The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is an 1859 translation from Persian to English by Edward FitzGerald of a selection of quatrains () attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia".
Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald's work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous "Omar Khayyam clubs" were formed and there was a " cult of the Rubaiyat".
FitzGerald's work has been published in several hundred editions and has inspired similar translation efforts in English, Hindi and many other languages.
Sources
FitzGerald's first source was the Bodleian MS, a transcript of which was given to him in 1856 by his friend Edward B. Cowell, with 158 quatrains.MS. Ouseley 140, copied in 1460 in Shiraz, Persia, 47 folia. This is the oldest securely dated manuscript of Omar Khayyam's poetry. It belonged to William Ouseley (1767–1842) and was purchased by the Bodleian Library in 1844. His second source was a transcript of an MS Cowell found in 1857 in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta.Juan Cole, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian (London: IB Tauris, 2020), preface.
FitzGerald completed his first draft in 1857 and sent it to Fraser's Magazine in January 1858. He made a revised draft in January 1859, of which he privately printed 250 copies. This first edition became extremely sought after by the 1890s, when "more than two million copies ha[d] been sold in two hundred editions".Preface to a facsimile of the first edition (no year [c. 1900], "from the fine copy owned by Charles Dana Burrage" [1857–1926]).
A. J. Arberry in his Romance of the Rubaiyat (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), gave the Persian sources for each of the 75 quatrains FitzGerald translated in his first edition. He showed that some 40 were loose translations of a single stanza in either the Bodleian or Calcutta manuscripts, while others were "mashed together" from two quatrains.
Juan Cole is expanding on Arberry's findings in a series of blog entries that also explain the Persian concepts and personalities found in the poetry: "FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Commentary by Juan Cole with Original Persian"
The authenticity of the poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam is highly uncertain. Khayyam was famous during his lifetime not as a poet but as an astronomer and mathematician. The earliest reference to his having written poetry is found in his biography by al-Isfahani, written 43 years after his death. This view is reinforced by other medieval historians such as Shahrazuri (1201) and Al-Qifti (1255). Parts of the Rubaiyat appear as incidental quotations from Omar in early works of biography and in anthologies. These include works of Razi (ca. 1160–1210), Daya (1230), Juvayni (ca. 1226–1283), and Jajarmi (1340).Edward Denison Ross, "Omar Khayyam", Bulletin of the School Of Oriental Studies, London Institution (1927) Also, five quatrains assigned to Khayyam in somewhat later sources appear in Zahiri Samarqandi's Sindbad-Nameh (before 1160) without attribution.Ali Dashti (translated by L. P. Elwell-Sutton), In Search of Omar Khayyam, Routledge Library Editions: Iran (2012)
The number of quatrains attributed to him in more recent collections varies from about 1,200 (according to Saeed Nafisi) to more than 2,000. Sceptical scholars point out that the entire tradition may be pseudepigraphic. The extant manuscripts containing collections attributed to Omar are dated much too late to enable a reconstruction of a body of authentic verses.
In the 1930s, Iranian scholars, notably Mohammad-Ali Foroughi, attempted to reconstruct a core of authentic verses from scattered quotes by authors of the 13th and 14th centuries, ignoring the younger manuscript tradition. After World War II, reconstruction efforts were significantly delayed by two clever forgeries. De Blois (2004) is pessimistic, suggesting that contemporary scholarship has not advanced beyond the situation of the 1930s, when Hans Heinrich Schaeder commented that the name of Omar Khayyam "is to be struck out from the history of Persian literature".Francois De Blois, Persian Literature – A Bio-Bibliographical Survey: Poetry of the Pre-Mongol Period (2004), p. 307.
A feature of the more recent collections is the lack of linguistic homogeneity and continuity of ideas. Sadegh Hedayat commented that "if a man had lived for a hundred years and had changed his religion, philosophy, and beliefs twice a day, he could scarcely have given expression to such a range of ideas". Hedayat's final verdict was that 14 quatrains could be attributed to Khayyam with certainty. Various tests have been employed to reduce the quatrains attributable to Omar to about 100. Arthur Christensen states that "of more than 1,200 ruba'is known to be ascribed to Omar, only 121 could be regarded as reasonably authentic". Foroughi accepts 178 quatrains as authentic, while Ali Dashti accepts 36 of them.
Scepticism vs. Sufism debate The extreme popularity of FitzGerald's work led to a prolonged debate on the correct interpretation of the philosophy behind the poems. FitzGerald emphasized the religious scepticism he found in Omar Khayyam. In his preface to the Rubáiyát, he describes Omar's philosophy as Epicurean and claims that Omar was "hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed and whose faith amounts to little more than his own when stripped of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide".FitzGerald, E. (2010). Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (p. 12). Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg Richard Nelson Frye also emphasizes that Khayyam was despised by a number of prominent contemporary Sufis. These include figures such as Shams Tabrizi, Najm al-Din Daya, Al-Ghazali, and Attar, who "viewed Khayyam not as a fellow-mystic, but a free-thinking scientist".The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 4. Cambridge University Press (1975): Richard Nelson Frye The sceptical interpretation is supported by the medieval historian Al-Qifti (), who in The History of Learned Men reports that Omar's poems were only outwardly in the Sufi style but were written with an anti-religious agenda. He also mentions that Khayyam was indicted for impiety and went on a pilgrimage to avoid punishment."Sufis understood his poems outwardly and considered them to be part of their mystical tradition. In their sessions and gatherings, Khayyam's poems became the subject of conversation and discussion. His poems, however, are inwardly like snakes who bite the sharia [Islamic law] and are chains and handcuffs placed on religion. Once the people of his time had a taste of his faith, his secrets were revealed. Khayyam was frightened for his life, withdrew from writing, speaking and such like and travelled to Mecca. Once he arrived in Baghdad, members of a Sufi tradition and believers in primary sciences came to him and courted him. He did not accept them and after performing the pilgrimage returned to his native land, kept his secrets to himself and propagated worshipping and following the people of faith." cited after Aminrazavi (2007)
Critics of FitzGerald, on the other hand, have accused the translator of misrepresenting the mysticism of Sufi poetry by an overly literal interpretation. Thus, the view of Omar Khayyam as a Sufi was defended by Bjerregaard (1915)."The writings of Omar Khayyam are good specimens of Sufism, but are not valued in the West as they ought to be, and the mass of English-speaking people know him only through the poems of Edward Fitzgerald. It is unfortunate because Fitzgerald is not faithful to his master and model, and at times he lays words upon the tongue of the Sufi which are blasphemous. Such outrageous language is that of the eighty-first quatrain for instance. Fitzgerald is doubly guilty because he was more of a Sufi than he was willing to admit." C. H. A. Bjerregaard, Sufism: Omar Khayyam and E. Fitzgerald, The Sufi Publishing Society (1915), p. 3 Dougan (1991) likewise says that attributing hedonism to Omar is due to the failings of FitzGerald's translation, arguing that the poetry is to be understood as "deeply esoteric"."Every line of the Rubaiyat has more meaning than almost anything you could read in Sufi literature". Abdullah Dougan, Who is the Potter?, Gnostic Press 1991 Idries Shah (1999) similarly says that FitzGerald misunderstood Omar's poetry."FitzGerald himself was confused about Omar. Sometimes he thought that he was a Sufi, sometimes not." Idries Shah, The Sufis, Octagon Press (1999), pp. 165–166
The Sufi interpretation is the view of a minority of scholars. Henry Beveridge states that "the Sufis have unaccountably pressed this writer [Khayyam] into their service; they explain away some of his blasphemies by forced interpretations, and others they represent as innocent freedoms and reproaches".Beveridge, H. (1905). XVIII. "Omar Khayyam". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 37(3), 521–526. Aminrazavi (2007) states that "Sufi interpretation of Khayyam is possible only by reading into his Rubaiyat extensively and by stretching the content to fit the classical Sufi doctrine".
Modern scholars still defend FitzGerald's "scepticist" reading of the poetry. Sadegh Hedayat (The Blind Owl, 1936) was the most notable modern proponent of Khayyam's philosophy as agnostic scepticism. In his introductory essay to his second edition of the Quatrains of the Philosopher Omar Khayyam (1922), Hedayat states that "while Khayyam believes in the transmutation and transformation of the human body, he does not believe in a separate soul; if we are lucky, our bodily particles would be used in the making of a jug of wine".Katouzian, H. (1991). Sadeq Hedayat: The life and literature of an Iranian writer (p. 138). London: I.B. Tauris He concludes that "religion has proved incapable of surmounting his inherent fears; thus Khayyam finds himself alone and insecure in a universe about which his knowledge is nil". In his later work (Khayyam's Quatrains, 1935), Hedayat further maintains that Khayyam's usage of Sufic terminology such as "wine" is literal, and that "Khayyam took refuge in wine to ward off bitterness and to blunt the cutting edge of his thoughts."
Editions
FitzGerald's text was published in five editions, with substantial revisions: 1st edition – 1859 [75 quatrains] 2nd edition – 1868 [110 quatrains] 3rd edition – 1872 [101 quatrains] 1878, "first American edition", reprint of the 3rd ed. 4th edition – 1879 [101 quatrains] 5th edition – 1889 [101 quatrains]
Of the five editions published, four were published under the authorial control of FitzGerald. The fifth edition, which contained only minor changes from the fourth, was edited posthumously on the basis of manuscript revisions FitzGerald had left.
Numerous later editions were published after 1889, notably an edition with illustrations by Willy Pogany first published in 1909 (George G. Harrap, London). It was issued in numerous revised editions. This edition combined FitzGerald's texts of the 1st and 4th editions and was subtitled "The First and Fourth Renderings in English Verse".
A bibliography of editions compiled in 1929 listed more than 300 separate editions.Ambrose George Potter, A Bibliography of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1929). Many more have been published since.Francois De Blois, Persian Literature – A Bio-Bibliographical Survey: Poetry of the Pre-Mongol Period (2004), p. 312.
Notable editions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries include: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (1887, 1888, 1894); Doxey, At the Sign of the Lark (1898, 1900), illustrations by Florence Lundborg; The Macmillan Company (1899);