Author of The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) was a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer. Though he was known mostly for his scientific work during his lifetime, Khayyam’s poetic masterpiece was rediscovered in the nineteenth century and is now considered a classic of medieval Islamic literature.
The Rubaiyat is made up of more than 500 quatrains, or four-line poems, about religion, nature, and love. Wistful and sometimes elegiac, the general message of the compilation is to make the most of life: “While you live / Drink!—for, once dead, you never shall return,” Khayyam urges in one of the verses.
Khayyam was born in Nishapur, a Persian city in what is now northeastern Iran. His name means “tent maker,” which is believed to have been his family’s profession. He studied philosophy, became an important mathematician, and wrote Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, an influential textbook, in 1070. The sultan appointed him one of his court astronomers, in which post his duties included calculating the length of the year and reforming the Persian calendar.
The Rubaiyat came to prominence in the West after it was discovered and translated by a British scholar, Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883). Many of the poems ruminate on the theme of how life can be lived and enjoyed given the certainty of death. Khayyam, in two passages, recommends living life to the fullest so that one is prepared when death comes, but also keeping the insignificance of one’s life in perspective.
So when that Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff—you shall not shrink….
When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the Sea’s self should heed a pebble-cast.
Although he was raised as a devout Muslim, Khayyam’s religious views came under attack later in life, and he was suspected of disbelief. (He bitterly alludes to his plight in one of the quatrains.) He died in Nishapur at age eighty-three.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- President Bill Clinton (1946–) recited a quatrain from The Rubaiyat in one of his statements asking forgiveness in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky (1973–) scandal. “The moving finger writes; and having writ, / Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, / Nor all your tears wash out a word of it,” he said.
- Actor Cornel Wilde (1915–1989) played the title role in the 1957 film Omar Khayyam. The same movie also featured Yma Sumac (1922–2008), who would go on to fame as a singer, in a minor role.
- While working as an astronomer in Esfahān, Khayyam calculated the length of a year to be 365.24219858156 days. It was the most accurate estimate of his time.
