Omar Khayyam

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Lore & Background

Omar Khayyam was born in 1048 and died in 1131. The earliest reference to his having written poetry is found in his biography by al-Isfahani, written 43 years after his death. This view is reinforced by other medieval historians such as Shahrazuri (1201) and Al-Qifti (1255). The authenticity of the poetry attributed to him is highly uncertain; sceptical scholars point out that the entire tradition may be pseudepigraphic. The number of quatrains attributed to him in more recent collections varies from about 1,200 (according to Saeed Nafisi) to more than 2,000. Various tests have been employed to reduce the quatrains attributable to Omar to about 100. Arthur Christensen states that "of more than 1,200 ruba'is known to be ascribed to Omar, only 121 could be regarded as reasonably authentic". Foroughi accepts 178 quatrains as authentic, while Ali Dashti accepts 36 of them. The extreme popularity of FitzGerald's work led to a prolonged debate on the correct interpretation of the philosophy behind the poems. FitzGerald emphasized the religious scepticism he found in Omar Khayyam, describing Omar's philosophy as Epicurean and claiming that Omar was "hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed". Richard Nelson Frye also emphasizes that Khayyam was despised by a number of prominent contemporary Sufis, including Shams Tabrizi, Najm al-Din Daya, Al-Ghazali, and Attar, who "viewed Khayyam not as a fellow-mystic, but a free-thinking scientist".

Reader's Guide

Omar Khayyam's significance lies in his pioneering mathematical work and his lasting impact on astronomy and culture. As a mathematician, he provided a general solution for cubic equations using conic sections. In astronomy, he calculated the solar year and designed the Jalali calendar. His legacy also includes the poetry attributed to him—quatrains known as rubāʿiyāt—which became widely known in the West through Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation, *The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám*. FitzGerald's translation is rhyming and metrical, and rather free; many of the verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to his source material at all. FitzGerald's first source was the Bodleian MS, a transcript of which was given to him in 1856 by his friend Edward B. Cowell, with 158 quatrains. His second source was a transcript of an MS Cowell found in 1857 in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. A. J. Arberry in his *Romance of the Rubaiyat* (1959) showed that some 40 were loose translations of a single stanza in either the Bodleian or Calcutta manuscripts, while others were "mashed together" from two quatrains. FitzGerald's text was published in five editions, with substantial revisions: 1st edition – 1859 (75 quatrains); 2nd edition – 1868 (110 quatrains); 3rd edition – 1872 (101 quatrains); 4th edition – 1879 (101 quatrains); 5th edition – 1889 (101 quatrains). A bibliography of editions compiled in 1929 listed more than 300 separate editions.

Did You Know?

• Omar Khayyam was famous during his lifetime not as a poet but as an astronomer and mathematician.
• The earliest reference to Khayyam having written poetry is found in a biography written 43 years after his death.
• FitzGerald's first edition of the Rubáiyát (1859) had only 75 quatrains and was privately printed in 250 copies.
• By the 1890s, more than two million copies of the Rubáiyát had been sold in two hundred editions.
• Sadegh Hedayat's final verdict was that only 14 quatrains could be attributed to Khayyam with certainty.