Saturday Rave: The Lost anf Fabulous Work of Omar Khayyam.

Omar Khayyam? He was a poet, of course - 

- except that actually he might not have been a poet at all.

What Omar Khayyam (1048 - 1131) definitely was, was a mathematician and astronomer. No, really. He wrote all sorts of serious stuff about the real number concept, the theory of parallels, binomial theory, and the solution of cubic equations. He invented a calendar, too.

He also wrote a treatise on extracting the nth root of natural numbers. But that, sadly, has been lost.

So why is he famous as a poet, if he didn't write poetry?

Well, what seems to have happened is that when people came across odd bits of orphan poetry about the place (which was Persia, nowadays known as Iran), they tended to attributed it to Omar Khayyam just because he was someone famous. Some of the poetry may even have been his, but the vast majority of it probably isn't.

This is plainly all deeply unfair, but, hey, it just goes to prove that what will survive of us is Art.

Here's a verse which may or may not have been written by Omar Khayyam. 

Whoever wrote it was a terrific poet, anyway.

Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned,
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him nothing!

Word To Use Today: Khayyam means tent maker.