Omar Khayyam

Writing in the eleventh century, Khayyam was one of the most accomplished masters of the new and increasingly popular ruba'i, or two-line stanza, that had been adopted by poets to help them shake off the artifice of conventional court poetry and express their personal feelings with wit and clarity. Khayyam ranges in his stanzas through the most fundamental aspects of...

The best-loved, bestselling poem ever published - a poem that embraces the theme 'seize the moment' 'One thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies' The epic, beautiful poem Rubaiyat is widely attributed to Omar Khayyam. As much a philosopher as a poet, he was a Persian astronomer, who praised the beauties of...

A repository of subversive, melancholic and existentialist themes and ideas, the rubaiyat (quatrains) that make up the collected poems attributed to the 12th century Persian astronomer Omar Khayyam have enchanted readers for centuries. In this modern translation, complete with a critical introduction and epilogue, Juan Cole elegantly renders the verse for contemporary readers. Exploring such universal questions as the meaning...