Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, rendered into English verse

by Edward Fitzgerald
Contents:

Introduction.
First Edition.

Fifth Edition.
Notes.

Introduction
Omar Khayyam,

The Astronomer-Poet of Persia.
Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in the latter half of

our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth
Century. The Slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that

of two other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country: one
of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier

to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the
Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the

Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe
into the Crusades. This Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiyat--or

Testament--which he wrote and left as a Memorial for future
Statesmen--relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review,

No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins.
"'One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was the Imam

Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored and reverenced,--may God
rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it

was the universalbelief that every boy who read the Koran or studied
the traditions in his presence, would assuredlyattain to honor and

happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur
with Abd-us-samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in

study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher.
Towards me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and as his

pupil I felt for him extremeaffection and devotion, so that I passed
four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other

pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-
fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the

highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship
together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me,

and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was
a native of Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah's father was one Ali, a

man of austere life and practise, but heretical in his creed and
doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, "It is a universal

belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune.
Now, even if we all do not attainthereto, without doubt one of us

will; what then shall be our mutualpledge and bond?" We answered,
"Be it what you please." "Well," he said, "let us make a vow, that to

whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the
rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself." "Be it so," we both

replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged our words. Years
rolled on, and I went from Khorassan to Transoxiana, and wandered to

Ghazni and Cabul; and when I returned, I was invested with office, and
rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp

Arslan.'
"He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old school-

friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good
fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and

kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the
Sultan granted at the Vizier's request; but discontented with a

gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental
court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he

was disgraced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan
became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians,--a party of

fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil
eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In A.D.

1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which
lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was

from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the
Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through

the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin,
which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark

memorial, is derived from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the
Indian bhang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch

of orientaldesperation, or from the name of the founder of the
dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur.

One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam ul
Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.<1>

<1>Some of Omar's Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, the
instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men,

recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam-ul-
Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii.], "When

Nizam-ul-Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, 'Oh God! I am
passing away in the hand of the wind.'"

"Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to
ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he

said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune,
to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life

and prosperity.' The Vizier tells us, that when he found Omar was
really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted

him a yearlypension of 1200 mithkals of gold from the treasury of
Naishapur.

"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the
Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in

Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the
Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise

for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon
him.'

"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one
of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali

era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names)--'a
computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and

approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He is also the
author of some astronomical tables, entitled 'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and

the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise
of his on Algebra.

"His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and
he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before

Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian
poets similarlyderive their names from their occupations; thus we

have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil presser,' etc.<2> Omar
himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines:--

"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned;

The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!'

<2>Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers,
etc., may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling.

"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
to the close; it is told in the anonymouspreface which is sometimes

prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and D'Herbelot

alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam.<3>--
"'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of

the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira,
517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled,--the very paragon of his

age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates
the following story: "I often used to hold conversations with my

teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me,
'My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses

over it.' I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were
no idle words.<4> Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I

went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden,
and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden

wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was
hidden under them."'"

<3>"Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans sa
Religion, vers la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second

Siecle," no part of which, except the "Philosophe," can apply to our
Khayyam.

<4>The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in