Omar Khayyam is known to everyone. Everyone has heard or read his poems. True, whether he owns most of them is a moot point. But we can definitely say that he was the greatest scientist of his time, and his fame is wider than the poet's popularity for postcards.
Poet for postcards
Omar Khayyam is one of the most published foreign poets in Russia. Almost everyone has come across his rubyes, aphorisms, or stories about him. You can even say that he is one of the most quoted poets in our country, but this popularity has a downside. Omar Khayyam has undergone a serious vulgarization, his rubai is published even without indicating who translated them. And it is still unknown whether this is his ruby. Researchers of the poet's work note that no more than 66 quatrains can be reliably attributed to Khayyam, while by the beginning of the twentieth century their number exceeded 5000.
Rubai, attributed to Khayyam, began to appear only in the second half of the XII century, more than half a century after the death of the author. For several centuries, everything that was convenient to ascribe to Khayyam was attributed to him, since there is no demand for bold, and sometimes even daring quatrains from the great.
Thus, with Omar Khayyam, perhaps the worst thing that can happen happened - he became a poet for postcards, and his poetic legacy is perceived as a hymn to sebaritism, as an excuse for vices. Meanwhile, Omar Khayyam is a personality of a much more significant scale.
Was there Khayyam?
Strange as it may seem, but even researchers are still not completely sure that Khayyam - a poet and Khayyam - a scientist - are one and the same person. Volume 42 of the famous Brockhaus and Efron dictionary contains an article "Omar al-Kayami" about a scientist, and in volume 73 - an article "Hayam or Omar Hayam" about a poet. Such a division is connected not only with the fact that it seemed strange to scientists to relate these two Khayyams, but also with “translation difficulties” - in Persian writings this poet is called Omar Khayyam, and in Arabic - Omar al-Khayyam.
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Name
The full name of Omar Khayyam is Giyas ad-Din Abu-l-Fath Omar ibn Ibrahim Khayyam Nishapuri. The word "Khayyam" is translated as "tent master", from the word "Khayma" - a tent. It is interesting that from the same word came the Old Russian word "khamovnik", ie textile worker.
Ibn Ibrahim means the son of Ibrahim. As you can now understand, Khayyam's father was called Ibrahim and he came from a family of artisans. The version about Khayyam's almost peasant origin, widespread in some romantic biographies of Khayyam, can therefore be considered unsubstantiated. His father had enough funds to give his son the best possible education.
The statement that Khayyam was born in the “village of Khorasan near the city of Nishapur”, which, in particular, Irina Kraineva cites in the preface to the publication “Omar Khayyam in the constellation as a poet”, published in St. Petersburg in 1997, also introduces confusion. Khorasan is not a village, but a large and famous ancient province in northeastern Iran, south of the Kopetdag ridge, which once constituted the core of the Parthian state, and Nishapur is one of several large cities in this province with a population of several hundred thousand people.
Memory
Biographers and researchers of Omar Khayyam note that he was able to achieve what he managed to achieve not only thanks to good education and diligence, but also to phenomenal abilities. Already at the age of seven, Omar went to a madrasah, quickly memorized the entire Koran, and at the age of fifteen he had already begun to prepare his first mathematical treatise. According to legend, Nizam-ud-mulk once offered Khayyam power over Nishapur and all adjacent provinces. The learned poet refused, saying that he wanted to devote his whole mind to science for the benefit of people.
Contribution
Omar Khayyam's contribution to science can hardly be overestimated. Today it is customary to speak of him exclusively as a poet, but Khayyam was one of the best mathematicians and astronomers of his time. He wrote many works on algebra, geometry and philosophy, participated in the construction of the palace observatory. The greatest achievement of Omar Khayyam can be considered the calendar he created.
It was named after the sultan who ordered it "Malikshah chronology" and was based on a thirty-three-year period, including eight leap years; leap years followed seven times after four years and once after five years.
The calculation made it possible to reduce the time difference of the proposed year, in comparison with the tropical year, calculated at 365, 2422 days, to nineteen seconds. Thus, amazingly, the calendar created by Khayyam was seven seconds more accurate than the current Gregorian calendar (developed in the 16th century).
Death
By the end of his life, Khayyam's reputation was tested by public opinion. They began to talk about him as a freethinker and apostate. Then, at an old age, he went to his last hajj, returning from which he continued to participate in scientific disputes, taught in a madrasah for a small group of students.
Omar Khayyam died, according to legend, while reading the works of Avicenna. He calmly put the book down, asked “to call the clean ones to make a will,” got up and prayed. Al-Beykhaki recalled: “When he finished the last evening prayer, he bowed to the ground and said, bowing his face:“… Oh my God, you know that I got to know you to the best of my ability. Forgive me, my knowledge of you is my way to you. " And he died."