The Life and Works of Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam was a great Persian poet, an astronomer, and a mathematician. His one long poem, "The Rubaiyat", has made him famous throughout the world.1 "The Rubaiyat" (meaning a collection of quatrains, or four-line rhymes) first became known outside of Persia when the Englishman Edward FitzGerald translated about 100 of the quatrains written by Omar Khayyam.2
Omar wrote with a gentle melancholy about nature and regret for the brief sweetness of life.
Omar Khayyam's full name was Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami.3 It is believed that the name "Khayyam" is an epithet probably derived from his fathers trade. It means "the tentmaker".4
Omar Khayyam was born and educated in the city of Nishapur. He studied geometry and astronomy in the great city of Samarkand and worked for the chief magistrate and the ruler of the city of Bokhara. Khayyam later entered the service of the Seljuk Sultan Malekshah. The Seljuk’s were the rulers of Persia in the time Omar Khayyam lived. As royal astronomer, he changed the Persian calendar. He devised one that is said to actually be more accurate then the Gregorian calendar.5 Khayyam also traveled to the holy Islamic city of Mecca and to Baghdad before returning to his hometown -- Nishapur. With his great knowledge in the study of the stars he helped to build an observatory and assemble a set of astronomical tables upon which was based a new calendar era. Omar Khayyam also wrote an Arabic book on algebra. Because of his great contribution to science, Khayyam is more often remembered as an astronomer and mathematician rather then a poet. The great Omar Khayyam died in the year 1131.6
Khayyam’s times were dangerous ones because of the Seljuk Turks who were finishing their conquests of Iran, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. When Khayyam was a child, the Seljuks conquered Persia (Iran) and by the time he was dead, the Seljuks had forged an empire that stretched from the River Amu-Darja to Syria. In these unstable times Khayyam’s verse gives the reader a sense of logic and clarity.7 The poems of “The Rubaiyat” are four-part pieces that display a sort of skepticism and were therefore likely to have been distributed secretly, anonymously and with some considerable danger for their author, Omar Khayyam. This is reflected in the fact that the first mention of these verses under Khayyam’s name was almost ninety years after his death. And this mention itself was only to defame the author for his evil and corrupt mind. The reason for this was that the government was a tireless and uncertain patronage of religion. A thinker and philosopher like Omar Khayyam would have found this power awful and unjustifiable.8
The form of the “Rubaiyat” is a Persian poem structure known for its shortness. Each verse, or so-called "ruba’i", contains four lines and is an independent unit of thought. The first and second lines of each "ruba’i" present a statement of some sort; the third brings the statement to its height before the fourth sums up the central thought. In this way the sequence of verses is disconnected but each one is complete in itself, brief, beautiful and simple.9
The questions asked by Khayyam were not new even then. They are universal issues but presented in an outstandingly charming and precise way. Omar Khayyam presents two contrasting visions in the "Rubaiyat": on one side are the images of pleasure and life (light, flower, nightingale, grass) and on the other -- death and total destruction (darkness, corpse, dust, veil). Khayyam presents no solution but instead the logical decision to live for the day... 10
