's oil-press we are cast away.