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Tajikistan Contemporary Poetry Themes 

Gholam abas Nafisi 

Islamic Azad University,  

Arak, Iran 

Email:  <n.nazanin67@gmail.com 

Mohammad A.D.A Farahani 

Islamic Azad University,  

Arak, Iran 

Ali Sar Yaghoubi 

Islamic Azad University,  

Arak, Iran 

 

Abstract  

Tajik poetry deviated from its mainstream with the victory of the communist revolution. The 

imposition of Russian language and the new communist literature made Tajik poetry to take 

influence from the works of Russian romantic poets and to have new themes. Meanwhile, it 

benefited from the ancient Persian poets and one can see the rhetorical figures such as metaphor, 

simile, conflict, pun, Īhām, proverb, husn-i ta'lil (good reason), imagery and paradox in the works 

of Tajik poets. Additionally, Bīdel's poem has also had a clear influence on the poetry of some 

contemporary poets. Tajik poetry is very close to the informal language of the people, and in these 

poems, we encounter words that are specific to the Tajik dialect. The first Persian she'r-e now (new 

poetry) in Central Asia was written by Sadriddin Ayni. In Tajik poetry, we occasionally encounter 

with recurrences, the nostalgia of the missed glory, the oppression of the nation, and the unwanted 

fate of their ancestors. In these poems, they rely on emotion and content, and the epic and 

passionate tone prevail other poetic performances. The present study gives a general overview of 

the poetry of some Tajik poets. 

Keywords: Poetry, Tajikistan, Tajik, Persian language  

INTRODUCTION 

If we regard Persian poetry and literature as a 

tree whose foliage and branches has reached all 

the lands of the Persian language people and 

the fruits of which are enjoyed by the children 

of these lands, we must admit that this fruitful 

ancient tree is rooted in the great land of the old 

Khorasan, which includes the modern Iranian 

Khorasan, and the vast territories today known 

as Afghanistan and Tajikistan. In days that 

there was no sign of civilization and culture in 

the present countries, people of those lands had 

culture and literature. Great poets such as 

Rudaki, Rumi, Attar, Sanai, Hafez, Saadi, etc. 

have grown up in those lands and every 

Persian speaking person is proud of them. They 

are poets that are still famous and their works 

have become more well-known over time so 

that they are known to more people in the 

world. The consistent words and content of the 

poetry of these great poets are such that even 

the translation of their works into other 

languages surprises the non-Persian speaking 

readers and increases their admirers. Today, 

with arguments about the modern and 

postmodern world, and due to the remarkable 

media facilities, languages will soon forget their 

old words and, instead, they will have more 

new words. But what is the reason for every-

year memorials in different countries and the 

cost of these celebrations to commemorate 

those great poets, and, more participants attend 

these memorials and ceremonies every year? Is 

it not for no reason but the fact that the great 

sea of Persian literature is so much filled with 



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spiritual gems and expensive pearls of words 

that the more the rhetorician divers search this 

sea the more jewels they find? The politically 

motivated world of today that has created new 

geographic boundaries does not want people to 

live together like the past, or the poets and 

writers write for their hearts and their people, 

and create literary and artistic works. There is 

no Iranian that reads Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī 

(Bayhaqi's History) book and is not influenced 

by the honesty of the author and great historian 

and does not feel to be close to him. There is no 

one who reads the life story of Hasanak the 

Vizier and does not blow in tears with the 

weeping of the author’s pen. 

The strong cultural and literary link 

between Iranians and countries like 

Afghanistan and Tajikistan is such that 

centuries of separation have not been able to 

disassociate their hearts, because no one can 

erase the love of the great people like Rudaki, 

Rumi, Abu Reyhan Biruni (Al-Biruni) and 

Abusa'id Abolkhayr from the heart of people of 

these lands. Therefore, in order to revive this 

cultural and historical affinity of people who 

share many common grounds and have loved 

the works of their great authors for centuries, 

an effort should be made to analyze and 

remind these respected commons to provide 

the ground for the affinity of the Persian 

speaking people and benefit from the richness 

of this reviving culture that has been cultivated 

for centuries among these nations, and not to 

let the geopolitical and political separations of 

the nations lead to their cultural and literary 

separations. 

Contemporary Tajik poetry content  

Tajik poets, following the example of Bidel’s 

poetry, and enjoying the rhetorical figures of 

Indian poetry style, moved towards imagism in 

poetry. Although some poets like Muhammad 

Naqib Khan Tugrul Ahrari (1865 1919) 

considered themselves fascinated by Abdul 

Qadir Bidel Dehlavi and, as their poems show, 

followed him, but despite their talent, they did 

not succeed much because of mere imitation of 

Bidel's poetry. In this regard, Sadriddin Ayni 

says ‚Tugrul imitates Bidle, but like many of 

Bidle ’s imitators, he has not succeeded in this 

pursuit. The talent of Tugrul was very complete 

and his imagination was capable of ascension. 

If he has not captivated his taste in imitating 

Bidel, and he knew himself well, he would have 

excelled in his own time (Ayni, Sadriddin, 2016, 

pp. 41-409). Zafarkhan Jowhari is another Tajik 

poet who imitated Bidel and Sadriddin Ayni 

has spoken of him (Ayni, Sadriddin, 2016, p. 

109). In addition to the effect of Bidel's poetry, 

Tajik poetry has been influenced by Russian 

romantic poets, too. Nevertheless, they still 

enjoy the ancient Persian poets and one can see 

the rhetorical figures such as metaphor, simile, 

conflict, pun, iham, proverb, husn-i ta'lil, and 

figures that are well-known today such as 

imagery and paradox in their poems. Tajik 

poetry, in comparison with Afghan poetry, has 

been less associated with Iranian contemporary 

poetry. Tajik poetry is very close to the dialect 

of the native people. In the works of poets such 

as Mū’min Qanoat, Bozor Sobir, Loiq Sher-Ali, 

and Gulrukhsor Safieva, you see a language 

spoken by the people on the streets. In these 

poems, we encounter words that are only 

available in the Tajik dialect (Mojib Mehrdad: 

December 6, 2009). According to Tajik scholars, 

the first Persian she'r-e now (new poetry) in 

Central Asia was written by Sadriddin Ayni.  

When Tajik poetry was experiencing 

turbulence and indolence, few young people 

entered the field and created a new path for 

their language and culture, contrary to the 

current destructive stream. These were Mū’min 

Qanoat or the ‚Nima of Mian Roodan‛, who 

initiates this trend, and the Bozor Sobir and 

Loiq Sher-Ali who followed him. These are the 

first people who breathed a new life in the dead 

body of the Tajik poetry and created hope for 

people who were drowning in a foreign culture. 

Replying to those who called the Persian 



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language three different names with wrong 

intentions, Mū’min Qanoat says  

Either you call it Farsi or Dari 

Say what you say  

Or you call it the good words of coquetry 

Say what you want 

For me, it is only the mother tongue  

This is like the breast milk  

There is no other thing to liken it to 

Since it is the mother's love.  

Bozor Sobir also expresses his objection to the 

current situation with language. His ‚Zaban 

Madari‛ (mother tongue) poem expresses the 

painful history of the Tajik people.  

Whatever it had in this world, it lost 

It had Balkh and Bukhara, it lost  

It had a great tradition and the Court of 

Justice, it lost  

It had the throne of Saman, it lost ... 

The young poetry of present Tajikistan 

breathes with full glory in the Persian language 

territory, and it has a great contribution to this 

process. Poets such as Siavash, Rostam, 

Farzaneh Khojandi, Ali Ajami, Soroush 

Esfandiar, Dara Nejat and others are known by 

their works in the entire Persian language 

territory. On the other hand, Tajiks also know 

the poems of poets such as Bahmani, Monzavi, 

Salman Harati, Ali Moalem, and Najme Zare in 

Iran, and Parto Naderi, Sami Hamed, Qahar 

Assi, Seyyed Reza Mohammadi, Sharif Sa'idi 

and others in Afghanistan. This reveals a 

promise for the re-establishment of a major 

language territory.  

Language and literature as the identity of 

Tajik People  

In the introduction to the book ‚Sample of Tajik 

Literature‛ on the importance of the work of 

Sadriddin Ayni, Dr. Ali-Asghar Sherdost writes 

‚Sample of Tajik Literature was the tip of the 

iceberg, although prepared in a hurry and 

quickly, it was able to silence the tumult of the 

mob that was going to deny the national, 

ethnic, and cultural identity and the ethnic 

language of Tajiks, and bring them to their 

knees. That's why Tajiks still consider the 

‚Sample of Tajik Literature‛ as the proof of 

their identity and they appreciate it and are 

proud of it (Ayni, Sadriddin: 1385, p. b).  

Sadriddin has a long Tarji-Band that is full 

of curses, curses on the oppressors who gain 

power by slaughtering people and commit 

numerous crimes to keep their power. This 

throne, instead of bringing peace and security, 

causes the nation to be miserable. In this poem, 

Sadriddin curses the oppressors from the 

bottom of his heart and fully expresses his 

hatred.  

Such curses and complaints of the time 

clearly indicate that the noble Tajik people have 

gone through many hardships and lost many 

lives for the sake of their love and interest in 

the language of their ancestors, i.e. Persian 

language. As a result, now that they have found 

a small relief and have survived the former 

Soviet communist regime by the independence 

of the Tajik countries, and have been able to 

establish relations with their neighboring 

countries who speak the same language, it is 

not unlikely that they will need to communicate 

with the people who have spoken their 

language for a long time in order to rejoin their 

historical past, and benefit from the eternal sea 

of Persian language and literature (Sherdost, 

2010).  

Bozor Sobir  

The professor Bozor Sobir, along with Mū’min 

Qanoat and Loiq Sher-Ali, were the founders of 

the literary-cultural movement after years of 

forgetting and silence among Tajiks. The 

obvious difference between Bozor Sobir and 

others is that when other poets talk about their 

homeland, they also a little consider the Soviets, 

while Bozor Sobir wanted to draw the true 

borders of his country begun at the start of 

alienations for the Tajiks in his poetry. In his 

poem, he does not speak of any country but 



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Tajikistan, and Tajikistan appears with another 

manifestation. The beautiful nature of 

Tajikistan has less found its true and elegant 

appearance in other poetries than in his. In 

Tajik poetry, these figures are referred to as 

wisdom symbols and glorious and liberating 

myths for future generations.  

Bozor Sobir's poetry was written in the 

same language of Tajik poetry at that time. 

Tajik poets have paid less attention to the 

language itself and its structure in their poetry. 

The images are so simple that they cannot be 

easily detected in these poems. Tajik poetry is 

more reliant on emotion and content and the 

poet forgets the language when writing the 

poem. Tajik poetry is epic. Tajik accent is 

naturally rigorous and is the most favorable 

bed for epic poems.  

The poems of Sobir are tremendous, 

especially when he wants to make a show. In 

Tajik poetry, you see very old words along with 

informal words. It is hardly possible to disclose 

the boundaries of formal and informal 

languages in these poems. This fact is both 

evident at the lexical and the syntactic levels.  

The love poems of Bozor Sobir are unique. 

In his poems, the beloved sometimes has a 

natural manifestation, or in other words, it is a 

part of Tajikistan's beautiful and diverse nature 

or vice versa, nature appears in the form of a 

beloved in his poem.  

In his poems, we see impressive images 

that are completely new and defamiliarize our 

aesthetic sense, and art has no duty but 

eliminating the dust of familiarity from the eyes 

of the beholder:  

Remained like an anonymous island  

In the midst of the sea of ancient memories  

The homeland, my love, your youth  

The homeland, my love, your youth (Fire 

leaf, 1984, p. 11). 

Bukhara is a sore wound in Tajik poetry, a 

separated part of Tajiks’ body that they always 

look at it with regret: 

The land of my poetry is not a grave of 

words 

It is the durability of the mountains and 

deserts of my homeland 

My alive native language  

Is the language of spring thunder and rain  

My lips are opened to poems by springs  

And my heart by cascades  

Not line by line, but stream by stream to 

my book 

Has reached the water of the sea of 

Zarfeshan. (Kofi site, 2009)  

Loiq Sher-Ali  

Professor Loiq Sher-Ali is a major Tajik poet 

that had a new perspective. With his 

innovations is rhyming schemes, and with his 

social-political-literary thoughts, he created a 

new era in Tajik literature. He attracted the 

attention of literary people by writing the poem 

of ‚The Name‛ published in 1959 in the 

influential literary magazine of ‚Red East‛. In 

Loiq’s poems, one can see the grief of loneliness 

and the perplexity of his countrymen. The 

adventures that he had throughout his life have 

been very effective in expressing his feelings. 

When he contemplates on his past, he is 

worried about it and says:  

My childhood passed in solitude  

By harvesting and harvesters 

With a handful of clusters  

It passed across the field 

Attention to nature, mountains, and the 

sea are observed in the poems of other Tajik 

poets, too. Sometimes the poet, by comparing 

himself to one of the manifestations of nature, 

expresses the words as if he is talking to a 

living creature (personification). In this 

conversation, the poet reveals his intention to 

express his inner feelings, as if he does not find 

someone to talk to. 



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The themes of Loiq’s poetry are diverse, 

from personal issues to social issues, to return 

to the past and to be proud of historical and 

contemporary characters, descriptions of the 

land and the peasants, etc. The poetry of Loiq is 

first of all about human self-knowledge, which 

is in search of himself, his origin, his past, and 

the perception of his life and time, and it is 

because of this effort for self-knowledge that 

the poet talks about the ancient history of the 

nation and its great scholars and scientists, and 

recounts the current problems and sorrows of 

the nation (All Poems, 2004, p. 5).  

Loiq’s poetry links the contemporary 

poetry and the past Tajik Persian poetry. 

Generally speaking, Loiq is a traditionalist, but 

his new poetry is the common language of the 

people of his time. This is why he is popular 

among his compatriots. While adhering to the 

principles of traditional poetry, he has written 

many poems in the new style. His poetry 

expresses his talent and innovation so that with 

the use of appropriate rhetorical figures, he has 

been able to distinguish his poetry from other 

poets of his time. A new poem of Loiq, which 

has played a significant role in the evolutionary 

process of Tajik contemporary poetry, is mostly 

influenced by the Nimayi poetry of the poets of 

Iran. Nevertheless, he believed that Nimayi 

poetry would not have a future in Tajikistan 

since the taste of the Tajik people would not be 

satisfied by the rhyme-less nature of new 

poetry. Loiq’s new poetry is not written 

completely in accordance with the principles of 

Nimayi poetry. He mostly writes Charpareh 

and changes the length of the hemistiches, 

bringing his poetic thoughts to his audience. 

The Iranian Nimayi poets who had significant 

supporters in Tajikistan include Nader 

Naderpour, Fereydoon Tavaloli, Forough 

Farrokhzad, Khanlari, Sayeh, and Kasraei. 

Present poets of Tajikistan have benefited 

greatly from their poems. Although Loiq is 

inspired by the poems of the poets of Iran, his 

creativity and art are completely visible in his 

new poems.  

About the inspiration of Loiq Sher-Ali, 

Professor Alam Jan Khajeh Morad says ‚The 

inspiration of Loiq by other poets of the 

twentieth century in Iran has not been uniform 

in different periods of his poetry writing. In 

creating a series of his poems called ‚Madar 

Nameh‛ (the book of the mother) he was 

creatively influenced by Iraj Mirza, and in 

writing Ghazal by Rahi Mo'airi, Shahriar, 

Simin, Akhavan-Sales and the like. The poem of 

‚Kaveh weeping on the death of his seventeen 

sons‛ by Loiq reminds you of the Akhavan-

Sales’s poem of ‚for this sadness, not only my 

eyes shed blood‛.  

However, unlike the current poetry of 

Tajikistan, which in its entirety engages in 

national issues, Loiq's poetry is not free of 

individual concerns and philosophical 

thoughts. Loiq sometimes writes about love, 

with its earthly and everyday meaning, human 

life and relationships, and life and death. He 

considers death a reason for rebirth and 

motivation of dynamism in the ongoing route 

of life (Elegy of death, p. 35).  

Loiq's poetry is content oriented, like the 

poems of Mū’min Qanoat and Bozor Sobir, a 

poem that is filled with love for Tajikistan and 

the historical pains of its people.  

Loiq is powerful in writing Ghazals, too, 

and his contemporaneous poets have used 

classical forms less than him and have been less 

successful. He has written Ghazal, Do-bayti, 

Ruba’i (quatrain) and Charpareh, and there are 

undoubtedly spectacular samples among his 

works, which are rare in Tajik poetry and 

especially in these formats. However, Loiq has 

shown his capabilities in Do-bayti and Ruba’i 

more than other formats. His Ruba’is cover the 

subjects of worldliness, caring for happy 

moments (carpe diem), and everyday romantic 

issues. As the love of a mother, he has well-

developed the torn-apart homeland and the 



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hope for a reunion of culture in this short 

format. No other contemporaneous poets 

equate him in terms of quantity and quality of 

writing Do-bayti and Ruba’i. Many of these Do-

baytis and Ruba’is are retold by Tajiks and are 

sang in ceremonies.  

Gulrukhsor Safieva  

Gulrukhsor is the most famous female poet of 

Tajikistan. This reputation is due to both her 

sweet poetry and her multifaceted character as 

a poet, novelist, and politician. Ms. Gulrukhsor 

Safieva is a popular Tajik poet that published 

her first poems in 1962 in literary magazines. 

She continued to work in the press as the head 

of the press office of the Central Committee of 

Tajik Komsomol and the editor of the Pianar 

newspaper in Tajikistan and was promoted to 

the Secretariat of the Tajik Writers' Association. 

‚Shelter in the shade‛, ‚Green women of 

spring‛ and ‚Hardships of death‛ revealed 

another literary aspect of Gulrukhsor and 

introduced her as a successful novelist to the 

contemporary Tajik novelists and novel 

readers. The poetry books of Gulrukhsor were 

published one after the other and each one 

more successful than the previous one. She 

introduces Hafez and Bidel as her first degree 

masters and considers her poetry more closely 

related to the poetry atmosphere of these two 

great poets. So far, two cassettes of poetry 

reading have been published with the voice of 

Gulrukhsor: ‚Alone woman's streets‛ and 

‚Tears of typhoon‛, which still have a lot of 

popularity among Tajik poetry lovers (Surah 

Mehr, No. 57).  

Theme and content  

In Tajik poetry, you see very old words along 

with informal words. It is hardly possible to 

disclose the boundaries of formal and informal 

languages in these poems. This fact is both 

evident at the lexical and the syntactic levels.  

The hardships of the life have made Tajik 

poets, who have had many cultural, historical 

and national concerns, to use all their energies 

to express their unspeakable words in a simple 

way. This is why, according to Mojib Mehrdad, 

‚The Tajik poet, when speaking of his historical 

pains, uses the language recklessly, and he does 

not fear that this poem lacks an artistic aspect 

and anything that gives it an artistic value. 

Tajik poetry is a sensual poetry, one that blends 

the nature of the homeland and the cultural-

historical homeland with nostalgia, quarrel, 

and complaints to make the body of Tajik 

poetry. The Tajik poet always feels a vindictive 

and envious enemy waiting behind the gates of 

his culture. He has inherited this feeling from 

his risky history‛ (Tajikam, May 29, 2010). Tajik 

poetry is full of awakening themes, and the 

poets were willing to maintain their enormous 

culture at any cost to escape the domination of 

foreigners. Therefore, ‚during these years, the 

Tajik poet sees that his culture, which has great 

scholars like Ferdowsi, Maulana and Saadi, is 

ill-treated, his only homeland is divided, his 

great language loses its authority, and he can 

do nothing‛ (Ibid.). Nonetheless, Tajik poetry 

has a beauty that influences Persian speakers. 

As the Tajik poet Mojib Mehrdad says ‚Tajik 

poetry has beauties that have a special 

refreshing and sweet taste for the Persian 

speakers. Tajik poetry, unlike the poetry of Iran 

and Afghanistan, is the poetry of content, i.e 

poets pay attention to the theme in each poem, 

instead of dealing with transient moments and 

shortcuts and transient inspirations. Although 

we see this style in Iranian poetry in the works 

of Nima and his successors, and in the poetry of 

Afghanistan in the works of poets such as Vasef 

Bakhtari, Latif Nazemi, Parto Naderi and Siah 

Sang; Akhavan is the epic writer and 

storyteller. However, Tajik poetry, unlike the 

poetry of Nima and Akhavan, have become 

content-centered in accordance with Russian 

poetry and poets such as Pushkin, Lermontov, 

Sergei Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, and 

Mandelstam, since Tajik poets had an organic 

link with the Russian poetry through the 

Russian language, in which they were all fluent. 



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For this reason, whether Mū’min Qanoat, Bozor 

Sobir or Loiq Sher-Ali, all have written poems 

like The Bronze Horseman by Pushkin, Letter to 

My Mother by Sergei Yesenin, A Cloud in 

Trousers by Mayakovsky, etc. (Ibid.). What is 

repeated throughout the poems of all the poets 

of Tajikistan, alongside the expression of the 

suffering of the separated homeland, and the 

lost history, especially in times of the Russian 

rule, is the matter of love for mother, which is 

one of the central themes of Tajik poetry. 

Mother is very much honored by the Tajiks. 

Tajiks consider their homeland the same as a 

mother and their mother as Tajikistan and 

consider no difference between the two. Tajik 

poetry, from the perspective of the Persian 

speakers of Iran and Afghanistan, is weak in 

terms of language usage, which is quite right, 

but the problem arises because Iranians are less 

familiar with the syntactic structure and the 

wording of the Tajik dialect resulted from 

forced geographical separations. This problem 

particularly occurs when Tajiks remove any 

gap between their informal language and their 

literary language in previous generations. If we 

are familiar with these issues, many of these 

phonetic and syntactic weaknesses would not 

come up to us as flaws and will double the 

pleasure we receive by reading these poems. In 

any case, what is certain is that the poetry 

language of the second and third generations, 

using the possibility of new communication 

with Persian sources and other Persian 

speakers, has come closer to the standard 

Persian language. However, the specific 

sweetness of reckless use of the language, 

which was mixed with rich native resources in 

previous generations, is less pronounced in the 

language of the new generation of poets. Tajiks 

have encountered many injuries through 

especially those inflicted on them by the rule of 

the Communist Party, who intended to take 

away their identities and to eliminate their 

thousand-years-old culture and literacy. This 

has made Tajik poets, who have had many 

cultural, historical and national concerns, to use 

all their energies to express their unspeakable 

words in a simple way. This is why, according 

to Mojib Mehrdad, ‚The Tajik poet, when 

speaking of his historical pains, uses the 

language recklessly, and he does not fear that 

this poem lacks an artistic aspect and anything 

that gives it an artistic value (Wonderful 

climate of Tajik poetry, October 2009). 

The decline of Tajik poetry  

About the superiorities and weaknesses of 

contemporary Tajik poetry compared with the 

poetry of other Persian poets, Qanoat says 

‚Iranian scholars also say that the current 

poetry of Tajikistan is superior to the poetry of 

other Persian poets in terms of its theme, 

meaning, and realism. There is a defect in Tajik 

poetry, however, that is related to the rules of 

Persian poetry, namely, prosody, rhymes, 

rhetoric, and perspicuity. Perhaps our poets 

have benefited less from these language arts. 

That is because in their poetry, purpose and 

meaning are realistic, but the decoration of that 

particular meaning is not the same meaning, 

that is why the rhetorical figures are somewhat 

weak and old‛. Tajik poetry requires a 

thorough review. However, according to 

Qanoat ‚Tajik poetry requires a comprehensive 

review after the independence of Tajikistan ... 

Dr. Sherdost has divided the themes of 

Tajikistan poetry in the ‚Perspective of poetry 

of Tajikistan‛ book as follows:  

a. poems that have a historical-national 

background and they talk about the 

history of the Tajik people, their culture 

and native language, and relations with 

Iran. In some of these poems, the poet 

searches for his lost identity with the help 

of the historical memory. Those patriotic 

poems written in praise of Tajikistan or 

Iran are also in this group.  

b. Mother and wife are also commonly-used 

topics of contemporary Tajik poetry. 

Almost every Tajik poetic book has some 

poetry on these subjects. Some poets, such 



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 118 

as Loiq Sher-Ali, have a poetic collection 

on this subject.  

c. Childhood is also a constant theme of the 

works of every poet. The focus of 

contemporary Tajik poets is on the same 

issue, too.  

d. War and Peace are other themes of Tajik 

poetry. Since Tajikistan, like other Soviet 

republics, itself was part of a country that 

was one of the main fronts of the world 

war, many of its poets have written poems 

about the devastation of the war, the 

heroism of the Soviet troops, and the 

propitiousness of peace. Many of the 

featured poems are written on the same 

subject. ‚The angel of Stalingrad‛ by 

Mū’min Qanoat is one of them. 

e. Tajik poetry also has a lot of romance. 

Love in Tajik poetry - like the poetry of 

most nations of the world - is a feature that 

most poets have written about.  

f. Nature is one of the old themes of Persian 

poetry. Following this tradition, the 

contemporary Tajik poets have also 

depicted nature in their poetry.  

g. The political-social themes of Tajik poetry 

can be explored in two branches: The 

period before the collapse of the Soviet 

Union and the post-independence period 

of Tajikistan. In the first period, poems are 

full of praise, while the protest is formed 

in the second period, of which Bozor Sobir 

is the most prominent representative. 

Based on the works studied, Bozor Sobir 

has poems in praise of the Soviet Union in 

the first period. Although there is protest 

poetry in the first period and praise poetry 

in the second, they have no definitive 

nature.  

h. Although the ethical advice is an old 

theme in Persian poetry, it is presented in 

contemporary Tajik poetry both 

traditionally and in other ways.  

i. Due to the conditions, the religious-

mystical poetry is still weak, but due to its 

remarkable start, we will see the 

flourishing of this branch in the future‛ 

(Sherdost, Ali Asghar, 2010, pp. 83-84). 

Recalling the magnificent history of the 

Tajik people and the oppression that Tajiks 

have come across in history is the source of 

many poems. Among Tajik poets, one cannot 

find anyone who has not written poems about 

it. We will find some spectacular examples in 

the works of the Sobir Bozor. In several poems, 

Sobir speaks of the glory of the Samanid era 

and the grief of his oppressed people.  

In a poetry, we find the poet at the side of 

the Bukhara wall, putting his lips on the lips of 

the cracks of the wall, stroking its shoulders, 

and writing a grieving poem (Ibid, 83-85).  

After the independence of Tajikistan, 

culture and literature were also liberated from 

an ideological fence. Contemporary poets have 

no more limitations in the open atmosphere 

and the literary environment filled with ups 

and downs. The poetry of independence era 

moves back to its root, foundation, and initial 

origin, and great poets such as Rostam, Siavash, 

Khojasteh Sayyad, Farzaneh, Soroush, 

Esfandiar, Afagh, Azar, Vares, Dolat 

Rahmanian and dozens of others bear the great 

duty of being a poet, who tie together the past 

and present of Persian Tajik poetry is in Central 

Asia. 

Sadriddin has a long Tarji-Band that is full 

of curses, curses on the oppressors who gain 

power by slaughtering people and commit 

numerous crimes to keep their power. This 

throne, instead of bringing peace and security, 

causes the nation to be miserable. In this poem, 

Sadriddin curses the oppressors from the 

bottom of his heart and fully expresses his 

hatred. Here is the last clause of the Tarji-Band:  

Oh God! Destroy that house of oppression  

Oh God! Bury that court of oppression  

Oh God! That throne that made us 

miserable  

Shatter it and raise it to the ground 



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Such curses and complaints of the time 

clearly indicate that the noble Tajik people have 

gone through many hardships and lost many 

lives for the sake of their love and interest in 

the language of their ancestors, i.e. Persian 

language.  

Bozor Sobir has a poem in which there are 

references to the history of its ancestral land, it 

has images that affect the reader:  

Like the blood of the homeland 

From the neck of Nizam al-Mulk  

Drop  

By drop  

We dripped  

The fluctuating history of the Tajik people 

is more reflected in the works of Loiq Sher-Ali 

and Bozor Sobir. In the poems of these two, the 

bitter fate of the Samanids is depicted for the 

readers dolorously. In the following poem, 

Bozor Sobir addressed himself, whose tone is 

very sad. On the other hand, the sarcastic tone 

of the poem is obvious. The cry and adjuration 

of Bozor are well heard between the lines of this 

poetry:  

... Shame on me, Shame on me, Shame on 

me ...  

I was before  

But I was not  

Or what was I  

... My face is in that sad image that pours 

sadly  

From Sistan’s minarets and towers  

My grief is in those stones that are silent 

and crying  

In the tomb of Rudaki and Samanids  

I made Bamian  

I processed Kafian  

I lost Kafian  

The throne of Dara was in my way, I 

ruined it 

The treasure of Qarun was in my hand 

I wasted it  

I considered it a piece of straw and a 

bunch of dirt 

Shame on me, shame on me 

What have I done  

I expelled Avicenna from the honorable 

Bukhara  

I threw Al-Tirmidhi in the Amo river last 

night  

I shed the blood of Nizam al-Mulk  

Even I shed the blood of our land ...  

Gulrukhsor also refers to the resistance of 

Tajik people against the life events, and uses 

the word of Taj (crown) to show the 

immortality of the Tajik people:  

Fate has overthrown many kings with 

crowns 

And has made kings beg the beggars 

So many Qaruns has spoiled their life  

But Tajik peoples have always worn the 

crown  

They have been looted many times but 

never looted others  

(Selection of poems by Gulrukhsor, p. 57; 

Landscape, p. 90). 

Tajik poetry stylistics and aesthetics  

The review of contemporary poetry in 

Tajikistan, will not categorize the poems 

written in this era as classified in typical 

stylistics of Iran into the style of poets based on 

the place they lived in. Although many scholars 

believe that the classification of different poetic 

styles in Iran was not based on a correct 

method, they themselves did not provide the 

method they considered correct.  

Due to the political and historical changes 

that took place in Tajikistan in the 

contemporary century which was going to 

eradicate the Persian language, poetry did not 

find good conditions to follow its normal 

course and flourish as in Iran. Therefore, the 

categorization of poetry periods in Tajikistan 

and Afghanistan are remarkably different from 

the situation in Iran.  

This is because the style of poetry in 

contemporary Tajik literature has not followed 



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a correct course. If we want to give a correct 

definition of the style of this period, we should 

say that we can find the trace of every style in 

Tajik contemporary poetry. That is because the 

fighting poets, in order to save their Persian 

poetry and language they have used the word 

to express their goal which was the struggle to 

keep the Persian language alive, regardless of 

the texture of the words and use of rhetorical 

figures. As a result, poetry has sometimes been 

transformed into slogans without any specific 

features.  

Many of the poems of this period are 

written in the same old forms of Qasida (ode), 

Ghazal, Masnavi, Do-bayti, Qit’e, and 

sometimes Musammat. We will describe each 

of them separately.  

Qasida, which has been used extensively 

in ancient poetry, has not attracted much 

attention in contemporary Tajik poetry. As a 

result, no Qasida writing poet has emerged in 

Tajikistan during this period. As Bidel says: 

Neither Ghazal nor Qasida will remain 

after us 

Only two or three drops of tears from the 

pens will remain 

In addition to the factors that made the 

poetry of Tajikistan stay away from Qasida, one 

of the other factors was the language after the 

October Revolution of this country, which 

attributed the perfection of the language of 

poetry to the bourgeoisie and reactionary, and 

Qasida could not survive such circumstances. 

however, there are some long poems by some 

poets that can be considered as some kind of 

Qasida. The political Qasida by Loiq with the 

following beginning lines is one of them:  

The land of stones, and we have no 

fortress  

Every one of us a warlord, and we have no 

leader ...  

(A selection of poems by Loiq, 1995, p. 

179).  

 

CONCLUSION  

From the review and comparison of the themes 

of contemporary poetry of Afghanistan and 

Tajikistan, it is concluded that the Persian 

poetry of Afghanistan is far superior to 

Tajikestan poetry in terms of sophistication and 

consistency of the word and the use of 

rhetorical figures in the classical style. and the 

works of Iranian poets are far superior to that 

of the two Persian-speaking neighboring 

countries. These superiorities have been made 

due to their specific political and geographic 

conditions. Because over the past century there 

has been more unrest in those countries, and 

the opportunity for cultural, literary, etc. 

development is only obtained when the people 

of the country are at peace over the years. This 

peace has been less available in Afghanistan 

and Tajikistan. Moreover, the distancing of 

these countries from the Iranian Persian 

language and their particular conditions have 

caused the dialects to differ, and this difference 

is more evident between the language of the 

Tajik people and Iranian people. Obviously, 

Tajik and Afghan dialects are different, and 

there are words and phrases in these languages 

that are less available in the Iranian vocabulary. 

For instance, there are words specific to the 

people of Tajikistan that either do not exist in 

the language of Iranians or they have a 

different meaning. The names of the new 

instruments are different in Iran, Tajikistan, and 

Afghanistan.  

Tajik poets have tried to keep the form of 

Ghazal alive in every situation. In the Ghazals 

of first-generation poets, the lyric, classical, and 

political languages were parallel. The Ghazal of 

‚Tajik song‛ by Sadriddin Ayni is one of them. 

Some of the Ghazal writers of this era, along 

with political poetry, have tried to improve 

lyric Ghazal (real Ghazal), too, and relying on 

the rich Persian Ghazal history, and being 

influenced by the Indian style, they have 



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created beautiful, yet simple Ghazals. The 

impact of Bidel's style on Tajik poetry, 

especially in Ghazal, is sometimes quite 

obvious. 

 

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