Today marks the national day in commemoration of Omar Khayyam, an outstanding mathematician, astronomer and teacher from Neishabour. In science he was unrivalled, the very paragon of his age. And he was also the author of numerous rhymed quatrains, a verse form called ruba'ie. Omar's four-line epigrams were subsequently brought together in collections called Rubai'yat and recorded in various manuscripts. The following article is by Edward Fitzgerald, who translated the Rubai'yat of Omar Khayyam. Omar Khayyam was born at Neishabour. The slender story of his life is curiously twined about that of two other very considerable figures in their time and country: one of whom tells the story of all three. This was Nizam ul-Mulk, vizier to Alp Arslan the son and Malik Shah the grandson of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the Crusades. Nizam-ul Mulk, in his will or testament -- which he wrote and left as a memorial for future statesmen -- relates the following, quoted in the Calcutta Review, No.59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins. "One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorasan was Imam Mowaffak of Neishabour, a man highly honored and reverenced -- may God rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it was the universal belief that every boy who read the Qoran or studied the traditions in his presence would assuredly attain to honor and happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Neishabour with Abd-us-Samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher. Towards me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and as his pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of my own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Neishabour, while Hasan Ben Sabbah's father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practice, but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, It is a universal belief that the pupils of Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?' We answered, Be it what you please.' Well,' he said, let us make a vow, that to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself.' Be it so,' we both replied, and on those terms were mutually pledged our words. Years rolled on, and I went from Khorasan to Transoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Kabul; and when I returned, I was invested with office, and rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslan." He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old school friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good fortune, according to the school-day vow. The vizier was generous and kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the Sultan granted at the vizier's request; but discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he was disgraced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians. Omar Khayyam also came to the vizier to claim his share, but not to ask for title or office. The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he said, is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of science, and pray for your long life and prosperity.' The vizier tells us, that, when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkals of gold, from the treasury of Neishabour. At Neishabour thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, busied,' adds the vizier, in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon him. When 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.' He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled Ziji-Malikshahi, and the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic treatise of his on Algebra. His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a tentmaker, and he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we have Attar, a druggist,' Assar, an oil presser,' etc. Omar himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines: 'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science, Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned' The shares of Fate have cut the ropes of his life, And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!' We have only one more anecdote to give of his life. It has been printed in the Persian in the appendix to Hyde's Veterum Pesarum Religion, p.499; and D'Herbelot alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam. "It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Neishabour in the year of the Hegira, 517 (1123 C.E.); in science he was unrivalled -- the very paragon of his age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarkand, who was one of his pupils, relates the following story: 'I often used to hold conversations with my teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me, "My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it." I wondered at the words he spoke, but I knew that his were no idle words." The rashness of the worlds, according to D'Herbe, consisted of their being so opposed to those in the Qoran: "No man knows where he shall die." "Years after, when I chanced to revisit Neishabour, I went to his final resting-place, and lo! It was just outside a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was hidden under them." Though the Sultan "shower'd favors upon him," Omar's epicurean audacity of thought and speech caused him to be regarded a skance in his own time and country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed and whose faith amounted to little more than his own, when stript of the mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Our poets, including Hafez, who are (with the exception of Ferdowsi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's material, but turning it to a mystical use more convenient to themselves and the people they addressed. This great poet and scientist died in Neishabour where he was born. He died but left a precious treasury for all the people in the fields of science and literature. The following English verse renderings are an anthology of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat which have been translated by Professor Saied Saedpoor. When I'm dead disperse my dust to dust, Make my life a story for all to trust, Soak my body into the liquor pure, Of my flesh make for the vat's lid a crust. Of all the travelers of this long distance, No one has returned to tell the secret by chance So leave behind nothing out of need or greed- You'll never return to this point of divergence. Some ruminate along the path of religion Some suppose they have found faith and conviction. Afraid am I lest a voice calls out someday: O you beguiled, truth lies in neither direction!