What Kind of Wine did Rudaki Fancy?

A lecture in English by Kamran Talattof (University of Arizona). October 09, 2017.

One of the earliest Persian poets, Rudaki (859–941), employed the word wine within a wide semantic register in his poems. However, his unicity is most manifest when the process of wine making is depicted within a highly allegorical poem entitled “Mother of Wine.” Through contextual, historical, and discursive analyses, it is argued that this poem—written in the form of a qasideh—was composed for the purpose of being performed for an audial audience, and thus reflected the conscious cultural discourse of the Samanids (819–999 – the first Iranian dynasty following the Arab conquest of Persia), who deemed themselves heirs to past, pre-Islamic grandeur, and sought to connect both in content and form (here the performativity of the poem) with the Sasanian empire (ca. 224–651).

This event is made possible with the major support of the Amuzegar Chair in Iranian Studies and the Musa Sabi Term Chair of Iranian Studies and the generous support of The Farhang Foundation and in collaboration with the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.