Astronomical Inspiration in the Rubiyat of Umar Khayyam

Imad A. Ahmad

Minaret of Freedom Institute

The great astronomer-poet of Persia, Umar Khayyam is known to the West primarily through the English translation by Edward Fitzgerald. Differences of culture are reflected between the Modern Englishman Fitzgerald's interpretation and the understanding of Umar's medieval Muslim contemporaries.

Certainly the astronomy of the 14th and 19th centuries was very different. We shall look at the verses with astronomical references in a literal translation of Umar's verse and compare them both to Fitzgerald's translation and to the wonderful illustrations of Fitzgerald's first American edition by the American painter Elihu Vedder. The differences and similarities in the significance of the astronomical inspirations for two (three?) civilizations (medieval Islam and the modern, English and American, West) are extremely interesting.