tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post8050686735123980222..comments2024-01-26T21:38:25.924-08:00Comments on Duane's PoeTree: Rainy Sarmistha writesDuanesPoeTreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post-45761260009445213352016-09-09T20:22:21.008-07:002016-09-09T20:22:21.008-07:00A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wi...A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,<br />A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou,<br />Beside me singing in the Wilderness,<br />And oh, Wilderness is Paradise enow.<br /><br />Omar Khayyám [Life + Tent Maker] (actually, Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu'l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī) was one of the most influential scientists and mathematicians of his time, writing numerous treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, and astronomy, including the "Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra" (1070), which contained a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. But he is far better known as a poet, particularly due to the English translation of a small number of his thousand quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) by Edward FitzGerald (1809–83). FitzGerald took immense liberties as a translator and emphasized the hedonistic aspects of his writing rather than the esoteric. Born in Nishapur, Khayyām grew up in Samarkand (though he also spent some time in Balkh, Afghanistan) and then made his career in Isfahan, where he advised Seljuq sultan Jalal al-Din Malik-Shah Saljuqi (Malik-Shah I, 1072–92) on various issues, including calendar reform; his Jalali calendar (like those used in India) was based on actual solar transits and required an ephemeris to calculate dates, but it was was more accurate than the later Gregorian calendar in general use today. But after the sultan's murder by by the sect of Assassins, his widow turned against Khayyám and he returned to Nishapur to work as a court astrologer. In an autobiographical poem he wrote:<br /><br />Khayyám, who stitched the tents of science,<br />Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned,<br />The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,<br />And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!<br /> DuanesPoeTreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.com