Chapter Two

Omar Khayyam and his Philosophy

Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam was a Persian polymath, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher

but is best known in the West as a poet, the author of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The Rubaiyat was translated and published in 1859 by the English poet Edward Fitzgerald

and became one of the most popular, oft-quoted, and frequently anthologized works in the

English language. Khayyam’s name became so well-known among English speakers that

organizations were founded in his honor which encouraged interest in other Persian poets and

their work. In the East, however, Khayyam is known primarily as a scientist, particularly as

an astronomer and mathematician who contributed to the Jalali Calendar (a solar chart which

corrected the Islamic Calendar) and as a philosopher whose works prefigured the

existentialist and humanist movements. Until fairly recently, Khayyam was not recognized

primarily as a poet in the East.

Omar Khayyam was born in 1048 in Nishapur, a leading metropolis in

Khorasan during medieval times that reached its zenith of prosperity in the eleventh century

under the Seljuq dynasty.  Nishapur was also a major center of the Zoroastrian religion, and it

is likely that Khayyam's father was a Zoroastrian who had converted to Islam. His full name,

as it appears in the Arabic sources, was Abu’l Fath Omar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam. In

medieval Persian texts he is usually simply called Omar Khayyam.  Although open to doubt,

it has often been assumed that his forebears followed the trade of tent-making,

since Khayyam means tent-maker in Arabic.

His boyhood was spent in Nishapur. His gifts were recognized by his early tutors who

sent him to study under Imam Muwaffaq Nishaburi, the greatest teacher of the Khorasan

region who tutored the children of the highest nobility. Khayyam was also taught by the
Zoroastrian convert mathematician, Abu Hassan Bahmanyar bin Marzban. After studying

science, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy at Nishapur, about the year 1068 he traveled

to the province of Bukhara, where he frequented the renowned library of the Ark. In about

1070 he moved to Samarkand, where he started to compose his famous treatise on

algebra under the patronage of Abu Tahir Abd al-Rahman ibn Alaq, the governor and chief

judge of the city. Omar Khayyam was kindly received by the Karakhanid ruler Shams al-

Mulk Nasr, who according to Bayhaqi, would "show him the greatest honour, so much so that

he would seat (Omar) beside him on his throne".

In 1073–74 peace was concluded with Sultan Malik-Shah who had made incursions

into Karakhanid dominions. Khayyam entered the service of Malik-Shah in 1074–75 when he

was invited by the Grand Vizier Nizam al-Mulk to meet Malik-Shah in the city of Marv.

Khayyam was subsequently commissioned to set up an observatory in Isfahan and lead a

group of scientists in carrying out precise astronomical observations aimed at the revision of

the Persian calendar. The undertaking began probably in 1076 and ended in 1079 when Omar

Khayyam and his colleagues concluded their measurements of the length of the year,

reporting it to 14 significant figures with astounding accuracy.

After the death of Malik-Shah and his vizier, Omar fell from favor at court, and as a

result, he soon set out on his pilgrimage to Mecca. A possible ulterior motive for his

pilgrimage reported by Al-Qifti, was a public demonstration of his faith with a view to

allaying suspicions of skepticism and confuting the allegations of unorthodoxy (including

possible sympathy to Zoroastrianism) leveled at him by a hostile clergy. He was then invited

by the new Sultan Sanjar to Marv, possibly to work as a court astrologer.  He was later

allowed to return to Nishapur owing to his declining health. Upon his return, he seems to

have lived the life of a recluse.

 Omar Khayyam died at the age of 83 in his hometown of Nishapur on 1131, and he is

buried in what is now the Mausoleum of Omar Khayyam. One of his disciples Nizami

Aruzi relates the story that some time during 1112–13 Khayyam was in Balkh in the

company of Al-Isfizari (one of the scientists who had collaborated with him on the Jalali

calendar) when he made a prophecy that "my tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind

may scatter roses over it".  Four years after his death, Aruzi located his tomb in a cemetery in

a then large and well-known quarter of Nishapur on the road to Marv. As it had been foreseen

by Khayyam, Aruzi found the tomb situated at the foot of a garden-wall over which pear trees

and peach trees had thrust their heads and dropped their flowers so that his tomb stone was

hidden beneath them.

Khayyam’s philosophical treatises were written in the Peripatetic tradition at a time

when philosophy in general and rationalism in particular was under attack by orthodox

Muslim jurists. It is quite appropriately claimed that Khayyam was the poet of destiny.

However, it will be very wrong of us to think that he was a fatalist, at least by the common

understanding and definitions that we have of this word.

There are two major thought in trying to classify Omar Khayyam's philosophy in

Rubaiyat. One claims that he was highly influenced by Islamic mysticism, and particularly

Sufism, and his references to wine and lovers are allegorical representations of the mystical

wine and divine love. Second thought refutes the first completely, claiming that Khayyam

understood his mortality and inability to look beyond, and his references to wine and lovers

are very literal and sensual.

It is safe to assume that both of the thought are somewhat erroneous, and that the

proponents of each, while half understanding the wisdom that Khayyam imparted, are turning

and twisting his words to suit their own beliefs.

 One only has to look at Khayyam's life to come to the same conclusion. He was a

super achieving genius. He was counsel to ministers and kings. He was a mathematical

genius, presenting solutions to problems that were centuries ahead of his time. He was a

highly knowledgeable astronomer, who calculated the duration of the solar year with

unmatched accuracy, at least unmatched until this century. He was knowledgeable in other

physical sciences such as medicine and chemistry. He was a much sought after philosopher

and teacher.

The very fact that he had the urge, the drive, and the discipline to compose and write

the Rubaiyat, shows that he had a depth of perception and vision that we are still having

difficulty understanding. A man who has done so much in his life is clearly not a mystical

fatalist claiming "what will be, will be!" To the contrary, he saw the folly of being

mesmerized by such techniques, which may bring amazing visions of reality, but so long as

they remain visions, they are not and cannot be the truth, the reality itself.

Furthermore, a man who changed the world of his time and for centuries after is

clearly not one who would say, since we are all going to die, let us concern ourselves with

sensual pleasures only. He clearly saw that just as mystical infatuations were merely visions

of reality and not the truth, sensual pleasures were also representations of a deeper joy and

not the truth either.

Anyone who can so clearly pose the questions of mortality and temporality of our

existence has obviously struggled deeply with life and death and existence. Khayyam

understood the meaning of not being in control of our lives and deaths, and found the limits

of our freedom. He understood what was important in life. And through his life, his teachings

and his Rubaiyat conveyed that meaning, though in somewhat of a cryptic form, nevertheless

complete and intact to us.

 Khayyam understood that it was our fate, our destiny, something beyond our control

to be born into this world. He also understood that death was an inevitable fate for anyone

who was ever born. He understood that our bodies come from dust and clay, and return to

clay. “Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,” (23) He understood the fantasy of concerning

ourselves with the future, as well as the neurosis of staying in our past. He saw that all we

have is this ever slipping moment, this now, which itself has a timeless quality. And he

understood that in life what is important is that deeper joy and love for which we have

infinite yearning, as well as capacity to both receive and emanate. His Rubaiyat force us to

ask those ultimate existential questions, and lead us down a path that, unless we are lost along

the way or are destabilized by the abyss, which we must traverse, must inevitably reach the

same answer. Those ultimate truths that in life all that matters is love and joy. All else is

fantasy and fallacy.

In his philosophical treatise, Khayyam adheres to three types of determinism

Universal-cosmic;

Socio-political;

Ontological.

On a universal or cosmic level, our birth is determined in the sense that we had no

choice in this matter. Ontologically speaking, our essence and our place on the overall

hierarchy of being appear also to be predetermined. However, the third category of

determinism, socio-political determinism, is manmade and thus changeable. One of

Khayyam’s best known quatrains in which determinism is clearly conveyed asserts:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it (51)

 By “Universal-cosmic determinism” Khayyam means we have been thrown into this

world by accident, which creates in us a sense of bewilderment and existential anxiety.

Khayyam expresses this when he says:

With Earth’s first Clay They did the Last Man knead,

And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:

And the first Morning of Creation wrote

What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read. (53)

In the cosmic and universal sense, our presence in this world and our entry and exit is

predetermined, a condition that Khayyam bemoans throughout his Rubaiyat.

The second sense of determinism is Socio-economic, which is rarely addressed by

Muslim philosophers. Finally there is “Ontological determinism,” which relies on a

Neoplatonic scheme of emanation.

At first they brought me perplexed in this way

Amazement still enhances day by day

We all alike are tasked to go but Oh!

Why are we brought and sent? This none can say. (Tirtha, 18)

Thus a reading of the Rubaiyat in conjunction with Khayyam’s philosophical

reflections brings forward a more sophisticated view of free will and determinism indicating

that Khayyam believed in free will within a form of cosmic determinism.

Philosophical Wisdom: Khayyam uses the concept of “wine and intoxication”

throughout his Rubaiyat in three distinct ways:

The intoxicant wine

The mystical wine

The wine of wisdom

 The pedestrian use of wine in the Rubaiyat, devoid of any intellectual significance,

emphasizes the need to forget our daily suffering. The mystical allusions to wine pertain to a

type of intoxication which stands opposed to discursive thought. The esoteric use of wine and

drinking, which has a long history in Persian Sufi literature, refers to the state of ecstasy in

which one is intoxicated with Divine love. Those supporting the Sufi interpretation

of Rubaiyat rely on this literary genre. While Khayyam was not a Sufi in the traditional sense

of the word, he includes the mystical use of wine among his allusions.

Khayyam’s use of wine in the profound sense in his Rubaiyat is a type of Sophia that

provides a sage with philosophical wisdom, allowing one to come to terms with the

temporality of life and to live in the here and now.

Wisdom is the type of wisdom that brings about a rapprochement between the poetic

and discursive modes of thought, one that sees the fundamental irony in what appears to be a

senseless human existence within an orderly and complex physical universe. For Khayyam

the mathematician-astronomer, the universe cannot be the result of a random chance; on the

other hand, Khayyam the poet fails to find any purpose for human existence in this orderly

universe.

As Spring and Fall make their appointed turn,

The leaves of life one aft another turn;

Drink wine and brood not—as the Sage has said:

“Life’s cares are poison, wine the cure in turn.” (Sa‘idi, 58 )

Khayyam’s philosophical works are the least studied aspects of his thought, and were

not even available in published form until a few years ago. They permit a fresh look at overall

Khayyamian thought and prove indispensable to an understanding of his Rubaiyat. In his

philosophical works, Khayyam writes as a Muslim philosopher and treats a variety of

traditional philosophical problems; but in his Rubaiyat, our Muslim philosopher morphs into
an agnostic Epicurean. A detailed study of Khayyam’s philosophical works reveals several

explanations for this dichotomy, the most likely of which is the conflict between pure and

practical reasoning. Whereas such questions as theodicy, the existence of God, soul and the

possibility of life after death may be argued for philosophically, such arguments hardly seem

relevant to the human condition given our daily share of suffering.

If we accept Khayyam's philosophy and heed his advice, then we will shift our focus

from the external, be it mystical or sensual, to the internal. And if we go through this

transformative alchemical transmutation of the soul, we too will become like Khayyam, men

and women who change ourselves, and consequently our world, as well as the future worlds

to come.