Omar Khayyam Books

I only picked up the book because of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat and was happily surprised. The only two observations I would add to other reviews here are, first, that the novel was translated from French into English and so may lose some elegance and effect. Perhaps that's the origin of someone's remark, "surprisingly dry"? Second, I enjoyed the way the fictionalized characters were drawn from actual history, Medieval and modern, and how characters in the early history had thought provoking parallels in the modern story. So, I came away moved by the question of how different types of people influence history, or art, or the people around them. And the story opens a door into Persian history, including Islam, for those of us in the West who had little or no idea of it before.

This is a translation of a novel written in French by the Lebanese author Amin Maalouf. This novel is, in fact, two loosely linked stories tied together by the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. For those who are unaware of what this is, the Rubaiyat are a series of quatrains (four line poems) written in the 11th century in Persia. They are poems about life, love, women, and destiny which I would say they are comparable in some sense to the Odes of Horace (for those more familiar with Roman literature). These quatrains were supposedly lost for several centuries, rediscovered in the 19th century, and ultimately became enormously popular both in Persia (Iran) and the West. It is doubtful that Omar Khayyam wrote all of the collection, it is believed that some have been added in subsequent centuries. I found it useful to read some of the quatrains as I was reading this novel.

The first part of this novel is a fictionalized account of Omar Khayyam's life. I am not an expert, and I don't know how much is truly historical and how much is fictionalized, but this is both an informative and entertaining story. Khayyam befriends the head of a strict Muslim sect who founds the Assassins. This is also a tragic love story. This is primarily a political and romantic adventure describing the events surrounding Omar Khayyam as he writes his Rubaiyat.

The second part of the novel takes place in the late 19th and early 20th century as the Rubaiyat is uncoverd after centuries of hiding. A young man becomes obsessed with obtaining an original copy of the Rubaiyat, and ultimately gets swept into the Persian Constitutional Revolution of the early 20th century. As before, the story is primarily political and romantic in nature. It is interesting that the Persians (Iranians) of the early 20th century viewed the United States as the best example of democracy and freedom. I wonder if they feel the same today?

Like much of the writing of Maalouf, the main characters in the two stories don't fully participate/belong in the societies in which they are living. This gives them a unique perspective from which to evaluate the culture and the society around them. This novel is a great balance of compelling tales, tragic loves stories, and fascinating historical fiction, combined with the unique perspective that Mr. Maalouf writes with. This is a beautiful novel that I highly recommend.

This is easily Maaloufs best work. Totally different from all other writers, Maalouf never polarises. He writes with fine balance and invokes a deep respect for every culture and creed he writes of. No one , having read this, will finish it without having a deep understanding and respect for Iran and its people, its brutal history , its identity ,which it has had very little chance in creating due to constant invasions-Turks to Mongols- or tutelege-Britain and Tsarist Russia.
Using the verses of Omar Kayyams Samarkand Manuscript and the turn of the century constitutional and democratic revolts and its failure due to British and Russian interference (what would we give for the democratic Iranian state today-free of religious and political tyranny?!) Maalouf weaves a wonderful tale of -appropriately-Arabian Nights proportions and educates the reader on all the historical upheavals desires and missed opportunities of the region. The book divides into two main parts; 11th century Persia and the life of Kayyam, and the late 19th and early 20th century Persia; a nation trying to establish itself in the world.
A deep lesson lies here, of the importance of democracy freedom and justice to all people, and how fragile it is against vested interests.
This is a truly great novel. A wonderfully unifying novel that lifts the prejudices and fears between the east and west, and misconceptions of Iran and islamic cultures.
A masterpiece in humanitarian understanding.

this novel introduced to me a world i already know from a new perspective,that now i understand in a better way.
this novel to me was about learning something new,researching for the real events,and most of all understanding the east in a way nobody like Maalouf can bring to life.

Other reviewers have highlighted the charm of the book, with its evocation of Khayyam, the Rubiyyat and the fabled cities of the Silk Route. I would like to point out that it holds a frightening parallel to our present times. The book was published in 1988, so Maalouf could have had no idea how closely his book would mirror the early part of the twenty first century.

The book deals partly with the confict between the hidden leader of a violent sect and powerful empire. The second part of the book deals with the citizens of a country (ironically, today's Iran) striving for democracy and freedom from the oppressive rule of theocrats, but opposed by two great world powers of the time (Britain and Russia!) who wish to maintain the status quo for their economic benefit.

The book is written with great charm and makes the reader feel (s)he is there. Like a previous reviewer, I do not know enough to separate fact from fiction, but at the end of the book, one wishes with all one's heart that there IS such a book, written in Omar Khayyam's own hand, and that it is NOT at the bottom of the Atlantic.

An amazing and uplifting book.

This is either one helluva pun or it's some divine knowledge or something... I laughed, cried, and hit myself in the eye. Taking a stand back from the hype: this book isn't a joke. It can lead to some very confronting issues such as: the ambiguity of belief, the need for dogma and many other "shattering" realizations. I don't feel that a proper review can be written for this book--it is too stupid, profound and obscure. Pegging this book down is like kicking a hyena in the face for laughing.

We are all attracted to (or attracted by) the appropriate elements at the appropriate time. If you're considering buying this, then you're in rarified air; you might as well make the leap and...

JOIN US...

You can thank me later

These profound scriptures come close to rivalling James Robinson's edition of the Nag Hammadi Library as the most important contribution to 20th century metaphysics. And not only for those who consider Discordianism as a form - albeit a weird one - of Gnosticism. Certain passages are more inspiring than others, like "The Enlightenment Of Zarathud" and Lord Omar's "Epistle To The Paranoids", although only the orthodox version of the latter appears here. According to the Samaritan Codex and the Octuagint there is an additional verse which reads: "Ye build high buildings, only to cast yeself from the roofs." The same Codex (but not the Octuagint) also contains "The Epistle To The Neurotics" by St. Euthanasius that sadly didn't make it into this edition. These minor gripes aside, I do recommend this work to all those who are searching for the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Eris, goddess of Chaos, is ready, willing and able to help you. For more information about spirituality and chaos, read Peter Carroll's Liber Kaos or Liber Null And Psychonaut. And if you appreciate this type of humour, you will love the work of Robert Anton Wilson.

This book changed my life! I simply would not be who I am if not for this book.

A refreshing look of religion, beliefs and ethics formed from a giant collage of chaos. Malaclypse The Younger avoids running around his ideas and giving hints to the reader. Instead he forces a reader into a head dive sucking him into his world. A true work of poetic terrorism.

To some this might seem as an explanation for just another religion, to others a blasphemy and a selected few as a whole new way of approaching the world. This book is a must have for any chaos magician, a big giant sigil designed to awaken your mind.

CAUTION: After purchasing this book expect Eris to play head games with you and tasting chaos early in the morning.

NOTE: Principia Discordia and Principia Discordia or How I Found Goddess And What I did To Her When I Found Her are the same book except for a special afterword and a collage found at the end in the later book. Of course Eris did not inform me of this and I bought both. Twice the fun.

Assume Nothing

My knowledge of the Rubiyat came from reading it in Poetry Anthologies .The hypnotic rhythms , the combination of life- philosophy and striking poetry seemed to naturally lead to the memorization of many stanzas.
There is the 'seize the day' enjoy life now, ' a jug of wine a loaf of bread and thou/ kind of hedonism. There is also a certain skeptical and realistic attitude which as I understand created problems for Omar Khayyam in a Muslim society.
How I wonder is this treasure of world - literature taken, or perhaps censored in the radical Islamic Iran of today.
In any case Fitzgerald's is one of the great translations of world- literature one of those cases, some experts say, in which the translation surpasses the original.
A poem to be enjoyed .

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keeps falling one by one.

Omar has contributed so many phrases to us that for the most part, people are unaware of their origin.
"Eat drink and be merry."
"The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. nor all thy piety, nor all thy wit, can lure it back to cancel half a line of it." Nothing ever written captures the inexorable one way march of time better than that single sentence by this master. But is it Fitzgerald, or is it Omar? What the hell... who cares?
Just wallow drunkenly in the rapture of his prose. Only Rumi approached this writing. But wait.. was it Barks, or was it Rumi? LOL.
Few books, excepting perhaps the Bible, have so many exquisitely crafted and picaresque sentences in them. A little tid bit from the book, unrelated to his prose:
The word Assassin, was associated with the life and times of Omar and two boy hood friends of his.
If you have not read this book, I envy you. You have before you, a stunning feast of prose by an unknown famous writer. Two of them. Omar and Fitzgerald. Although at one time Fitzgeralds star was burning bright.

"We are no other than a moving row
of magic shadow shapes that come and go,
'round with the sun-illumined lantern held,
at midnight by the master of the show.

But pieces of the game he plays
upon this chequer-board of nights and days,
and hither and thither moves and checks and slays,
and one by one, back in the closet lays."

Khayyam's Rubaiyat is a great work of amateur philosophy, as well as being one of the literary greats of all time. It combines a deeply poetic, resounding tone with ideas and images so vivid and sophisticated that one has to admire the genius of the work. Khayyam's view of the world runs back and forth, from religious to agnostic to atheistic. His central thesis, though, remains the same, that man's time on earth is limited, and he should drink the wine of fulfillment while he can, before it's too late.

"The moving finger writes, and having writ,
not all thy piety nor wit,
can lure it back to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears can wash away a word of it."

i have just recently read this book.it trancends east to west..has a more spiritual value tham most books of this kind ...of couse we all know that Khayyam was a scientist well.. and he shows some of that in his writings... yet these writings come as pleasure ..i would like to extend all of you a invitation to enjoy this book ...it.s a pleasure

Omar Khayyam was a multifaceted man who lived at around the time the second millennium of the Christian era was beginning. He was not only a scientist but also a Sufi mystic, and his Rubaiyat (book of verses in quatrains) has evoked much interest and endless debate. The best known English translation is that of Edward FitzGerald. Here is a sample verse:

"Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough / A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse---and Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness --- /

And Wilderness is Paradise enow."/

Whose imagination can fail to be stirred? But most people see this as a glorification of wine, women and song -- a handbook of hedonism. Could such an earthy and earthly book be in keeping with Khayyam's reputation as a Sufi mystic and a saint? Now towards the end of the millennium, the Indian saint, mystic and spiritual leader Paramahansa Yogananda has commented on the Rubaiyat in his book "Wine of the Mystic." Omar was indeed a mystic. The divine intoxication of the love and joy of God could only be conveyed to the people of his age through metaphors and allegory that described the pleasures they could understand. One must read the Rubaiyat in conjunction with "Wine of the Mystic" to really get to the heart and soul of one of the world's classic books.

Universally Khayyam is known as the book's title describes but there is a clear contradiction between Khayyam's poems and the quality of a Mathematician, scientist, jurisprudent,.... According to the late philosopher Muhammad Taghi Jafari Tabrizi citing from a book from Dr. Taghi Arani ( one of the 52 jailed by Reza Shah) Khayyam was the poet and Khayyami was the Mathematician, scientist,..... Two different individuals with two opposing qualities.

How can you describe 246 pages of the most delightful writing in a paragraph? It is impossible. I can only say a few words that describe this wonderful book. It is an ongoing story, when you think all is good something happens. It is one of those books you soar through without noticing how much you have read. It is a happy and sad story, it is a calm and adventurous story, it has a very interesting plot, and I highly recommend it.

As an often overly dramatic and imaginative adolescent, I would go about chanting (silently to myself, of course) "I sent my soul into the invisable..." and since, have peruised the editions of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat translations with sometimes thrill and sometimes apathy Now comes this new editor's compilation; this is a volume that will enrich all the senses. It is not just the verses of Omar, it is a fusion of all our artistic expressions. It should be read both silently to oneself and aloud, to oneself and the one you love. The pictures must be studied and drempt about. The book is not for brisk reading, but slowly and repeditively, allowing reality to fade and fantasy and memory to emerge. It is the "gourmet" for the soul.One suggestion: Cecile,(once this book is read she can no lomger be Mrs. MacTaggart) writes her editorialc history at the back of the volume, humbly allowing the history of the Rubaiyat to preceed the verses. I think her tales of the "agony and exstasy" that evollved this edition are so marvelously human; laughter, anger and tears, that they embellish the enjoyment of the reading. Perhaps one should read the last first.

The author begins with this tribute by James Russell Lowell:

  These pearls of thought in Persian Gulfs were bred,
  Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
  The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
  Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

To which I feel inspired to add the following:

  These pearls that Omar found and Edward threaded
  Cecile MacTaggart, to a Scotsman wedded,
  Took, some from one string and some from another,
  And in a setting splendidly imbedded.

Ali Dashti's book is a detective story. He uses all the clues in Omar Khayyam's known biography and writings to paint a picture of what kind of person Omar was. Dashti then goes through the myriad of quatrains (rubaiyat) attributed to `The Tentmaker', trying to sift out obviously counterfeit verses. He goes on to find those that reveal beliefs contrary to what we know of Khayyam's own. Dashti looks for personality traits not reflecting what we know of Omar. And Dashti finally establishes a corpus that MAY be the quatrains actually spoken by Khayyam (since there is no record of him ever having written down a single quatrain!). Along the way, Dashti teaches us a lot about 11th century intellectual history under the Seljuk Turks. He explains why Khayyam could never have been an Ismaili, and how close he came to accepting certain aspects of Sufism. We learn that the so-called `Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam' is no such thing, but a poetic creation by 19th century British writer Edward FitzGerald (who was `inspired by' a manuscript in the Bodleian library purportedly containing verses of Khayyam). We also find out that Khayyam should have been famous primarily as a mathematician and astronomer; he was greatly revered in his era (and into modern times!) for his work in those fields. We discover that Khayyam developed a calendar more accurate than the modern Gregorian calendar, and did pioneering work in cubic and other algebraic equations. -Dashti's tome is a true exploration of times past. (It's a pity this book is out of print!). Dashti, who died in his 80s of injuries inflicted on him in one of Khomeni's jails, wrote with grace and knowledge. Even when one disagrees or questions his chain of thought, it remains fascinating and reasonable. I have re-read parts of this work several times (after going cover to cover twice!), and I do not spend that kind of time on any but the best books! Oh, do not miss the absolutely excellent introduction L.P. Elwell-Sutton, which is a fascinating overview; this is what an introduction truly should be!

All we remember about Omar Khayyam are his Persian
quatrane poetry which Lamb says he wrote as idle whim.
The books of Omar Khayyam were burned for saying that
the Earth wasn't the center of the universe.
He had already calculated a new more modern calendar.
I think that this failure of Islam in it's confrontation
with science and the progress of knowledge
shows a cultural pattern that hasn't been broken
since. That an astronomer and scientist who was respected by his King
was also a poet shows that he was a very great man.

I should start off by saying that I am not familiar with Omar Khayyam or his work. I should also state that Richard La Gallienne's translation is likely completely unlike the literal translation. His effort was only to produce a witty and stylish version reminiscent of Khayyam's original intent. From what I have read, it is excellent on its own. I do not generally go in for poetry, but found that I couldn't stop reading this work. Here are some especially interesting excerpts:

Look not above, there is no answer there;
Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer;
Near is as near to God as any Far,
And Here is just the same deceit as There.

[...]

And do you think that unto such as you;
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:
God gave the secret, and denied it me?--
Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.

[...]

"Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think,
And at the same time make it sin to drink?
Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus--
Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!"

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rendered in English verse by Edward Fitzgerald.
The text of the first edition beautifully illustrated by Arthur Szyk.
Copyright 1940.
Hardback comes in slipcase.