Omar Khayyam awakening

    Caption: An imaginative portrait of Omar Khayyam (1048--1123).

      Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
      Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
            And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
      The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

        ---Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1st edition, Verse 1 by Omar Khayyam (1048--1123) and Edward FitzGerald (1809--1883).

    Omar Khayyam was a considerable mathematician and astronomer. He is famous for his work on cubic equations (see Wikipedia: Omar Khayyam: The solution of cubic equations) and his attempted calendrical reform (see Wikipedia: Omar Khayyam: Astronomy)---and as a poet of Persian poetry.

    But actually all poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam was collected and added to in later centuries. His contemporaries left NO record of him as poet. See, e.g., Encyclopedia Britannica: Omar Khayyam.

    So it is NOT clear if Omar Khayyam wrote any of the poetry attributed to him or was a poet at all, except in legend. His poems may be all pseudepigrapha.

    Credit/Permission: © David Jeffery, 2003 / Own work.
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