Omar Khayy¯ am 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 Rub¯ a‘iy¯ at 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.
Omar Khayy¯ am (the name means “Omar, Son
of the Tent-maker”) was probably born and educated in Nishapur, and grew to manhood in an
Iran newly conquered by the Seljuk Turks. It was
a time in which scholars were not likely to find
much employment unless they could attract the
patronage of the rich or powerful. In 1070, Omar
moved to the ancient city of Samarkand in Central Asia (now Uzbekistan), where he was supported by a wealthy jurist named Abu Tahir, and
was able to gain the favor of Shams al-Mulk Nast
ibn Ibrahim, the Qarakhanid ruler of Transoxiana. By the age of 25, Omar had produced a treatise on arithmetic and one on music, and had also
composed two treatises on algebra, in which,
among other things, he presents the first general
theory of cubic equations. Shams’s rival, the
Seljuk sultan Jal¯ al al-D¯ın Maliksh¯ah (r. 1072–92),
lured Omar to his own court in Isfahan and became the mathematician’s patron and friend for
some 18 years. In Maliksh¯ah’s service Omar was
asked to take part in the establishment of a new
solar calendar in 1079. Omar measured the length
of the year at 365.24219858156 days, an astoundingly accurate calculation. As the chief scholar of
the court, he prepared new astronomical tables
and wrote a number of treatises on philosophy
and theology, and he also began making plans for
a new observatory.
But Maliksh¯ ah’s death put an end to Omar’s favored position at court, and plans for his observatory were abandoned. Omar also came under fire
at this point from conservative Muslims who
thought his studies were contrary to Islam. Omar
spent several years trying to return to favor at
court, and when, in 1118, Maliksh¯ ah’s third son,
Sanjar, became overall Seljuk ruler, Omar became
part of a new center of learning in Sanjar’s new
capital of Merv, Turkmenistan, and there continued to work on mathematical studies.
Early biographers of Omar Khayy¯ am mention
nothing about his verse, and there is no contemporary witness to his poetic ability. But in his day it
was common for educated Persians to compose
occasional verse, typically in quatrains called rub¯ a‘i
(plural rub¯ a‘iy¯ at). These epigrammatic poems included four half-lines, of which the first two and
the fourth rhymed. Thus the quatrain introduced
and developed a theme in the first two half-lines,
and reached a climax in the fourth after a suspenseful pause in the third half-line. Like the
roughly contemporary Japanese TANKA, such quatrains were composed by virtually every literate
Iranian as a social expectation and circulated privately and by word of mouth. Certainly they were
never collected into a d¯ıw¯an, the anthology of a
professional poet.
A manuscript dated 1161 cites some of Omar’s
verses, and he is first mentioned as a poet about
1177. The first extant manuscript containing a
complete quatrain of Omar’s is dated 1209. By the
end of the 14th century, there were some 60
poems attributed to him, and as his reputation as
a poet grew, more and more verses were credited
to Omar. Clearly there were a number of anonymous quatrains that were produced in medieval
times, and as Omar’s reputation grew, so did the
number of verses he was supposed to have written. By the late 15th century, more than 300
rub¯ a‘iy¯ at were ascribed to him, and that number
had grown to some 1,200 by the time FitzGerald
made his translation.
FitzGerald includes about 600 quatrains in his
Rub¯ a‘iy¯ at, a number of which were never attributed to Omar himself, but were borrowed from
other Sufi poets as they contributed to the picture
FitzGerald was trying to paint of Omar as a skeptical and melancholy sensualist. Even today determining which poems might genuinely be
attributed to Omar Khayy¯ am is extremely difficult, and made an even thornier task by the fact
that literary Persian changed very little over the
centuries, so that poems written hundreds of years
after Omar lived might still be passed off as his.
At this point scholars have succeeded in narrowing down to about 100 the poems considered
Omar Khayy¯ am’s genuine work. But given the nature of the evidence, a consensus among scholars
would be hard to achieve. Most, appropriately,
take a very conservative view about what may be
accepted as genuine. It is simply difficult to know
what Omar himself wrote, and difficult to separate the real Omar from the one created by
FitzGerald’s compilation.
Bibliography
Dasht¯ ı, Al¯ ı. In Search of Omar Khayyam. Translated
by L. P. Elwell-Sutton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Edited and with an introduction by Harold
Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers,
2004.
Kasra, Parichehr, ed. and trans. The Rub¯ a‘iy¯ at of Umar
Khayy¯ am. Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars’ Facsimiles and
Reprints, 1975.
Rashed, R., and B. Vahabzadeh. Omar Khayyam, the
Mathematician. New York: Bibliotheca Persica
Press, 2000.