The Most Important Element of Imagination and Creating Mental Imagery in the Poetry of Rudaki

Simile is one of the most widely discussed topics in eloquence, the emergence of which in early human speech has coincided with the creation of the man. To express complicated and vague concepts, early humans needed different figures of speech as well as a strong imagination. The use of simile has played an important role in achieving this aim. It is wrong to assume that the use of rhetorical devices has been specific to a certain ethnicity or era. The use of figures of speech varies among poets and authors under different circumstances.
Rudaki is the father of Persian poetry and one of the greatest poets in Samani epoch, who has done a great service to Dari Persian in the early centuries of Persian literature and with the aid of his genius used exquisite imagery in his poetry. The question in this research is that for what purpose Rudaki used simile and to what extent he has used different kinds of simile?
This article reviews different kinds of simile and attempts to extract and review different kinds of simile in Rudaki’s poetry. To reach this goal, in some instances the similes used by Rudaki are compared with those used by poets of following eras.