Other editions of book The Rubáiyát Of Omar Khayyám

Omar, son of a tentmaker (Khayyam), was born at Nishapur in the latter half of he eleventh century, and died early in the twelfth century. He was a deeply learned man who followed his own convictions. He evolved a concept of life which was basically mystic: he preached the moral purity of the contemplative life; he struggled to master the eternal, the good, the beautiful. And he set down his newly found convictions in a series of quatrain.

Edward J. Fitzgerald's translation and adaptation of a selection of Omar Khayyám's poems, presented as part of The Pocket Classics Series (issued in a cardboard slipcase). Kyahhám, who lived from 1048 to 1131, was a Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. Although he wrote a number of important mathematical studies, Omar's fame as a scientist has been greatly eclipsed in the West by the popularity of his "Rubáiyát," epigrammatic verse quatrains. The "Rubáiyát" is among the few masterpieces that have been translated into most languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and Urdu, but the most famous translation of the "Rubáiyát" has been this one, from Farsi into English, undertaken in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald. [Fourth Edition]