~ Omar Khayyam ~
~ 12th. Century Persian Poet ~
Ah, fill the cup: ~ what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our feet:
Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
Omar was one of the most remarkable, as well as one of the most distinguished, of the poets of Persia, at the latter end of the twelth century.
He was altogether unprecedented in regard to the freedom of his religious opinions ~ or, rather, his boldness in denouncing hypocrisy and intolerance, and the enlightened views he took of the fanaticism and mistaken devotions of his countrymen.
He may be called the Voltaire of Persia, though his writings were not calculated to shock European notions so much as those of the followers of the Prophet.
The priests were his great enemies, and he was peculiarly hated by the false devotees, whose arts he exposed.
His indulgence to other creeds gave great offence, and his liberty of speech drew down upon him continued censure; yet he was extremely popular, and his compositions were read with avidity by those who were not bigots. The admiration of these consoled him for the enmity of the others.
With me along with some strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown.
Where name of slave and sultan scarce is known,
And pity Sultan Mahmud on his throne.
He was born in Nishapoor, and devoted much of his time to astronomy, of which science he was a learned professor; but it is asserted by his ill-wishers, that instead of his studies leading him to the acknowledgment of the power of the Supreme Being, they prompted him to disbelief.
The result of his reflections on this important subject is given in his poem, much celebrated, under the title of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
He was a friend of Hassan Sabah, the founder of the sect of the Assassins; and it has been conjectured, assisted him in the establishment of his diabolical doctrines and fellowship.
Some allowance must, however, be made for the prejudices of his historians, who would, of course, neglect nothing calculated to cast odium on one so inimical to their superstitions.
Omar Khayyam seems particularly to direct his satire against the mysticism of Moasi and the rest of the Mystic Poets.
The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
Verse LI
A more historically accurate emerges from the research of modern-day scholars of both East and West, who have established that far from ridiculing the Sufis, Omar probably counted himself among their number. In 1941, Swami Govinda Tirtha published one of the most detailed studies of Omar Khayyam's life and writings ever made, based on a comprehensive survey of most (if not all) of the existing material on Khayyam-including biographical data from the time of Omar himself. From that and other works of scholarship are summarized the following historical facts.
Omar's full name was Ghiyath ud DinAbu'l Fatah Omar bin Ibrahim al Khayyam. (Khayyam means tentmaker, referring it seems to the trade of his father Ibahim. Omar took this name as his takhallus, or pen name.) He was born at Naishapur in the province of Khorasan (located in the northeastern part of present-day Iran) on May 18, 1048.His keen intelligence and strong memory, we are told, enabled him to become adept in the academic subjects of his day by the age of seventeen. Owing to the early death of his father, Omar began searching for a means of supporting himself, and thus embarked on an illustrious public career when he was only eighteen.
A tract he wrote on algebra won him the patronage of a rich and influential doctor in samarkand. Later he obtained a position at the court of Sultan Malik Shah, which included serving as the ruler's personal physician. By his mid-twenties, Khayyam had become the head of an astronomical observatory and had authored additional treatises on mathematics and physics. He played a leading role in the reformation of the Persian calendar-devising a new calendar that was even more accurate than the Gregorian, which came into use in Europe five hundred years later.
Summing up Khayyam's professional achievements, Swami Govinda Tirtha tells us that Omar "was reckoned in his time second to Avicenna in sciences. But he combined in himself other qualificationnns"-having become proficient in studies of the Koran, in history and languages, astrology, mechanics, and clay modeling. His interest in the latter pursuit is reflected in the several quatrains where he uses clay pottery and pottery-making to refer metaphorically to spiritual truths.
After the death of Sultan Malik Shah, Omar lost his place at court and subsequently made a pilgrimage to Mecca. He then returned to Naishapur, where he apparently lived as a recluse. About the remaining decades of his life, only scanty information has survived; in particular, "over the [last] sixteen years of his there is drawn an impenetrable veil."