Reference
- Fitzgerald, EdwardFitzgerald’s reputation as a poet rests on his brilliant “translation” called the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859). Drawing from hundreds of short poems written by the 12th-c. Persian poet Omar Khayyám, Fitzgerald forged an English masterpiece that is sensuously musical in style, exotically colorful in imagery, and daringly skeptical in its largely epicurean and nihilistic outlook. Upon its first appearance in 1859, the Rubáiyát went almost totally unnoticed. By 1900, it was widely recognized as a unique and fundamentally original contribution to English poetry, and it has come to be one of the most popular and widely known poems in the English language...
- OMAR KHAYYÁM QUATRAINor Rubaiyat stanza (from Persian, originally Ar. rubāʿiyyāt [pl.], "quatrains"). In Eng. poetry, a quatrain of decasyllabic lines rhyming aaba (rarely aaaa). The term is taken from Edward FitzGerald's famous collection Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859), which is a free adaptation of a selection of poems by the Persian poet ʿUmar Khayyām (d. 1122), whose major reputation within the cl. Ar. trad. is as an algebraist. There is considerable doubt as to the attribution of a large part of Khayyām's poetry, but about 50 poems are clearly authentic, while a large number of others are also thought to be so...
- Omar KhayyámOmar Khayyām was a Persian scientist and mathematician famous in his own day for his contributions in the fields of algebra and astronomy. Although his occasional verse was little known in the Middle Ages, the publication in 1859 of Edward FitzGerald's Rubā’iyāt of Omar Khayyam made him the most widely known Persian poet in the world, at least until the recent popularity of Rumi. Of course only a few of FitzGerald's translated verses can with any confidence be attributed to Omar...
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Omar Khayyam: Famous People, Incredible Lives
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Omar Khayyam lived from 1048-1131. Until the 19th century, the Persian poet was mainly known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. In this Film Ideas video, explore Khayyam's early life, education, time at Malik-Shah's court, and The Rubaiyat.
Online Resources
- Omar Khayaam: Poetry FoundationBorn Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyámi, the 11th-century Persian poet, astronomer, and mathematician Omar Khayyam was raised in the town of Nishapur in present-day northern Iran. He is thought to have been the son of tent makers, as al-khayyami translates to “tent maker.” As a child he studied first with the scholar Sheik Muhammad Mansuri in the town of Balkh, in present-day northern Afghanistan, and then with the imam Mowaffaq Nishapuri in Khorassan...
- Omar Khayyam: BritannicaOmar Khayyam, Arabic in full Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī al-Khayyāmī, (born May 18, 1048, Neyshābūr [also spelled Nīshāpūr], Khorāsān [now Iran]—died December 4, 1131, Neyshābūr), Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet, renowned in his own country and time for his scientific achievements but chiefly known to English-speaking readers through the translation of a collection of his robāʿīyāt (“quatrains”) in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859), by the English writer Edward FitzGerald...
- Omar Khayyam: Iran Chamber SocietyOmar Khayyam lived between 1044 and 1123 CE and his full name was Ghiyath al-Din Abul Fateh Omar Ibn Ibrahim Khayyam. Omar Khayyam was an outstanding mathematician and astronomer. He was also well known as a poet, philosopher, and physician. In the "History of Western Philosophy", Bertrand Russell remarks that Omar Khayyam was the only man known to him who was both a poet and a mathematician...
- Robāʿiyyāt: Omar Khayyam: BritannicaThe work done in mathematics by early Arabic scholars and by al-Bīrūnī was continued by Omar Khayyam (died 1131), to whom the Seljuq empire in fact owes the reform of its calendar. But Omar has become famous in the West through the very free adaptations by Edward FitzGerald of his robāʿiyyāt. These quatrains have been translated into almost every known language and are largely responsible for colouring European ideas about Persian poetry. Some scholars have doubted the authenticity of these verses. Since FitzGerald’s time, many more faithful translations have been published...
- RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM: Project GutenbergRead the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam online through Project Gutenberg.
Perspectives
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, perhaps the most frequently read Victorian poem and certainly one of the most popular poems in the English language, poses formidable challenges to an editor. FitzGerald compulsively revised his work, alternately swayed by friends' advice, importuned by his publisher's commercial interests, and encouraged by public acclaim. In consequence, the editor is faced with four published editions as well as manuscript and proof versions of the poem. Christopher Decker's critical edition of the Rubáiyát is the first to publish all extant states of the poem and to unearth a full record of its complicated textual evolution. Decker supplies a rich interpretive context for the Rubáiyát that reveals how its composition was so often a collaborative enterprise. His view of poetic creativity comprehends recent theories of the sociology of texts and challenges the common assumption that the desired product of a critical edition is a single unified text of a literary work. He illuminates the complex process of revision by providing a textual appendix in which a comparative printing lays down each stratum of FitzGerald's composition. Biographical and textual introductions, making imaginative use of FitzGerald's correspondence, trace the history of the poem and pay special attention to FitzGerald's motives for revising, for creating a variously beautiful work in verse. This definitive edition of the Rubáiyát will be of special interest to scholars and students of Victorian poetry, publishing history, verse translation, literary imitation, and revision. And readers for whom the poem is an old acquaintance will here find fresh ways to appreciate its strengths and finesse.
The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam
First published in 2000. GHIAS uddin Abul Fath Omar bin Ibrahim al Khayyam was born early in the 5th century A.H. in the province of Khorasan, and lived during the greater part of his life at Nishapur, one of the chief cities of that province, where he died in 517 A.H. This is a collection of the Persian text with an English Tense Translation.
Routledge Revivals: the Romance of the Rubáiyát (1959)
First published in 1959, this reprint of the first edition of Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát is accompanied by an introduction and notes by A J Arberry, one of Britain's most distinguished Orientalist scholars. The Rubáiyát is a selection of poems written in Persian attributed to Omar Khayyám. The work will be of interest to those studying Middle Eastern Literature.
Algebra, Algorithms, and al-Khwarizmi
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The field of mathematics owes a tremendous debt to the Islamic Golden Age. Mathematicians such as Omar Khayyam (who is perhaps better known today as a poet) and al-Khwarizmi built on the work of Babylonian, Greek, and Indian mathematicians to systematize and explain algebra and symbolic algorithms. Survey this critical period of mathematics history.