Omar Khayyám

Life and writing

Encyclopaedia Iranica describes uncertainty in Omar Khayyam’s biography, including disputed birth and death dates. Its account distinguishes evidence from later anecdotes rather than treating every reported episode as established. This profile therefore leaves lifetime years unspecified, matching the archive’s existing unknown dates. That choice does not deny historical evidence; it avoids turning a contested chronology into a precise coordinate. The archive’s English anthology passages remain separate from the question of when any Persian poem was composed.

Iranica’s poetry study describes the changing body of quatrains attributed to Khayyam and the difficulty of deciding authorship. The linked English text supplies FitzGerald’s first and fifth versions, allowing comparison without claiming to resolve that difficulty. The rose passage uses its Lap in first XVIII and her Lap in fifth XIX. The Moving Finger uses thy in first LI and your in fifth LXXI. Both selected anthology excerpts match the fifth version under limited punctuation, case and spacing comparison, with an explicit Cæsar/Caesar typographic expansion. These English correspondences do not prove Persian authorship.

Reading this voice

Read first XVIII beside fifth XIX, then first LI beside fifth LXXI. Notice both the changed pronouns and the different numbering. Four of the six historical anthology excerpts match this fifth version under limited normalization; two have wording or omission differences that are retained. The 33 associated entries also include 27 contributor-supplied records whose broader attribution remains independently unverified. This English rendering and the historical anthology do not establish a Persian original or composition date.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
• The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.