Omar Khayyam and His World

Omar Khayyam life

Omar Khayyam’s full name is Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyámi. He was born in Nishabur in Iran, and he was a poet, mathematician, philosopher, and an astronomer. Unfortunately, his mathematical and astronomical ideas were not discovered until his death. His first when he was a child his school was in the town of Balkh at Sheik Muhammad Mansuri School.

He also helped in the developing of Jalali calendar and building a star map. He found the Demonstrations of Problems of Algebra, and he engaged Euclidean geometry while he traveled to Samarkand which is now in Uzbekistan. He classified and solved cubic equations and quadratic equations. He wrote treatises about music, Islamic theology, mechanics, geography, and mineralogy. However, Omar Khayyam was notable for his poetry, and his poems were written in quatrains. Omar Khayyam died on December 4th in 1131.

 Omar's final place of burial was provided by his pupil Nizami Aruzi. The Mausoleum of Omar Khayyam is a worthy monument of white marble erected over Omar Khayyam's grave located in Omar Khayyam Square in Nishabur.

Khayyam Poetry

Firstly, Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani identified Omar Khayyam as a poet and as a scientist. Edward Fitzgerald translated Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in 1859, and it was widely known in English poetry and it was a great success in the fin de siècle orientalism and they were a complete poem alone. The translation reveals that Omar Khayyam had a deep thought, and he was troubled by the questions of the nature of reality and the eternal, and he was thinking about the impermanence and uncertainty of life as Carpe diem, and human’s relationship toward God.

This poetry became widely known to the English readers in a translation by (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859) from Farsi to English, which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siècle. The Rubáiyát includes hundreds of quatrains, and they illuminate political and religious contexts. A Rubáia is four-line poetry stanzas, which usually rhymes as a pattern of aaaa or aaba. The collection of Rubaiyat was circulated after his death by his name which was consists of 4 lines with a separated rhythm in each line... Rubaiyat were popular since the 9th century in Persia and they were translated to many languages as Persian poetry by all classes of people. Edward FitzGerald translated the Rubaiyat with some distortions to make it confirmed by Victorian romanticism. The changes Edward FitzGerald made to Rubaiyat caused some people to believe that he was a Sufi mystic and they believed that the form of his poetry was humorous and with the theme of the joy of wine and homosexual love and wit. The Rubaiyat was well known and admired in east and Europe and they were one of the best philosophical poems which displays freely thoughts and humanism and justice.

Omar Khayyam and Carpe Diem

The greatest Carpe diem belongs to Khayyam which means seize the day and live in the moment. Its major theme told us that there was no way to know what the future is and what will happen to you so it is better to live as great as possible to enjoy your life.

Khayyam Philosophy

Khayyam's efforts in philosophical fields diverge from the axis of troubles, mysteries, and obscurities, and he tries to express bitter truths in plain and understandable language and to present logical and acceptable solutions to solve problems.

Khayyam, in the form of the Rubaiyat, deals with all the important and dark philosophical issues that have wandered human beings in different times, and the thoughts that were imposed on him and the mysteries left behind by him.

These important and dark philosophical points that Sadegh Hedayat refers to are worries, difficulties, anxieties, mysteries, desires, and hopes that millions of human beings have suffered in the ages (even the present), reflecting the pain of the seemingly deceitful misery that remains.

Hedayat has tried to find, through the Rab'ayyat (in harmony with his own thoughts) with a philosophical relic and finds out how to find it, as he says: "In order to find and understand the mindset and philosophy of the speaker of the Rubaiyat, we should be able to bring forth thoughts and philosophy as it is used for its dignity, for there is none other than this other means".

However, these follow-ups and searches indicate that Omar Khayyam has a particular philosophical thought and taste, and he is studying and concluding about intelligence and intelligence about the universe and the world, and he can ridicule religious issues altogether... Or, in other words, he does not pose hypocrisy on religious matters, and he does not give mercy to the ignorant people of the world, because, according to Sadegh Hedayat: A philosopher, such as Omar Khayyam, who was free and subtle thinking, could not blindly follow the false, irrational, and false precepts of his time, believing in the deceitful myths and their livelihoods.

Thus he has opened what he sees and corresponds to his subjective logic, and he has not even had this recklessness, but in some cases it is clear that the curtain is turned into Secrecy and impartiality, and in the writings, he has adopted the method of natural scholars, as it is written in (Nowrouz Letter): "And the god of the excellency created the sun from the light and raised the heavens and the earth".

But this method is not permanent, the mysterious philosopher of the time of Malek Shah, during a violent logical song, puts his clear and clear thoughts out of his curtain of camouflage and hijab, and with a praiseworthy ability to choose the right words, It rules its environment and fights with obvious superstitions and falsehoods, and thus the way of fighting against false beliefs is seen throughout the Rubaiyat.

Khayyam Astronomy

Khayyam had many publications and astronomical ideas. In 1073, Sultan Jalal al-Din Maltekshah Seljukhi invited Khayyam to establish and operate an observatory, so he went to Isfahan and lived there for 18 years. During this period, Khayyam and his colleagues managed to measure the length of the solar year by 365.24219858156 days, which only has an error clock for every 5,500 years, while the Gregorian calendar that was set in Europe four centuries later has one day of error every 3,330 years.

Also, Omar Khayyam and his colleagues carried out numerous corrections on the Persian calendar based on the Indian calendar. Finally, on March 15, 1079, Sultan Malkshahh accepted this calendar as the official Iranian calendar.

You can visit Tomb of Khayyam and learn about his attitude and world on Iran Silk Road Tour along visiting great Caravanserais and Mashahd, the holy city in Khorasan.