Excerpt from Umar Khayyam and His Age The writer is indebted to many books for his facts and the conclusions he has based on the facts. All of them cannot be mentioned here. But he must mention with particular gratitude - ih addi tion to Professor Browne's standard work on Persian literature - the Recherches sur les Rubai yat written by A. Christensen and published in 1905 Ignacz Goldziher's excellent study of The Influence of Parsiism on Islam published in English in 1912; Sir Edward Denison Ross's introduction to the edition of 1900; and Von Kramer's fine history of the Islamic spirit. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Khayyam has been the subject of speculation on the part of literary critics ever since Edward Fitzgerald published his own version of the Rubaiyat in 1859. This edition represented the first opportunity to study in English the work of Khayyam by a Persian scholar. There is no conclusive evidence to prove which of the many quatrains attributed to Khayyam are authentic. Ali Dashti therefore constructs a likeness of the poet from references found in the works of writers of his day or immediately after, and from Khayyam’s own works on philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, of which the authenticity is not questioned. Khayyam emerges as a widely read and broad-minded scholar, immersed in his own studies, cautious and moderate, averse to committing himself on controversial questions. Using this portrait Dashti draws up a list of some hundred quatrains which are in keeping with Khayyam’s character. Selling point: An elegant and accurate translation which throws light on the nature of Khayyam’s religious and philosophical beliefs.