Omar Khayyam Life and Rubaiyat
Persian Poet, Mathematician and Astronomer, Famous for Poetry
Omar Khayyam, a great scholar in the ancient Muslim kingdom of Persia (now modern day Iran), is the author of one of the greatest poetic works, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859, published posthumously.
Khayyam was best-known for his over 200 four-line verses, and for Persian philosophy aside from Persian poetry.
Nutshell of Omar Khayyam's Life and Works
Omar Khayyam was born on May 18, 1048 in Nishapur, Persia. At that time during the 11th century, Persian civilization was far more advanced than that of Europe. As a young man, Omar Khayyam learned about astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and medicine.
When one of Omar Khayyam's student friends became an important official at the court of a powerful ruler, he traveled there in 1074, where he helped enquire into timekeeping, and was allowed to live and study at the court.
Between the years 1074 and 1079, he worked on a project to reform the Islamic calendar according to highly accurate astronomical observations. He also wrote and published important works on algebra as the branch of mathematics.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam English Translation
It is not known when Omar Khayyam wrote the 200 or so four-line verses for which he has become famous. His work became known outside the Muslim world when the English poet Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) published translations of his collected poems as The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam more than 700 years after Omar Khayyam's his death.
Fitzgerald's translations of the verses as a work of English literature was a high point of the 19th century and was greatly influential. They are the best known in English. The term "Rubaiyat" has been used to describe the quatrain rhyme scheme that Fitzgerald used in his translations.
Effect of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The book became extremely popular. Its poetry evokes brilliantly written insights of life. Readers love not only its sense of ancient wisdom but its descriptions of luxury, pleasure and the rhythm of life. The images explored and pictured beautiful and exotic gardens as well as mysterious veiled women that became the stereotyped Western idea of Muslim culture.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam has since been translated into most of the world's languages. Omar Khayyam died at the age of 83, December 4, 1131.
Quoted from Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat:
"You rising Moon that looks for us again –
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden – and for one in vain!"
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald
Sources:
- Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994.
- McGovern, Una, Ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers / Harrap Publishers, 2002.
- Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. London: Carlton, 1997.
Omar Khayyam, Poet, Mathematician, Astronomer
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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
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