This page is obviously under construction - in fact, I have only just started building it up. I hope to augment it with material divided under the three main headings: Omar, the mathematician Omar, the astronomer Omar, the mystic-poet

A brief biography of Omar (from Encyclopaedia Britannica)

There are numerous sites on the web which have the text of the Rubaiyaat - here are a few links:

• ELF Presents the Rubaiyaat of Omar Khayyam. This site contains translations from different editions of the Rubaiyaat - as `transcreated' by Fitzgerald - good for comparing among the various editions.
• Poet's Corner: Edward Fitzgerald - The Rubaiyaat of Omar Khayaam. The first edition (1859) of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyaat.

I have started by including the following essay on Omar's mathematical side.

J. L. Coolidge on The Mathematics of Omar Khayyam:

• The Story of Omar Khayyam

The Epicurean Humanism of Omar Khayyam by Pat Duffy Hutcheon

Persian for Beginners by Iraj Bashiri

A life of Khayyam" by Iraj Bashiri

Edward Fitzgerald: Omar's populariser to the west

``... the content that must have attracted this odd Victorian - the fantasy of being liberated from the female that underlies `Salaman and Absal, an Allegory Translated from the Persian of Jami'; or the epicurean sensuality of `The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'. ... the lengths to which FitzGerald went, and the problems he encountered, in his struggle to create a contemporary parallel to the mood of the original. (For instance, the garden in The Rubaiyat, one of the poem's dominant images, is wholly an invention of the translator.)''
- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (Book review of R. B. Martin's biography of Fitzgerald, N Y Times, April 11, 1985,Sec.C;p.24,col.3)

• Gordon S. Haigfht: The Rubaiyat of Edward Fitzgerald (a review of Robert B. Martin's biography of Edward Fitzgerald)
• George Levine: Rich, Lazy and (at least once) inspired (another review of Robert B. Martin's biography of Edward Fitzgerald)
• Anand: A Criticism of the Fitzgerald translation (Note that the Robert Graves-Omar Ali Shah translation referred to in this article has also been subsequently discredited as being merely a re-working of the manuscript Fitzgerald had used)