Summary

Fitzgerald introduces his translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam by briefly contextualizing the life of the author, who lived in the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE in the Seljuk Empire, a multilingual and multiethnic polity constituted by Oghuz Turks who occupied most of historical Persia, and large swathes of Central Asia, Asia Minor, the Arabian peninsula the Levant.

Omar Khayyam is described as “The Astronomer-Poet of Persia.” His life trajectory is tied, perhaps apocryphally, to two very important figures in history: Nizam ul-Mulk and Hasan Ben Sabbah. Fitzgerald quote a “Testament” written by the statesman Nizam ul-Mulk found in the Calcutta Review No. 59 in which Nizam ul-Mulk recounts studying with the renowned Islamic teacher Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur. According to the “Testament,” the two other pupils of Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur who were Nizam ul-Mulk’s age were Omar Khayyam and...