Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam

(One great Sufi poet, Omar Khayyam, has written in his RUBAIYAT, his world-famous collection of poetry: "I am going to drink, to dance, to love. I am going to commit every kind of sin because I trust God is compassionate -- he will forgive. My sins are very small; his forgiveness is immense."

When the priests came to know about his book -- because in those days books were written by hand, there were no printing presses.... When the priests discovered that he was writing such sacrilegious things, that he was saying, "Don't be worried, go on doing anything you want because God is nothing but pure compassion and love. How much sin can you commit in seventy years of life? -- in comparison to his forgiveness, it is nothing."- OSHO)

Omar Khayyam was one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He was acknowledged as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times. This is reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, has not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings.

Early life and Career:

Omar Khayyam was born on the 18th of May, 1048 AD in Iran. Omar Khayyam’s full name was Ghiyath al-Din Abu’l-Fath Umar Ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami. He was born into a family of tent makers. He spent part of his childhood in the town of Balkh, northern Afghanistan, studying under Sheik Muhammad Mansuri. Later on, he studied under Imam Mowaffaq Nishapuri, who was considered one of the greatest teachers of the Khorassan region. Khayyam had notable works in geometry, particularly on the theory of proportions.

( Those not interested in in maths may over look the paragraphs below. Don’t blame if we did not warn you about what follows …….

 He was a Persian polymath,  mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet. He wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, and music. The treatise of Khayyam can be considered as the first treatment of parallels axiom which is not based on petition principle but on more intuitive postulate. Khayyam refutes the previous attempts by other Greek and Persian mathematicians to prove the proposition. And he refused the use of motion in geometry.

Khayyam was the mathematician who noticed the importance of a general binomial theorem. The argument supporting the claim that Khayyam had a general binomial theorem is based on his ability to extract roots. Khayyam was part of a panel that introduced several reforms to the Persian calendar. On March 15, 1079, Sultan Malik Shah, accepted this corrected calendar as the official Persian calendar.)

(Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning? — Nay
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday.

― Omar Khayyám)

Death:

Omer Khayyam passed away on December the 4th 1131 in Nishapur, Persia now known as Iran.)

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and his quatrains 

(A quatrain is a piece of verse complete in four lines)

 “A book of verses underneath the bough
A flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise now.” 

(The Rubayat is one of the most misunderstood and also one of the most widely read books in the world. It is understood in its translation, it is misunderstood in its spirit.- OSHO)

 “What is my true substance?
What will remain of me after my death?
Our life is as short as a raging fire:
flames the passer-by soon forgets,
ashes the wind blows away.
A man's life.” 

Give me a flagon of red wine,

a book of verses, a loaf of bread,

 and a little idleness.

If with such store I might sit by thy dear side

 in some lonely place, I should deem myself

happier than a king in his kingdom.

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End!

Alike for those who for To-day prepare,
And those that after some To-morrow stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There".

And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That Endeavour and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

(Jocund -   cheerful and light-hearted)

(The RUBAIYAT talks of wine and women and nothing else; it sings of wine and women. The translators -- and there are many -- are all wrong. They are bound to be wrong because Omar Khayyam was a Sufi, a man of tasawuf, a man who knows. When he talks of the woman he is talking about God. That is the way Sufis address God: "Beloved, O my beloved." And they always use the feminine for God, this should be noted. Nobody else in the world, in the whole history of humanity and consciousness, has addressed God as a woman. Only Sufis address God as the beloved. And the 'wine' is that which happens between the lover and the beloved, it has nothing to do with grapes. The alchemy which happens between the lover and the beloved, between the disciple and the master, between the seeker and the sought, between the worshipper and his God... the alchemy. the transmutation -- that is the wine – OSHO)

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain — This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.

We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare;
To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup
And sold my Reputation for a Song.

Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

(Ishq , passionate love for God, is not of the personality. It is of the essence. It comes from your center; from the very ground of your being it arises and possesses you. It is not within your control; on the contrary, you are in its control. Yes, you are drunk and you are mad. – OSHO)

Omar, his name Khayyam (“Tentmaker”) may have been derived from his father’s trade. He received a good education in the sciences and philosophy in his native Neyshābūr before traveling to Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan), where he completed the algebra treatise, Risālah fiʾl-barāhīn ʿalā masāʾil al-jabr waʾl-muqābalah (“Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra”), on which his mathematical reputation principally rests. In this treatise he gave a systematic discussion of the solution of cubic equations by means of intersecting conic sections. Perhaps it was in the context of this work that he discovered how to extend Abu al-Wafā’s results on the extraction of cube and fourth roots to the extraction of nth roots of numbers for arbitrary whole numbers n.

(Mathematicians make perfect sense of the above)

He made such a name for himself that the Seljuq sultan Malik-Shāh invited him to Eṣfahān to undertake the astronomical observations necessary for the reform of the calendar. To accomplish this an observatory was built there, and a new calendar was produced, known as the Jalālī calendar. Based on making 8 of every 33 years leap years, it was more accurate than the present Gregorian calendar, and it was adopted in 1075 by Malik-Shāh. In Eṣfahān he also produced fundamental critiques of Euclid’s theory of parallels as well as his theory of proportion. In connection with the former his ideas eventually made their way to Europe, where they influenced the English mathematician John Wallis (1616–1703); in connection with the latter he argued for the important idea of enlarging the notion of number to include ratios of magnitudes (and hence such irrational numbers as √2 and π).

( Again,  if you are not comfortable with Mathematics, leave it as such….)

His years in Eṣfahān were very productive ones, but after the death of his patron in 1092 the sultan’s widow turned against him, and soon thereafter Omar went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He then returned to Neyshābūr where he taught and served the court as an astrologer. Philosophy, jurisprudence, history, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy are among the subjects mastered by this brilliant man.

Omar’s fame in the West rests upon the collection of robāʿīyāt, or “quatrains,” attributed to him. (A quatrain is a piece of verse complete in four lines) Omar’s poems had attracted comparatively little attention until they inspired FitzGerald to write his celebrated The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, containing such now-famous phrases as “A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou,” “Take the Cash, and let the Credit go,” and “The Flower that once has blown forever dies.” These quatrains have been translated into almost every major language and are largely responsible for coloring European ideas about Persian poetry.

By the help of God and with His precious assistance, I say that Algebra is a scientific art. The objects with which it deals are absolute numbers and measurable quantities which, though themselves unknown, are related to "things" which are known, whereby the determination of the unknown quantities is possible.   -  Omar Khayyam ).

More of his poetry …..

 “Drink wine. This is life eternal.

This is all that youth will give you.

It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends.

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” 

“Dead yesterdays and

unborn tomorrows,

 why fret about it,

 if today be sweet.” 

“So I be written in the Book of Love.

 I do not care about that Book Above.

 Erase my name, or write it as you will.

 So I be written in the Book of Love.” 

   “This world
that was our home
for a brief spell
never brought us anything
but pain and grief;
its a shame that not one of our problems
was ever solved.
We depart
with a thousand regrets
in our hearts.” 

 “It’s too bad if a heart lacks fire,
and is deprived of the light 
of a heart ablaze.
The day on which you are
without passionate love
is the most wasted day of your life.” 

 “There was a water-drop, it joined the sea,
A speck of dust, it was fused with earth;
what of your entering and leaving this world?
A fly appeared, and disappeared.” 

(Well. Not much of a joy if you do not listened to it….

Don’t guess too fast !!

Every first of the month the Mullah would cross the border with thirty donkeys with two bails of straw on each. Each time the custom person would ask the Mullah's profession and the Mullah would reply, "I am an honest smuggler."

So each time The Mullah, his donkeys and the bails of straw would be searched from top to toe. Each time the custom folk would not find anything. Next week the Mullah would return without his donkeys or bails of straw.

 Years went by and the Mullah prospered in his smuggling profession to the extent that he retired. Many years later the custom person too had retired. As it happened one day the two former adversaries met in a country far from home. The two hugged each other like old buddies and started talking. After a while the custom person asked the question which had been bugging him over the years, "Mullah, please let me know what were you smuggling all those years ago?" The mullah thought for a few seconds and finally revealed his open secret, "Donkeys.")

 “How sad, a heart that
does not know how to love, that
does not know what it is to be drunk with love.
If you are not in love, how can you enjoy
the blinding light of the sun,
the soft light of the moon?” 

“The rose that once has bloomed forever dies.”  

 “Realise this: one day your soul
will depart from your body and you will
be drawn behind the curtain that floats between us
and the unknown. While you wait for that moment,

be happy,
because you don't know where you came from and
you don't know where you will be going.” 

“To all of us the thought of heaven is dear ---
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
No doubt there is a heaven yonder too, 
But 'tis so far away --- and you are near.” 

 “Beyond the earth,
beyond the farthest skies
I try to find Heaven and Hell.
Then I hear a solemn voice that says:
"Heaven and hell are inside.” 

(A drunkard sat next to old Mullah Nasruddin on a bus. Thinking that Nasruddin was a preacher from his appearance, he started a conversation, “I’m not going to heaven. There is no heaven.”
The Mullah maintained silence.

“I say there is no heaven,” shouted the drunkard. The Mullah still didn’t answer.

“I said I’m not going to heaven,” shouted the drunkard.

Mullah Nasruddin quietly turned to the drunkard and said, “Well, go to hell then, but be quiet about it.”)

“There was a Door to which I found no Key
There was a Veil past which I could not see
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
There seemed--and then no more of THEE and ME.” 

 “I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.” 

 “I have not asked for life.
But I try to accept whatever
life brings without surprise.
And I shall depart again without having
questioned anyone about my strange
stay here on earth.” 

“Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way:
Heed not to-morrow, heed not yesterday;
The magic words of life are here and now -
O fools, that after some to-morrow stray!” 

 “Heaven has not learned of my arrival,

 and my departure will not in the least

 diminish it beauty and grandeur.

 I will sleep underground,

for us ephemeral mortals,

the only eternity is the moment

and drinking to the moment

is better than weeping for it.” 

( Now drink a little of Khayyam’s wine  …..

One night, Mulla Nasrudin was on his way home when a drunken man bumped into him violently. Nasrudin reproached him saying: "Idiot! Are you too blind to see a person as big as me?" The drunken man, staggering on, answered, "As a matter of fact, I see two of you... not just one." "Then, why did you bump into me?" "Well, I was trying to walk between you." )

The political events of the 11th Century played a major role in the course of Khayyam's life. The Seljuq Turks were tribes that invaded southwestern Asia in the 11th Century and eventually founded an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and most of Iran. The Seljuq occupied the grazing grounds of Khorasan and then, between 1038 and 1040, they conquered all of north-eastern Iran. The Seljuq ruler Toghrïl Beg proclaimed himself sultan at Nishapur in 1038 and entered Baghdad in 1055. It was in this difficult unstable military empire, which also had religious problems as it attempted to establish an orthodox Muslim state, that Khayyam grew up.

Khayyam studied philosophy at Naishapur and one of his fellow students wrote that he was:-

... endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers ...

However, this was not an empire in which those of learning, even those as learned as Khayyam, found life easy unless they had the support of a ruler at one of the many courts. Even such patronage would not provide too much stability since local politics and the fortunes of the local military regime decided who at any one time held power. Khayyam himself described the difficulties for men of learning during this period in the introduction to his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra 

Khayyam was an outstanding mathematician and astronomer and, despite the difficulties which he described in this quote, he did write several works including Problems of Arithmetic, a book on music and one on algebra before he was 25 years old. In 1070 he moved to Samarkand in Uzbekistan which is one of the oldest cities of Central Asia. There Khayyam was supported by Abu Tahir, a prominent jurist of Samarkand, and this allowed him to write his most famous algebra work, Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra from which we gave the quote above. We shall describe the mathematical contents of this work later in this biography.

Toghril Beg, the founder of the Seljuq dynasty, had made Esfahan the capital of his domains and his grandson Malik-Shah was the ruler of that city from 1073. An invitation was sent to Khayyam from Malik-Shah and from his vizier Nizam al-Mulk asking Khayyam to go to Esfahan to set up an Observatory there. Other leading astronomers were also brought to the Observatory in Esfahan and for 18 years Khayyam led the scientists and produced work of outstanding quality. It was a period of peace during which the political situation allowed Khayyam the opportunity to devote himself entirely to his scholarly work.

When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one of the eight learned men employed to do it, the result was the Jalali era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names) - 'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.'

Khayyam measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days. Two comments on this result. Firstly it shows an incredible confidence to attempt to give the result to this degree of accuracy. We know now that the length of the year is changing in the sixth decimal place over a person's lifetime. Secondly it is outstandingly accurate. For comparison the length of the year at the end of the 19th century was 365.242196 days, while today it is 365.242190 days.

Omar Khayyám continues …..

 “Shall I still sigh for what I have not got, 
Or try with cheerfulness to bear my lot? 
Fill up my cup! I know not if the breath 
I now am drawing is my last, or not!” 

 “We shall perish
along the path of Love.
Fate will trample us.

Yeah, tempting young woman,

get up and give me your lips
before I return to dust.” 

“When your soul and mine
have left our bodies and we are
burried alongside each other,
a Potter may one day mould
the dust of both of us
into the same clay.” 

Dead yesterdays and unborn tomorrows,

 why fret about it, if today be sweet?