Loiq Sher-Ali

Loiq Sher-Ali was born in a village in the Panjakent district of northern Tajikistan, in the valley of the Zarafshan, and spent his working life in Dushanbe as a poet, editor and public figure. He wrote in Tajik, the Persian of Central Asia, which in his lifetime was printed in Cyrillic.

Writing in both classical forms, the ghazal (lyric) and the roba'i (quatrain), and in freer modern verse, he returned again and again to one subject: the Persian language itself, and the inheritance of Rudaki, Ferdowsi and Rumi that Tajiks share with Iranians and Afghans. In the late Soviet years his poems helped give voice to a Tajik cultural revival, and he was among those who campaigned for Tajik to become the state language, as it did in 1989.

He was honoured as People's Poet of Tajikistan and widely read in Iran and Afghanistan as well. He died in Dushanbe in 2000.

Loiq's poems are in copyright. We publish them only with permission from the rights holders; until then we write about the work.