Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám was a prominent Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet, believed to have been born in Nishapur, Iran, during the Seljuk dynasty in the 11th century. He received a comprehensive education, excelling in various fields such as mathematics, astronomy, and literature. Khayyám is renowned for his work in algebra, particularly his treatise on cubic equations, which has been acknowledged for its significance in the history of mathematics. He also contributed to the reform of the Persian solar calendar, creating a system that was notably accurate.
While Khayyám is celebrated in the West primarily for his poetry, notably through Edward FitzGerald's translation, "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám," historical records indicate that he was not a professional poet but rather a scholar who occasionally composed quatrains. These quatrains reflect a rationalist worldview, often expressing a skeptical perspective toward religion and the afterlife, urging readers to embrace life's transience. Over time, Khayyám's legacy evolved, and he became an iconic figure in Persian literature, symbolizing individual thought and a critique of orthodoxy, resonating with many secular-minded individuals throughout history.
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Omar Khayyám
Persian mathematician and poet
- Born: May 18, 1048(?)
- Birthplace: Nishapur, Persia (now in Iran)
- Died: December 4, 1123(?)
- Place of death: Nishapur, Persia (now in Iran)
Khayyám was a leading medieval mathematician and the author of Persian quatrains made famous through the English poet Edward FitzGerald’s 1859 study, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
Early Life
Omar Khayyám (OH-mahr ki-YAHM) was born in all likelihood in Nishapur, then a major city in the northeastern corner of Iran. At his birth, a new Turkish dynasty from Central Asia called the Seljuks was in the process of establishing control over the whole Iranian plateau. In 1055, when their leader, Toghrïl Beg , entered Baghdad, the Seljuks became masters of the Muslim caliphate and empire. Of Omar’s family and education, few specifics are known. His given name indicates that he was a Sunni Muslim, for his namesake was the famous second caliph under whose reign (634-644) the dramatic Islamic expansion throughout the Middle East and beyond had begun. The name Khayyám means “tentmaker,” possibly designating the occupation of his forebears. Omar received a good education, including study of Arabic, the Qur՚ān, the various religious sciences, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, and literature.
At Toghrïl Beg’s death, his nephew Alp Arslan succeeded to the Seljuk throne, in part through the machinations of NizŃām al-Mulk (1019-1092), also from Nishapur, who was to serve the Seljuks for more than thirty years as a vizier (government administrator). Alp Arslan (r. 1063 to 1072 or 1073) was succeeded by his son Malik-Shāh, who ruled to 1092.
During this period of rule, Khayyám studied first in Nishapur, then in Balkh, a major eastern city in what is now Afghanistan. From there, he went farther northeast to Samarqand (now in Uzbekistan). There, under the patronage of the chief local magistrate, he wrote a treatise in Arabic on algebra, classifying types of cubic equations and presenting systematic solutions to them. Recognized by historians of science and mathematics as a significant study, it is the most important of Khayyám’s extant works (which comprise about ten short treatises). None of them, however, offers glimpses into Khayyám’s personality, except to affirm his importance as a mathematician and astronomer whose published views were politically and religiously orthodox.
From Samarqand, Khayyám proceeded to Bukhara and was probably still in the royal court there when peace was concluded between the Qarakhanids and the Seljuks in 1073 or 1074. At this time, he probably entered the service of Malik-Shāh, who had become Seljuk sultan in 1072.
Life’s Work
Two of Malik-Shāh’s projects on which Khayyám presumably worked were the construction of an astronomy observatory in the Seljuk capital at Eşfahān in 1074 and the reform of the Persian solar calendar . Called maleki after the monarch, the new calendar proved more accurate than the Gregorian system centuries later.
Khayyám was one of Malik-Shāh’s favorite courtiers, but after the latter’s death Khayyám apparently never again held important positions under subsequent Seljuk rulers. In the mid-1090’, he made the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca and then returned to private life and teaching in Nishapur. It is known that Khayyám was in Balkh in 1112 or 1113. Several years later, he was in Marv, where a Seljuk ruler had summoned him to forecast the weather for a hunting expedition. After 1118, the year of Sanjar’s accession, no record exists of any work by Khayyám. He died in his early eighties.
Some of the meager information available today regarding Khayyám was recorded by an acquaintance called Nizāmī ՙArūzī (fl. 1110-1161) in a book called Chahár Maqála (c. 1155; English translation, 1899). Nizāmī tells of visiting Khayyám’s grave site in 1135 or 1136. Surprisingly, given Khayyám’s reputation as a poet, the anecdotes regarding him appear in Nizāmī’s “Third Discourse: On Astrologers,” and no mention of him is made in the “Second Discourse: On Poets.” In other words, though in the West Omar Khayyám is known for his poetry, no evidence in Persian suggests that he was a professional court poet or that he ever was more involved with poetry than through the occasional, perhaps extemporaneous, composition of quatrains (rubai or robai, plural rubáiyát). Because the quatrains first attributed to Khayyám are thematically of a piece and are distinct from panegyric, love, and Sufi quatrains, they can be usefully designated as “Khayyamic” even if authorship of many individual quatrains is impossible to determine definitively.
The following three quatrains are among the most typical and earliest to be attributed to the historical figure of Omar Khayyám:
There was a drop of water, it merged with the sea.
In the centuries following Khayyám’s death, increasing numbers of quatrains attributed to him appeared in manuscripts. Several of these manuscripts came to the attention of Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), a serious student of Persian, who found them particularly appealing. His study of them inspired him to compose The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the first edition of which consisted of 75 quatrains and appeared in 1859. A second edition, expanded to 110 quatrains, appeared in 1868. The third edition in 1872 and the fourth in 1879 contained 101 quatrains, and the latter is the standard text. By FitzGerald’s death, his work had begun to receive favorable critical attention, but its extraordinary fame, making it the single most popular poem of the Victorian Age, did not commence until later. A comparison of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám with the Khayyamic Persian quatrains that FitzGerald had read and studied reveals that the themes, tone, and imagery of his poem are very close to those in the Persian quatrains, but that FitzGerald’s poem is not a translation in any sense. It was the worldwide popularity of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám that drew scholarly attention in Iran to Khayyám as a poet, so that he now is recognized as a leading figure in the Persian literary pantheon, along with Firdusi (between 932 and 941-between 1020 and 1025), Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (1207-1273), Saՙdi (1200-1291), and Hafiz (c. 1320-1389 or 1390).
Significance
The Persian quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyám express the point of view of a rationalist intellectual who sees no reason to believe in a human soul or an afterlife (as in the first quatrain quoted above). The speaker would like to live a springtime garden life, but his continuing awareness of his own mortality and his inability to find answers in either science or religion lead him to a modified carpe diem stance: In this far-from-perfect world, in which human beings do not have a decent chance at happiness, one should nevertheless endeavor to make the best of things (as in the second quatrain quoted above). Some slight consolation is offered in appreciating the fact that human beings have faced this situation from the beginning of time (as in the third quatrain quoted above).
In the orthodox Seljuk age, Khayyamic quatrains constituted a bold, individualistic voicing of skepticism. Because literary Iranians throughout history have admired individualists and free spirits, Omar Khayyám has been mythologized into a figure quite different from what the known facts about his biography imply. For example, he was a hero and inspiration to Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951), Iran’s most acclaimed twentieth century author, in whose novel Buf-i kur (1936; The Blind Owl, 1957) are palpable Khayyamic echoes.
Regardless of the historical facts, the view of Hedayat and many others is that Khayyám bucked the tide of religious orthodoxy and dared to say what many secular-minded people believe: that religion, science, and government fail to give an adequate explanation of the mystery of the individual lives of human beings.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Edward FitzGerald’s “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.” Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. Presents an introduction to FitzGerald’s infamous study and chapters that consider the “fin de siècle cult” of FitzGerald’s work, comparisons with poets such as Tennyson, “forgetting” Fitzgerald’s study, and more. Bibliography, index.
Boyle, J. A. “Omar Khayyám: Astronomer, Mathematician, and Poet.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, edited by R. N. Frye. Vol. 4. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1975. A succinct and careful review of the known facts about Khayyám’s life, concluding with a brief review of the dispute over Khayyám’s attitude toward Sufism, with which he presumably had little affinity.
Dashti, Ali. In Search of Omar Khayyám. Translated by L. P. Elwell-Sutton. London: Allen and Unwin, 1971. A very reliable study of Khayyám, which includes a review of his age and the known facts of his life, a collection of seventy-five quatrains that the author argues can be attributed with some confidence to Khayyám, and a sympathetic and sensitive identification of themes in the poems.
FitzGerald, Edward. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. 4th ed. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1879. This is the last edition the author saw to press and thus the official, final version of the poem.
Gray, Erik. “Forgetting FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 41, no. 4 (Autumn, 2001). Argues that the notion of “forgetting” or remembering “imperfectly” marks FitzGerald’s poetic study as an important text in the context of Victorian poetry and in continuing literary work.
Heron-Allen, Edward. Edward FitzGerald’s “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” with Their Original Persian Sources. Boston: L. C. Page, 1899. A study of FitzGerald’s stanzas paralleled with the Persian texts of possible sources, demonstrating that, although FitzGerald was inspired by Khayyamic and other Persian quatrains, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is an original English poem and not a translation.
Hillmann, Michael C. “Perennial Iranian Skepticism.” In Iranian Culture: A Persianist View. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988. A treatment of the significance to Iranian culture today of the ideas expressed in Khayyamic quatrains, which are compared to FitzGerald’s poem. Comprehensive bibliography.
Kennedy, E. S. “The Exact Sciences in Iran Under the Saljuqs and Mongols.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, edited by J. A. Boyle. Vol. 5. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Surveys the foundations of mathematics, algebra, trigonometry, planetary theory, observational astronomy, mathematical geography, specific gravity determination, and rainbow theory, with a discussion of Khayyám’s contribution to polynomial equations and his possible contribution to observational astronomy.
Khayyám, Omar. The Algebra of Omar Khayyám. Translated by Daoud S. Kasir. 1931. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1972. A great history of mathematics and Khayyám’s most important extant work, prefaced with a discussion of the state of algebra before his time and Khayyám’s methods and significance. Bibliography.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia. Edited by Mehdi Amin Razavi. Richmond, Surrey, England: Curzon Press, 1996. Presents a chapter exploring Omar as a philosopher, poet, and scientist. Bibliography, index.
Ozdural, Alpay. “A Mathematical Sonata for Architecture: Omar Khayyám and the Friday Mosque of Isfahan.” Technology and Culture 39, no. 4 (October, 1998). Explores the possibility that Omar, with his theories on ornamental geometry and the triangle, was the designer of the North Dome Chamber (or Great Mosque), built in 1088-1089, in Eşfahān, Iran. Includes technical language and geometrical drawings.
Rashed, Rushdei, and Bijan Vahabzadeh. Omar Khayyám: The Mathematician. New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 2000. An exploration of Omar’s work in mathematics. Part of the Persian Heritage series. Bibliography, index.