Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the famous English translation by Edward FitzGerald of selected quatrains attributed to the Persian poet Omar Khayyam (c. 1048-1131). FitzGerald’s first edition appeared in 1859 and was substantially revised across four subsequent editions through 1879. The translation became one of the most successful English poetry books of the nineteenth century and shaped Western perception of Persian poetry for generations.

The quatrains take up the major themes that FitzGerald drew out of the original Persian. The brevity of life, the pleasures of wine and friendship, skepticism about religious certainties, and the unknowability of the great metaphysical questions all run through the famous stanzas. The image of the moving finger writing and having writ moves on, the jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and various other phrases from FitzGerald’s English have entered the standard English literary vocabulary.

For readers approaching Persian literature in English, FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat is the natural starting point.