The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The quatrains of the Persian poet, astronomer and mathematician Omar Khayyam, of Nishapur, in Edward FitzGerald's famous English version of 1859. Each four-line rubai holds a single thought, and together they muse on the shortness of life, the riddle of fate and the wisdom of enjoying the moment: 'A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, / A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou', or 'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Moves on'. FitzGerald rearranged and freely reworked the originals into one connected poem that moves from dawn to nightfall.

FitzGerald's anonymous little booklet sold so poorly that it was soon offered for a penny, until the poets Rossetti and Swinburne discovered it; it then became one of the best-loved poems in English. In Arabic, Ahmed Rami's translation, parts of which Umm Kulthum sang, is the best known. Khayyam was also a major scientist who helped reform the Persian calendar. For more Persian poetry, read the Poems from the Divan of Hafiz.

Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) of Nishapur was famous in his own time as a mathematician and astronomer: he wrote a major treatise on algebra that solved cubic equations geometrically, and helped reform the Persian calendar into one of the most accurate ever made. The short four-line poems attributed to him were written, it seems, for himself and his friends.

Many of the quatrains credited to him may be by other poets, but their mix of doubt, wine and wonder at the shortness of life won the world through Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of 1859. In Arabic they are best known in Ahmed Rami's version, parts of which Umm Kulthum sang.