The Stanzas of Omar Khayyam

The Stanzas of Omar Khayyam is an English collection of Khayyam quatrains, drawing on the Persian poetry tradition that Edward FitzGerald’s 1859 Rubaiyat made famous in the English-speaking world. Various subsequent translators have produced their own versions of the Khayyam material, with different selections of quatrains and different translation approaches.

Khayyam (c. 1048-1131) was a Persian polymath whose work in mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy was substantial alongside the poetry that became his lasting Western reputation. The Persian text of the Khayyam quatrains exists in many manuscripts with considerable variation between them, and modern scholars have debated for over a century which quatrains are genuinely his and which were added later under his name.

The Stanzas collection presents a particular selection of Khayyam material in English. For readers who have read FitzGerald and want a different angle on the same poet, alternative English versions of the Khayyam quatrains offer useful comparison.