A review of the recording and attribution of verses to Rudaki Samarqandi in Ajayeb al-Loqaa dictionary

Ajayeb al-Loqaa is a Persian-to-Persian dictionary authored in the first half of the eleventh century along with numerous poems by Persian poets. The only hand-written copy of that dictionary is kept in the library of the parliament at no. 2192. It was written by a person named Adibi during the Ottoman period and edited by Modabberi in 2010. According to the studies on registering vocabulary and recording poetic works, it is obvious that Adibi used his earlier vocabulary sources, especially Loqat-e-Fors and Sehah al-Fors for his work. Therefore, the present dictionary can be considered as a documentary source for the retrieval and edition of the scattered poems of pioneering poets and those who have no anthology. One of these poets is Rudaki Samarqandi under whose name the author has recorded 92 instances of verses. Since this work has not been cited and used in any of the printed anthologies (edited by Nafisi and other subsequent editors), it was necessary to discuss some of the verses recorded in this work in the name of Rudaki but not mentioned in published anthologies. Since the editor of the dictionary (Mahmoud Modabberi), for some reason, has only mentioned the attribution of the poems and given some brief explanations of the words and verses, a comprehensive study was needed to shed light on the book contents for future scholars and editors of Rudaki’s anthology.