The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam: Translated from the Persian by Joobin Bekhrad

The impact that the medieval Persian polymath Omar Khayyam has had on civilization is perhaps best reflected in the reverence held for his groundbreaking mathematical findings and celebrated Rubaiyat (quatrains), not only in his native Iran but also in all corners of the world. Exhorting readers to seize the moment and enjoy the pleasures of life as well as warning them about the ephemerality and infidelity of the world, Khayyam’s philosophies are just as relevant today, if not more than during the turbulent times in which he lived. Providing neither a loose interpretation nor a word-for-word translation of Khayyam’s poetry, Bekhrad has striven to preserve the poetic qualities and spirit of the original Persian quatrains, in addition to providing as accurate a translation as possible of each and every stanza. The present volume contains, for bilingual readers, the original Persian poems as selected and categorized by the late Sadegh Hedayat as well as an introduction by Iranian scholar Dr. Sayed Hassan Amin.