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Columbia Encyclopedia entry: Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyamō'mär kīäm', fl. 11th cent., Persian poet and mathematician, b. Nishapur. He was called Khayyam [tentmaker] probably because of his father's occupation. The details of his life are mostly conjectural, but he was well educated and became celebrated as the outstanding mathematician of his time. As astronomer to Sultan Malik Shah, he was one of a group that undertook to reform the calendar. Their work led to the adoption of a new era, the so-called Jalalian or Seljuk era, beginning Mar. 15, 1079. 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 Rubaiyat, epigrammatic verse quatrains. The work was little known in Europe until the freely paraphrased English translation of them was first published by Edward FitzGerald in 1859. This influenced all subsequent evaluations of his poetry, even among native speakers of Persian, where FitzGerald's translation led to a new appreciation of his output. FitzGerald omitted many of the quatrains (which were independent and unconnected) and rearranged them into a unity expressing his conception of Omar's philosophy; it is, however, impossible to establish definitely that many of the nearly 500 quatrains attributed to Omar are really his work. The hedonism of his verse often masks his serious reflections on metaphysical issues. The verses have been offered in literally hundreds of editions.

See study by A. Dashti (tr. 1972).

Wikipedia search results for: Omar Khayyám
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Omar Khayyám (redirected from Omar Khayyam),, was a Persian polymath, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, and music. He has also become established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. Recognized as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times as reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He also contributed to the calendar reform and may have proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus. His significance...more »
Columbia Encyclopedia search results: Omar Khayyam
Results 1 - 8  of 8
  • Dulac, Edmund

    Dulac, Edmund, 1882–1953, French illustrator of English books. He is known for his imaginative, colorful illustrations of the Arabian Nights (1907), Shakespeare's Tempest (1908), and The Rubai...

  • Abu Said ibn Abi al-Khair

    Abu Said ibn Abi al-Khair, 967–1049, Persian poet, a Sufi and a dervish. He was the first to write rubaiyat (quatrains) in the Sufistic strain that Omar Khayyam made famous.

  • FitzGerald, Edward

    FitzGerald, Edward, 1809–83, English man of letters. A dilettante and scholar, FitzGerald spent most of his life living in seclusion in Suffolk. His masterpiece, a translation of The Rubaiyat ...

  • Neyshabur

    Neyshabur, city (1991 pop. 135,681), Razavi Khorasan prov., NE Iran; also called Nishapur. It is the trade center for a farm region where cotton, fruit, and grain are grown. Manufactures inclu...

  • South African literature

    South African literature, literary works written in South Africa or written by South Africans living in other countries. Populated by diverse ethnic and language groups, South Africa has a dis...

  • Turks

    Turks, term applied in its wider meaning to the Turkic-speaking peoples of Turkey, Russia, Central Asia, Xinjiang in China (Chinese Turkistan), Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, Iran, and Afghanist...

  • Persian literature

    Persian literature, literary writings in the Persian language, nearly all of it written in the area traditionally known as Persia, now Iran. Pre-Islamic Persian literature consists of religiou...

  • mathematics

    Mathematics, deductive study of numbers, geometry, and various abstract constructs, or structures; the latter often abstract the features common to several models derived from the empirical, o...

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