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  • (b) - ‘UMAR KHAYYĀM: ASTRONOMER, MATHEMATICIAN AND POET

  • Edited by R. N. Frye
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Iran
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1975, pp 658-664

  • Summary

    Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abu'1-Fath 'Umar b. Ibrāhīm al-Khayyāmī in Persian texts is usually called simply 'Umar-i Khayyām, that is, 'Umar the tentmaker, and it is reasonable to assume that his father or grandfather followed that trade. In fact, his surviving scientific works, if one excludes the spurious Naurūnāma treatise on the Persian New Year's Day, occupy only 130 pages in Rozenfel'd's translation. For an assessment of these works the reader is referred to his and Yushkevich's introductory essays and commentary and to Professor E. S. Kennedy's chapter in Volume 5 of the Cambridge History of Iran. It is the rubā'īyāt or quatrains which, mirrored in FitzGerald's masterpiece, have won for 'Umar the poet a fame far greater than was vouchsafed to 'Umar the scientist. Not until the middle of the 9th/15th century, three hundred years after his death, do the first attempts appear to have been made to collect together the whole corpus of his poems.