Omar Khayyam's Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 7: Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan's North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability

By Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

Omar Khayyam's Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, is a 12-book series of which this book is the 7th volume, subtitled Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan's North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Kha

• Language: English
• Publisher: Okcir Press (imprint of Ahead Publishing House)
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781640980365

Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, retired associate professor of sociology at UMass Boston and previously full-time lecturer at SUNY-Oneonta and adjunct lecturer at SUNY-Binghamton, is the founding editor of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, a publication of OKCIR: the Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics) which has served since 2002 to frame his independent research, pedagogical, and publishing initiatives. His publications include Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism (Routledge/Paradigm, 2007) and Gurdjieff and Hypnosis: A Hermeneutic Study (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Book preview

9781640980365_cover.jpg

Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge

Monograph Series: Tayyebeh Series in East-West Research and Translation

About OKCIR

Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

www.okcir.com

OKCIR (est. 2002) is an independent research, pedagogical, and publishing initiative dedicated to exploring, in a simultaneously world-historical and self-reflective framework, the human search for a just global society.

Since the world’s utopian, mystical, and scientific movements have been the primary sources of inspiration, knowledge, and/or practice in this field, OKCIR aims to critically reexamine the shortcomings and contributions of these world-historical traditions—seeking to clearly understand why they have failed to bring about the good society, and what each can integratively contribute toward realizing that end.

The center aims to develop new conceptual (methodological, theoretical, historical), practical, pedagogical, inspirational and disseminative structures of knowledge whereby the individual can radically understand and determine how world-history and her/his selves constitute one another.

OKCIR promotes creative exercises in liberating sociology and alternative pluriversities of knowledge production and publication in the global cyberspace. As a virtual research center, its publications are available in part freely online in its open-stacks digital library, in part via subscription to its own or other academic database member-stacks, and others for purchase online via the Okcir Store and other online distributors. Selected publications are also available in print for online purchase by libraries, institutions, and interested print readers.

OKCIR pursues innovative editorial, digital, and print publishing practices reflecting its substantive goals, and is the publisher of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge (ISSN: 1540-5699, est. 2002) which explores issues pertaining to the center’s interests. Human Architecture is a hybrid scholarly journal whose edited and monographed issues are simultaneously published also as individual books in hardcover, softcover, and pdf and/or epub ebook formats (with separately assigned ISBNs).

Tayyebeh Series in East-West Research and Translation (2014-) and Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press) (1991-) respectively honor Tayyebeh Tamjidi (1928-2020) and Mohammed (Ahad) Tamjidi (1930-2007) whose parental love and support made the life and works of Mohammad H. (Behrooz) Tamdgidi, the founder of OKCIR, possible.

Published to Date in the Series

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 1: New Khayyami Studies: Quantumizing the Newtonian Structures of C. Wright Mills’s Sociological Imagination for A New Hermeneutic Method (Okcir Press, 2021)

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 2: Khayyami Millennium: Reporting the Discovery and the Reconfirmation of the True Dates of Birth and Passing of Omar Khayyam

(AD 1021-1123) (Okcir Press, 2021)

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 3: Khayyami Astronomy: How Omar Khayyam’s Newly Discovered True Birth Date Horoscope Reveals the Origins of His Pen Name and Independently Confirms His Authorship of the Robaiyat (Okcir Press, 2021)

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 4: Khayyami Philosophy: The Ontological Structures of the Robaiyat in Omar Khayyam’s Last Written Keepsake Treatise on the Science of the Universals of Existence (Okcir Press, 2021)

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 5: Khayyami Theology: The Epistemological Structures of the Robaiyat in All the Philosophical Writings of Omar Khayyam Leading to His Last Keepsake Treatise (Okcir Press, 2022)

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 6: Khayyami Science: The Methodological Structures of the Robaiyat in All the Scientific Works of Omar Khayyam (Okcir Press, 2023)

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 7: Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability (Okcir Press, 2024)

Omar Khayyam’s Secret

Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination

BOOK 7

Khayyami Art

The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability

About this Book

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, is a twelve-book series of which this book is the seventh volume, subtitled Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability. Each book, independently readable, can be best understood as a part of the whole series.

In Book 7, Tamdgidi shares his updated edition of Khayyam’s Persian book Nowrooznameh (The Book on Nowrooz), and for the first time his new English translation of it, followed by his analysis of its text. He then visits recent findings about the possible contribution of Khayyam to the design of Isfahan’s North Dome. Next, he shares the texts and his new Persian (where needed) and English translations and analyses of Khayyam’s other Arabic and Persian poems. Finally, he studies the debates on the attributability of the Robaiyat to Omar Khayyam.

Tamdgidi verifiably shows that Nowrooznameh is a book written by Khayyam, arguing that its unreasonable and unjustifiable neglect has prevented Khayyami studies from answering important questions about Khayyam’s life, works, and his times. Nowrooznameh is primarily a work in literary art, rather than in science, tasked not with reporting on past truths but with creating new truths in the spirit of Khayyam’s conceptualist view of reality. Iran in fact owes the continuity of its ancient calendar month names to the way Khayyam artfully recast their meanings in the book in order to prevent their being dismissed (given their Zoroastrian roots) during the Islamic solar calendar reform underway under his invited direction. The book also sheds light on the mysterious function of Isfahan’s North Dome, revealing it as having been to serve as a space, as part of an observatory complex, for the annual Nowrooz celebrations and leap-year declarations of the new calendar. The North Dome, to whose design Khayyam verifiably contributed and in fact bears symbols of his unitary view of a world created for happiness by God, marks where the world’s most accurate solar calendar of the time was calculated. It deserves to be named after Khayyam and declared as a cultural world heritage site. Nowrooznameh is also a pioneer in the prince-guidance books genre that anticipated the likes of Machiavelli’s The Prince by centuries, the difference being that Khayyam’s purpose was to inculcate his Iranian and Islamic love for justice and the pursuit of happiness in the young successors of Soltan Malekshah. Iran is famed for its ways of converting its invaders into its own culture, and Nowrooznameh offers a textbook example for how it was done by Khayyam.

Most significantly, however, Nowrooznameh offers by way of its intricately multilayered meanings the mediating link between Khayyam’s philosophical, theological, and scientific works, and his Robaiyat, showing through metaphorical clues of his beautiful prose how his poetry collection could bring lasting spiritual existence to its poet posthumously. Khayyam’s other Arabic and Persian poems also provide significant clues about the origins, the nature, and the purpose of the Robaiyat as his lifelong project and magnum opus.

Tamdgidi argues that the thesis of Khayyam’s Robaiyat as a secretive artwork of quatrains organized in an intended reasoning order as a ‘book of life’ serving to bring about his lasting spiritual existence can solve the manifold puzzles contributing to the riddle of his Robaiyat attributability. He posits, and in the forthcoming volumes of this series will demonstrate, that the lost quatrains comprising the original collection of Robaiyat have become extant over the centuries, such that we can now reconstruct, by way of solving their 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, the collection as it was meant to be read as an ode of interrelated quatrains by Omar Khayyam.

Omar Khayyam’s Secret

Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination

BOOK 7

Khayyami Art

The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability

Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge • XX • 2024

Monograph Series: Tayyebeh Series in East-West Research and Translation

OMAR KHAYYAM’S SECRET

Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination

Book 7: Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability

Author: Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

Copyright © 2024 by Mohammad-Hossein Tamdgidi

All English verse translations of the Robaiyat (quatrains) attributed to Omar Khayyam appearing in this book and of its parent series, Copyright © 2024 by Mohammad-Hossein Tamdgidi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any media or form, including electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or informational storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author and publisher except for brief passages fairly used for the purpose of review or study while fully acknowledging its source.

First Edition: March 1, 2024

Okcir Press • P. O. Box 393, Belmont, MA 02478, USA • www.okcir.com

For ordering or other inquiries contact: info[at]okcir.com

Okcir Press is an imprint of Ahead Publishing House, which is a division of OKCIR:

Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024902158

Publisher Cataloging in Publication Data

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination

Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability / Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, 1959- / First Edition: March 1, 2024

Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge • Volume XX • 2024

Monograph Series: Tayyebeh Series in East-West Research and Translation

826 pages • 6x9 inches • Includes references, figures, images, and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-64098-034-1 • ISBN-10: 1-64098-034-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-64098-035-8 • ISBN-10: 1-64098-035-0 (softcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-64098-036-5 • ISBN-10: 1-64098-036-9 (EPub ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-1-64098-037-2 • ISBN-10: 1-64098-037-7 (PDF ebook)

1. Omar Khayyam—Art. 2. Omar Khayyam—Nowrooznameh. 3. The North Dome of the Masjed Jāmeʿ (Congregational Mosque) of Isfahan. 4. Omar Khayyam—Other Arabic and Persian Poems. 5. Omar Khayyam—Robaiyat (Rubaiyat or Quatrains). 6. Omar Khayyam—Robaiyat Attributability Debates. 7. Omar Khayyam—Iranian Solar Calendar. 8. Nowrooz (Nowruz or Noruz). 9. Omar Khayyam—Criticisms and Interpretations—Biography. I. Omar Khayyam, AD 1021-1123 II. Title

Front/back cover images: Old Book (Dreamstime: 28232816)/North Dome, Jameʿ Mosque, Isfahan, Iran (Dreamstime: 97224654)

Cover/spine image: Statue of Omar Khayyam, by Abolhasan Seddiqi, Laleh Park, Tehran, Iran

Jacket flap image: Bas relief detail in the ancient city of Persepolis in Iran (Dreamstime: 50846948)

Cover and Text Design: Ahead Publishing House, Belmont, MA, USA

The paper used in the print editions of this book is of archival quality and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). The production of this book on demand protects the environment by printing only the number of copies that are purchased.

for

Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123)

who Phoenix-like flew to the peak empyrean sphere

In celebration of the millennium of his birth and in commemoration of the ninth centennial of Omar Khayyam’s passing

When considered, since the intellect is the most perfect, I did not find anything nobler than speech and higher than word, since, had there been anything nobler than word, God, Most High, would have used it to address the prophet, may God send His blessings to him. As they say in Arabic خير جليس فى الزّمان كتاب [Book is the best companion in time]. … The wise have called the pen the beautician of the world, and the ambassador of the heart. And speech without the pen is like the soul without the body. And when it [speech] binds to a pen, it acquires body and remains forever. It is like the spark that springs from the [friction of] stone and steel, and so long as it does not reach something to set it on fire, it does not become a lamp from which others become enlightened. And the Caliph Maʾmun said للّه در القلم كيف يجول رأسى المملكة يخدم الارادة و لا يميل يسكة واقفا وينطق سائرا على ارض بياضها مظلم و سوادها مضىء [meaning, God! How, with the turn of a pen, my head runs a country! It serves my will, standing silently, and when walking on land its speech turns the land’s whiteness to a darkness whose blackness illuminates!] … And humankind, despite being noble for its speech, if it does not achieve the ability to write, would remain deficient, as if being half-human. This is because the virtue of writing is an extremely great virtue that no virtue can reach its status, since it is what elevates humankind from being human to being angelic, and elevates the devil from devilry to humanity. And writing is that which elevates humankind from low to high status, becoming deserving of being called a scientist, an imam, a theologian, or a scribe. And also, it is due to the virtue of speech that humankind is distinguished from other animals and gains mastery over them.

— Omar Khayyam, Nowrooznameh

for my mother,

Tayyebeh Tamjidi

(March 20, 1928 - December 31, 2020)

About the Author

Other books beside this series by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

Liberating Sociology: From Newtonian Toward Quantum Imaginations: Volume I: Unriddling the Quantum Enigma (Okcir Press, 2020)

Gurdjieff and Hypnosis: A Hermeneutic Study (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism (Routledge/Paradigm, 2007)

Mohammad-Hossein (a.k.a. ‘Behrooz’) Tamdgidi (pronounced tamjidi) is the founder and editor respectively of OKCIR: Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics) and its publication, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge (ISSN: 1540-5699) which have served since 2002 to frame his independent research, pedagogical, and publishing initiatives. Formerly an associate professor of sociology specializing in social theory at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston, he has also previously taught sociology as full-time lecturer at SUNY-Oneonta, and also as adjunct lecturer at SUNY-Binghamton. He has authored numerous books and edited more than thirty journal collections, in addition to other peer reviewed articles and chapters.

Tamdgidi’s areas of scholarly and applied interest are the sociology of self-knowledge, human architecture, and utopystics—three fields of inquiry he invented in his doctoral studies and has since pursued as respectively intertwined theoretical, methodological and applied fields of inquiry altogether contributing to what he calls the quantum sociological imagination. His research, teaching, and publications have been framed by an interest in understanding how world-historical social structures and personal selves constitute one another. This line of inquiry has itself been a result of his longstanding interest in understanding the underlying causes of failures of the world’s utopian, mystical, and scientific movements in bringing about a just global society.

It was during his undergraduate studies at U.C. Berkeley and in the course of his mentorship by the painter and design architect Jesse Reichek (1916-2005) that Tamdgidi’s notion and project human architecture was born. During his graduate studies at SUNY-Binghamton, he was mentored in methods, theory, and world-systems studies by Terence K. Hopkins (1928-1997) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019), and further in dialectics by Dale Tomich and on space and society by Anthony D. King, amid a uniquely autonomous and flexible transdisciplinary Graduate Program in Sociology founded by T. K. Hopkins.

Tamdgidi holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology in conjunction with a graduate certificate in Middle Eastern studies from Binghamton University (SUNY). He received his B.A. in architecture from U. C. Berkeley, following enrollment as an undergraduate student of civil engineering in the Technical College of the University of Tehran, Iran. In Dec. 2013 he retired early from his tenured and promoted position at UMass Boston in order to pursue his independent scholarship in quantum sociological imagination and its application in Khayyami studies through the conduit of his research center, OKCIR.

جز مى ز هر آنچه هست كوتاهى به

وآن مى ز كف بتان خرگاهى به

رندى و قلندرى و گمراهى به

يك جرعۀ مى ز ماه تا ماهى به

— عمر خيّام

To abstain from everything but this Wine, it’s best.

Served by the Grand-Tent idols, I opine, it’s best.

The best is a rogue free-thinker’s lost wandering.

From the Moon to Earth, trying this Wine’s Shine, it’s best!

— Omar Khayyam (Tamdgidi translation)

Contents

About OKCIR

Published to Date in the Series

About this Book

About the Author

Notes on Transliteration

Acknowledgments

Preface to Book 7: Recap from Prior Books of the Series

Introduction to Book 7: Tracing the Robaiyat in Omar Khayyam’s Artwork

CHAPTER I—Omar Khayyam’s Literary Treatise Nowrooznameh: An Updated Persian Text and Its New English Translation for the First Time

1. Introduction

2. The Persian Text of Omar Khayyam’s Literary Treatise Nowrooznameh (The Book on Nowrooz): An Updated Edition Based on the Berlin Manuscript (Used in Its Mojtaba Minovi Edition and Also in Its Ali Hasouri Edition) and the Partial London and Other Manuscripts (Used in Its Edition by Rahim Rezazadeh Malek)

3. New English Translation of Omar Khayyam’s Literary Treatise Nowrooznameh (The Book on Nowrooz)

A. Introduction of the Book, Nowrooznameh

B. On the Customs of Persian Kings

C. The Arrival of the [Zoroastrian] Priest of Priests and the Offering of Nowroozi Gifts

D. The High Acclamation of the [Zoroastrian] Priest of Priests in Their Own Expression

E. Speaking of the Gold and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

F. Signs of the Buried Treasures

G. Speaking of the Ring and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

H. Speaking of the Budding Barley Grain and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

I. Speaking of the Sword and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

J. Speaking of the Bow and Arrow and What Is Necessary to be Said About Them

K. Speaking of the Pen and Its Attribute, and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

L. Speaking of the Horse, Its Art, and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

M. Names of Horses in the Persian Language

N. Speaking of the Falcon, and of Its Art, and What is Necessary About It

O. On Selecting a Falcon

P. Stories About the Benefits of the Wine

Q. Story About the Meaning of the Origin of Wine

R. A Speech on the Attribute of the Beautiful Face

4. Conclusion

CHAPTER II—Omar Khayyam’s Literary Treatise Nowrooznameh: A Clause-by-Clause Textual Analysis

1. Introduction

2. Clause-by-Clause Analysis of Nowrooznameh

A. Introduction of the Book, Nowrooznameh

B. On the Customs of Persian Kings

C. The Arrival of the [Zoroastrian] Priest of Priests and the Offering of Nowroozi Gifts

D. The High Acclamation of the [Zoroastrian] Priest of Priests in Their Own Expression

E. Speaking of the Gold and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

F. Signs of the Buried Treasures

G. Speaking of the Ring and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

H. Speaking of the Budding Barley Grain and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

I. Speaking of the Sword and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

J. Speaking of the Bow and Arrow and What Is Necessary to be Said About Them

K. Speaking of the Pen and Its Attribute, and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

L. Speaking of the Horse, Its Art, and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

M. Names of Horses in the Persian Language

N. Speaking of the Falcon, and of Its Art [of Falconry], and What Is Necessary to Be Said About It

O. On Selecting a Falcon

P. Stories About the Benefits of the Wine

Q. Story About the Meaning of How Wine Was Created

R. A Speech on the Attribute of the Beautiful Face

3. Conclusion

CHAPTER III—Unveiling the Open and Hidden Functions of the Mysterious North Dome of Isfahan: How Omar Khayyam Designed, for His Commissioned Projects of Solar Calendar Reform and Building Its Astronomical Observatory, Iran’s Most Beautiful Dual-Use Structure for the Annual Celebration of Nowrooz

1. Introduction

2. The Twenty-Year Reign of Soltan Malekshah and His Commission to Build an Astronomical Observatory in Isfahan to Reform Iran’s Solar Calendar

3. What Nowrooznameh Reveals about the Need for Solar Calendar Reform and Its Associated Observatory and Nowrooz Celebratory Building Projects

4. The Official ICOMOS and ICHHTO Accounts of the Nature and History of the North Dome amid the Wider Complex of Masjed-e Jāmeʿ of Isfahan

5. The Views of Architectural Historians Arthur Upham Pope, Eric Schroeder, Oleg Grabar, and Eugenio Galdieri, about the North Dome

6. The Contributions of the Late Turkish Architectural Historian Alpay Özdural to Understanding the Design of the North Dome

7. What Does the Strange Built-In Pattern of the Interior Ceiling of the North Dome Mean?

8. The Open and Hidden Functions of the North Dome as a Dual-Use Astronomical Observatory Site for the Annual Celebration of Nowrooz

9. Conclusion

CHAPTER IV—Omar Khayyam’s Arabic and Persian Poems Other than His Robaiyat: Translated into Persian (from Arabic) and English and Textually Analyzed

1. Introduction

2. Omar Khayyam’s Other Poems Expressing Doubt

A. Persian Ghazal Poem: A Talk with the Intellect

B. Arabic Poem: Plea for Brotherhood

C. Arabic Poem: Intellect’s Astonishment

D. Arabic Poem: The Near Distant

E. Arabic Poem: Malefic Fortunes

F. Arabic Poem: Complaints to Unjust Spheres

3. Omar Khayyam’s Other Poems Expressing Hope

A. Persian Qasideh Poem: Conversing with a Philosopher-Judge

B. Arabic Poem: How I Worship

C. Arabic Poem: No Fear of the Times

4. Omar Khayyam’s Other Poems Expressing Joy

A. Arabic Poem: Light Over Darkness

B. Arabic Poem: Flood of Droplets

C. Arabic Poem: Secretive Sense

D. Arabic Poem: Freedom

5. Conclusion

CHAPTER V—Did Omar Khayyam Secretively Author A Robaiyat Collection He Called Book of Life?: Solving the Manifold Riddles of His Robaiyat Attributability

1. Introduction

2. Treating the Manifold Riddles of the Robaiyat’s Attributability to Omar Khayyam as the Flip Side of the Riddle of Understanding Them Substantively

3. Deconstructing the Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Manifold Riddles of the Robaiyat’s Attributability to Omar Khayyam

A. The Underlying Either/Or Formal Logic Contributing to the False Narratives of the Riddle of Omar Khayyam’s Robaiyat Attributability

B. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Documentability: The Case of Absence of the Original Manuscript

C. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Documentability: The Case of Contemporaries Not Referring to Khayyam as Having Composed Quatrains

D. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Documentability: The Case of No Record of Robaiyat Having Been Found During the First Century Following Khayyam’s Passing

E. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Documentability: The Case of Nameless Quatrains Being Attributed to Khayyam

F. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Documentability: The Case of Sudden Increases in Historical Trends of Quatrains Being Attributed to Khayyam

G. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Documentability: The Case of Wandering Quatrains

H. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddles of Documentability: The Case of the Significance of Old Manuscripts

I. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddles of Cohereability and Integrability: The Case of So Many Different Views

J. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Stylizability: The Case of the 3-Line or 4-Line Rhymes

K. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Stylizability: The Case of Radif or Row-Rhyming

L. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Stylizability: The Case of the Letter D With or Without a Dot

M. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddles of Decipherability and Translatability: The Case of the Meaning(s) of the Trope of Wine and Poetic Metaphors Generally

N. Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Riddle of Concealability: The Case of Robaiyat as a Secretive Collection

O. Bringing Together All the Narratives Falsely Contributing to the Manifold Riddles of Attributability of the Robaiyat to Omar Khayyam

4. Omar Khayyam’s Robaiyat as A Secret Collection of Poetry to Serve As a Keepsake for His Lasting Spiritual Existence in His This-Worldly Afterlife

5. Conclusion

Conclusion to Book 7: Summary of Findings

Appendix: Transliteration System and Glossary

Cumulative Glossary of Transliterations (Books 1-5)

Book 7 References

Book 7 Index

Notes on Transliteration

In the English edition of this book and its parent series, texts in languages using diacritics in their Latin alphabet are rendered as in the original.

When quoting Persian and Arabic texts transliterated by others, I will render them (including their diacritics) as found in the source, whatever transliteration system the source has used, which can vary from one source to another.

My own transliterations of Persian and Arabic texts will follow their pronunciation in Persian; that is, Arabic (or any other language) words internalized in Persian language will be transliterated according to their Persian pronunciation, except for the commonly transliterated words that have already been established in public discourse, as further explained below.

The main goal of the transliteration system newly designed for and applied in this series as explained in the appendix to each book is to make it possible to pronounce Persian words and those in Arabic (or in other languages) internalized in the Persian language the way a native Persian speaker would usually pronounce it (local dialects of Persian notwithstanding). Fulfilling this need is important, since otherwise we would lose the Persian pronunciations of Persian and its internalized (including Arabic) words over time. In reading Persian poetry, in particular, we need to produce Persian, and not Arabic, pronunciations of the words.

In Persian transliteration systems prevalent today, at times native and internalized words in Persian are transliterated in ways that result in Arabic pronunciation. The word Rubaiyat (used for رباعيّات which is actually an Arabic word), for instance, does not readily produce the Persian pronunciation of the word, which is Robāʿiyāt; Khayyam should be pronounced as Khayyam (not Kayam), Isfahan as Éṣfahān, Ibn Sina as ébn-e Sinā, Iran not as I ran but as Earān (Ear+ān), Ramadan as Rameẓān, Islam as Éslām, and so on.

Some of the above word examples have been already transliterated in Western languages in common forms (such as Iran, Islam, Isfahan, etc.), so I will maintain the same spelling in the main text while providing their full Persian transliteration in a cumulative glossary following the transliteration system introduced in the appendix of each book of the series. In others, when needed or found substantively needed, I will render the word in a way that emphasizes the Persian pronunciation. In doing so, however, in the main text I will strip it of diacritics, while providing its full transliteration in the cumulative glossary placed in the appendix to each book. This is to avoid cumbersome experiences of reading and writing native and internalized Persian words; even in English, we do not use diacritics to distinguish how ‘u’ sounds differently in bus, busy, cute, or mouse.

The use of diacritics in the main text, following one or another transliteration system, poses its own challenges. The difficulties generated by a confusing and at times conflicting diversity of transliteration systems used today for Persian and Arabic do not in my view warrant making the reading and writing of the text itself cumbersome. In this age of the Internet, such diacritics also make online rendering of the texts, and digital searching for them, often challenging, if not impossible and unsuccessful. Moreover, at times, rare diacritics make the words in which they appear impossible to render online depending on browsers used, resulting in their being replaced by wrong or distorted words.

It is for the above reasons that in this series I will avoid using diacritics for the words transliterated in the main text, but will offer full diacritics for them in a glossary following the transliteration system explained in the appendix to each book. So, for instance, while in my proposed system رباعيّات is transliterated as Robāʿiyāt, in the main text I will simply render the same as Robaiyat. If خيام is fully transliterated as Khayyām, in the main text I simply render it as Khayyam. ʿOmar is simply rendered as Omar. All diacritics, including ʿein (ع) and hamzeh (ء) are omitted to simplify the renderings of the words (such as Arouzi, Ismaili, or Shafa), while the transliteration system as described in the appendix is used as a guide to make sure the Persian pronunciations of native and internalized words in Persian are rendered. As noted, for established words such as Isfahan, Iran, Islam, etc., I will just use the common form in the main text.

For substantive reasons, the word Rubaiyat will only be used when referring to the particular tradition arising from the FitzGeraldian and Western translation efforts, while I will use instead Robaiyat to distinguish the new tradition I hope to engender by advancing the new Khayyami studies as initiated in the present series.

Where it is needed in the main text, such as when sharing of transliterations of poetry, for the readers’ convenience I will include them in full transliteration next to the original Persian and my English translations in the main text itself.

Acknowledgments

Without the contributions of countless scholars and writers, past and present, in Iran and abroad, who have explored the life and works of Omar Khayyam over the many centuries, the conduct and results of this study would have been impossible. The list of these individuals is long, and I hope my specific engagements with some of their works throughout this series may serve as expressions of my deep appreciation for their valuable contributions.

I thank my wife Anna Beckwith for her patience and encouragements during the many decades it took me to conduct this research on Khayyam. I also thank Ramón Grosfoguel for his kind interest in my work, including that on Khayyam, and for inviting me to offer a seminar presentation on Khayyam in March 2011 at U.C. Berkeley. I also appreciate the interest Lewis R. Gordon has taken in my research in quantum sociological imagination.

I further thank the staff of the Interlibrary Loan at UMass Boston’s Healey Library for their professionalism and timely processing of my requests.

My sabbatical year (2010-11) after being granted tenure and promotion at UMass Boston allowed me to spend more focused time on earlier phases of this research. Ironically, the sabbatical gave me a sense of the enormity of the effort needed for this research, resulting in my decision to retire early, in Dec. 2013, from my academic position so as to devote full-time to this urgent study while also attending to the needs of my mother in Iran, who unfortunately passed away on the last day of the year 2020, from natural causes in old age.

What ultimately made this study possible have been the love, support, and sacrifices of my parents, Tayyebeh Tamjidi (1928-2020) and Mohammed (Ahad) Tamjidi (1930-2007). My only wish and hope is that this engagement with the immortal spirit of Omar Khayyam will keep the names and memories of both my parents, and my endless love for them, alive forever.

This series as a whole is dedicated, beside Omar Khayyam himself, to the memory of my mother and in celebration of the universe of love, search for justice, and spiritual curiosity she bequeathed to me. I have already shared, in an extended acknowledgement in my recent work Liberating Sociology: From Newtonian Toward Quantum Imaginations: Volume 1: Unriddling the Quantum Enigma (2020), her life’s story in the context of the broader history of contemporary Iran, so I refer interested readers to consult that writing for further insights into the motivations behind this series. It may suffice here again to say that this series is entirely a work of her life as well, as superposed with mine, in search of understanding by way of Omar Khayyam the enigma of our common human existence.

Despite her progressing Alzheimer’s in the last decade or so of her life, during which she became oddly a love poet reliving her younger years, Tayyebeh lived long enough to walk me through the last day of the calendar year 2020 into 2021. Her 94th birth day on March 20, 2021, would have fallen also on the last day of Iran’s calendar year and nominal century 1399 (SH), just a day before the 1400 SH Nowrooz holidays began. So, I see this book and series as also a Nowrooz gift from and to her as well.

Many sources on which this study has drawn are old, out of print, and freely available online. Other acknowledgments and credits are given in the text itself or in footnotes. I draw on others in the spirit of fair use for educational and research purposes.

Preface to Book 7: Recap from Prior Books of the Series

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination is a twelve-book series on the life and works of Omar Khayyam. Each book is independently readable, although it will be best understood as a part of the whole series.

In the overall series, I share the results of my longstanding research on Omar Khayyam, the enigmatic 11th/12th centuries Persian Muslim sage, philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, physician, writer, and poet from Neyshabour, Iran, whose life and works still remain behind a veil of deep mystery. The purpose of my research has been to find definitive answers to the many puzzles still surrounding Khayyam, especially regarding the existence, nature, and purpose of the Robaiyat in his life and works. To explore the questions posed in the series, I advance a new hermeneutic method of textual analysis, informed by what I call the quantum sociological imagination, to gather and study all the attributed philosophical, religious, scientific, and literary writings of Khayyam.

The first book of the series was subtitled New Khayyami Studies: Quantumizing the Newtonian Structures of C. Wright Mills’s Sociological Imagination for A New Hermeneutic Method. In the book, following a common preface and introduction to the series, I developed the quantum sociological imagination method framing my hermeneutic study in the series as a whole. In the prefatory note I explained the origins of this series and how the study is itself a moment in the trajectory of a broader research project. In the introduction, I described how centuries of Khayyami studies, especially during the last two, have reached an impasse in shedding light on his enigmatic life and works, especially his attributed Robaiyat.

The four chapters of the book were then devoted to developing the quantum sociological imagination as a new hermeneutic method framing the Khayyami studies in the series. The method builds, in an applied way, on the results of my recent work in the sociology of scientific knowledge, Liberating Sociology: From Newtonian Toward Quantum Imagination: Volume 1: Unriddling the Quantum Enigma (2020), where I explored extensively, in greater depth, and in the context of understanding the so-called quantum enigma, the Newtonian and quantum ways of imagining reality. In the first book of this series, I shared the findings of that research in summary amid new applied insights developed in relation to Khayyami studies.

In the first chapter, I raised a set of eight questions about the structure of C. Wright Mills’s sociological imagination as a potential framework for Khayyami studies. In the second chapter, I showed how the questions are symptomatic of Newtonian structures that still continue to frame Mills’s sociological imagination. In the third chapter, I explored how the sociological imagination can be reinvented to be more in tune with the findings of quantum science. In the last chapter, the implications of the quantum sociological imagination for devising a hermeneutic method for new Khayyam and Robaiyat studies were outlined. In conclusion, the findings of the first book of the Omar Khayyam’s Secret series were summarized.

The second book of the series was subtitled Khayyami Millennium: Reporting the Discovery and the Reconfirmation of the True Dates of Birth and Passing of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123). In the book, I laid down an essential foundation for the series by revisiting the unresolved questions surrounding the dates of birth and passing of Omar Khayyam.

Critically reexamining the manner in which Omar Khayyam’s birth horoscope as reported in Zahireddin Abolhassan Beyhaqi’s Tatemmat Sewan al-Hekmat (Supplement to the Chest of Wisdom) was used by Swāmi Govinda Tīrtha in his book The Nectar of Grace: Omar Khayyam’s Life and Works (1941) to determine Khayyam’s birth date, I uncovered a number of serious internal inconsistencies and factual inaccuracies that prevented Tīrtha (and, since then, other scholars more or less taking for granted his results) from arriving at a reliable date for Khayyam’s birth, hurling Khayyami studies into decades of confusion regarding Khayyam’s life and works. I then shared in the book the detailed account of my own discovery of Khayyam’s true date of birth for the first time, a finding that eluded Khayyami studies for centuries and is bound to revolutionize the studies for decades to come.

I then turned my attention to the task of definitively establishing the true date of passing of Omar Khayyam. Conducting an in-depth, superposed analysis of Beyhaqi’s Tatemmat Sewan el-Hekmat (Supplement to the Chest of Wisdom), Abdorrahman Khazeni’s Mizan ol-Hekmat (Balance of Wisdom), Nezami Arouzi’s Chahar Maqaleh (Four Discourses), and Yar Ahmad Rashidi Tabrizi’s Tarabkhaneh (House of Joy), amid other relevant texts, I succeeded in firmly reconfirming and further discovering, in a textually reliable way, not only the year, the season, the month, and the day, but even the most likely time of day at which the poet mathematician, astronomer, and calendar reformer died as a solar centenarian, completing his 102nd solar year age.

Strange was that these discoveries were made just in time as we approached the first solar millennium of Omar Khayyam’s birth date on June 10, AD 1021 (Gregorian), at sunrise of Neyshabour, Iran, and the ninth solar centennial of his passing on June 10, AD 1123 (Gregorian), on the eve also of his birthday, closing the circle of his life’s coming and going.

The third book of the series, simultaneously published with the two preceding books, was subtitled, Khayyami Astronomy: How Omar Khayyam’s Newly Discovered True Birth Date Horoscope Reveals the Origins of His Pen Name and Independently Confirms His Authorship of the Robaiyat.

Omar Khayyam’s true birth date horoscope, as newly discovered in this series, is comprised of a dazzling number of Air Triplicities sharing a vertex on a Sun-Mercury Cazimi point on the same Ascendant degree 18 of Gemini. Among other features, his Venus, Sextile with Moon, also plays a lifelong, secretively creative role to intentionally balance his chart. These features would not have escaped the attention of Omar Khayyam, a master astronomer and expert in matters astrological, no matter how much he embraced, doubted, or rejected astrological interpretations.

In the third book, conducting an in-depth hermeneutic analysis of Khayyam’s horoscope, I reported having discovered the origins of Khayyam’s pen name in his horoscope. The long-held myth that Khayyam was a parental name, even if true, in no way takes away from the new finding; it only adds to its intrigue.

My hermeneutic analysis of Khayyam’s horoscope in intersection with extant Khayyami Robaiyat also led me to discover an entirely neglected signature quatrain that I proved could not be from anyone but Khayyam, one that provides a reliably independent confirmation of his authorship of the Robaiyat. I also showed how another neglected quatrain reporting its poet to have aged to a hundred is from Khayyam. This means all the extant Khayyami quatrains are now in need of hermeneutic reevaluation.

My further study of a sample of fifty Khayyami Robaiyat led me to conclude that their poet definitively intended the poems to remain in veil, that they were considered to be a collection of interrelated quatrains and not sporadic separate quatrains written marginally in pastime, that they were meant to offer a life’s intellectual journey as in a book of life, that the poems’ critically nuanced engagement with astrology was not incidental but essential throughout the collection, and that, judging from the signature quatrain discovered, 1000 quatrains were intended to comprise the collection.

Oddly it appears that, after all, The Khayyam who stitched his tents of wisdom was a trope that had its origins in Omar Khayyam’s horoscope heavens.

The fourth book of the series was subtitled Khayyami Philosophy: The Ontological Structures of the Robaiyat in Omar Khayyam’s Last Written Keepsake Treatise on the Science of the Universals of Existence.

Having confirmed in the prior three books of the series the true dates of birth and passing of Omar Khayyam, his pen name origins, and his authorship of a robaiyat collection, in Book 4 I explored the origins, nature, and purpose of such a collection by applying the series’ quantum sociological imagination method to hermeneutically explore the ontological structures of the Robaiyat in Khayyam’s last written treatise on the universals of existence.

Khayyam’s treatise, found in the early 20th century and still largely ignored or misread, radically challenges the mythical narratives built over the centuries about him as one who thought existence is unknowable, having died not solving its riddles. Strangely, his treatise instead offers a logically coherent and brilliant worldview of someone who has found his answers as far as human existence is concerned. Khayyam even goes so far as confidently saying he hopes his peers would agree that his brief treatise is more useful than volumes.

Offering the Persian text and my new English translation of the treatise, I undertook in the fourth book a detailed clause-based hermeneutic study of the treatise. I also explored its broader intellectual and historical contexts by examining its relation to the book Savior from Error by Khayyam’s junior (by more than three decades) contemporary foe, Muhammad Ghazali, while questioning the long-held belief that the treatise was requested by and addressed to Fakhr ol-Molk, a son of the famous vizier Nezam ol-Molk.

I found instead that the treatise was written in AD 1095-96, a few years earlier than thought, for another son of Nezam ol-Molk, Moayyed ol-Molk, who served at the time Soltan Muhammad, Malekshah’s son. The treatise was intended as a philosophical foundation to move the post-Malekshah Iran in a more independent direction by way of influencing his son, Muhammad. Ghazali in his book, likely written to please Ahmad Sanjar (Malekshah’s younger son who disliked Khayyam) and his vizier at the time, Fakhr ol-Molk, anonymously chastised Khayyam as a philosopher, duplicitously feeding the cynical metaphors that some theologians and Sufis hurled at Khayyam down the centuries.

Khayyam’s treatise unveils his vision of existence as a participatory universe where the subject has objective status, shedding a new light on the ontological structures of the Robaiyat. His succession order thesis of existence is an alternative Islamic creationist-evolutionary worldview that offers a prescient quantum conceptualist vision of the universe as a unitary, relatively self-reliant, self-knowing, and self-creative, substance lovingly created by an absolutely good God in His own image. Existence is essentially good but, due to its good volitionally self-creative nature, can be potentially subject to incidental defects that are nevertheless knowable and curable to build both a spiritually fulfilling and a joyful life in this world. Other than God’s Necessary Existence there is no another world; judgment days, heavens, and hells are definitely real this-worldly, not other-worldly, existents. In Khayyam’s view, human existence can be what good we artfully make of it, starting here-and-now from our own personal selves in our this-worldly lifetimes. It is to creatively realize such an existence that the Robaiyat must have been intended.

The fifth book of the series, was subtitled Khayyami Theology: The Epistemological Structures of the Robaiyat in All the Philosophical Writings of Omar Khayyam Leading to His Last Keepsake Treatise.

It was devoted to an in-depth examination of all of Omar Khayyam’s philosophical treatises written before and leading to his last keepsake treatise on the science of the universals of existence, one I had examined already in depth in Book 4 of the series. The purpose of the study of these texts, applying the quantum hermeneutic method developed for the series, was to arrive at an understanding of the structures of the theological epistemology informing any collection of quatrains or Robaiyat Khayyam may have written in his life.

In the book, to understand the theological epistemology (or, way of knowing God) framing Khayyam’s Robaiyat as spread out in all his philosophical works, I offered the texts and my updated Persian and new English translations and analyses of six writings that preceded Khayyam’s last keepsake treatise on the universals of existence.

The six primary texts included: 1: Khayyam’s annotated Persian translation of Avicenna’s sermon in Arabic on God and creation; 2: Khayyam’s treatise in Arabic addressed to Nasawi (who I showed has been wrongly regarded as an Avicenna pupil) on the created world and worship duty; 3-5: Khayyam’s three treatises in Arabic (which I showed were all addressed to Abu Taher, to whom Khayyam also dedicated his treatise in algebra) that are separate chapters of a three-part treatise on existence on topics ranging from the necessity of contradiction, determinism, survival, attributes of existents, and the light of intellect on ‘existent’ as the subject matter of universal science; and 6: Khayyam’s treatise in Arabic addressed to Moshkavi (who I revealed was a supportive Shia intellectual) in response to three questions on soul’s survival, on the necessity of accidents, and on the nature of time.

In the book, it was shown that the most fruitful way of understanding Khayyam’s six texts is by regarding them as efforts made at defending his succession order thesis implicitly revealed when commenting on Avicenna’s sermon and finalized in his last keepsake treatise. The texts served to offer the theological epistemology behind Khayyam’s thesis, revealing his creative conceptualist view of existence that informed his poetic way of going about knowing God, creation, and himself within a unitary Islamic creationist-evolutionary worldview.

It was learned that Khayyam’s way of knowing God and existence is non-dualistic, non-atomistic, and unitary in worldview, allowing for subject-included objectivity, probabilistic determinism, transcontinuous (or ‘discontinuous’) creative causality, transdisciplinarity, and transculturalism; it thus fulfils in a prescient way all the eight attributes of the quantum vision (Tamdgidi 2020). Poetry is most conducive to unitary knowing, and subject-included objectivity must necessarily be self-reflective and thus engage intellective, emotional, and sensible modes of knowing. This explains why Khayyam transcended scholastic learning in favor of a poetic encounter with reality. What he meant by ‘Drunkenness,’ calling it the highest state of mind known to him, can thus be best understood as a unitary, quantum state of mind achieved by way of his poetry as a meditative art of self-purification (what he called tazkiyeh-ye nafs). The goal, metaphorically, is to move from a way of knowing things as divisible grapes to a pure and unitary way of knowing them as indivisible Wine—paralleling what we call today moving from chunky Newtonian toward unitary quantum visions of reality.

I posited that the key for entering Khayyam’s secret tent is realizing that what he primarily meant by ‘Wine’ in his Robaiyat was self-referentially his Robaiyat itself, a key openly hidden therein thanks to his theological epistemology. For him, the Robaiyat was a lifelong work on himself, serving also human spiritual awakening to its place and duty in the succession order of God’s creation. It also served his aspiration for a lasting soul. He knew the now-proven worth of his secret magnum opus, and that is why he so much praised his ‘Wine.’

The sixth book of the series, was subtitled Khayyami Science: The Methodological Structures of the Robaiyat in All the Scientific Works of Omar Khayyam.

In Book 6, I shared the Arabic texts, my new English translations (based on others’ or my new Persian translations, also included in the volume), and hermeneutic analyses of five extant scientific writings of Khayyam: a treatise in music on tetrachords; a treatise on balance to measure the weights of precious metals in a body composed of them; a treatise on dividing a circle quadrant to achieve a certain proportionality; a treatise on classifying and solving all cubic (and lower degree) algebraic equations using geometric methods; and a treatise on explaining three postulation problems in Euclid’s book Elements. Khayyam wrote three other non-extant scientific treatises on nature, geography, and music, while a treatise in arithmetic is differently extant since it influenced the work of later Islamic and Western scientists. His work in astronomy on solar calendar reform is also differently extant in the calendar used in Iran today. A short tract on astrology attributed to him has been neglected.

I studied the scientific works in relation to Khayyam’s own theological, philosophical, and astronomical views. The study revealed that Khayyam’s science was informed by a unifying methodological attention to ratios and proportionality. So, likewise, any quatrain he wrote cannot be adequately understood without considering its place in the relational whole of its parent collection. Khayyam’s Robaiyat is found to be, as a critique of fatalistic astrology, his most important scientific work in astronomy rendered in poetic form.

Studying Khayyam’s scientific works in relation to those of other scientists out of the context of his own philosophical, theological, and astronomical views, would be like comparing the roundness of two fruits while ignoring that they are apples and oranges. Khayyam was a relational, holistic, and self-including objective thinker, being systems and causal-chains discerning, creative, transdisciplinary, transcultural, and applied in method. He applied a poetic geometric imagination to solving algebraic problems and his logically methodical thinking did not spare even Euclid of criticism. His treatise on Euclid unified numerical and magnitudinal notions of ratio and proportionality by way of broadening the notion of number to include both rational and irrational numbers, transcending its Greek atomistic tradition.

I argued that Khayyam’s classification of algebraic equations, being capped at cubic types, tells of his applied scientific intentions that can be interpreted, in the context of his own Islamic philosophy and theology, as an effort in building an algebraic and numerical theory of everything that is not only symbolic of body’s three dimensions, but also of the three-foldness of intellect, soul, and body as essential types of a unitary substance created by God to evolve relatively on its own in a two-fold succession order of coming from and going to its Source. Although the succession order poses limits, as captured in the astrological imagination, existence is not fatalistic. Khayyam’s conceptualist view of the human subject as an objective creative force in a participatory universe allows for the possibility of human self-determination and freedom depending on his or her self-awakening, a cause for which the Robaiyat was intended. Its collection would be a balanced unity of wisdom gems ascending from multiplicity toward unity using Wine and various astrological, geometrical, numerical, calendrical, and musical tropes in relationally classified quatrains that follow a logical succession order.

The present volume, the seventh book of the series, is subtitled Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability. In this book I will share my updated edition of Omar Khayyam’s Persian book Nowrooznameh (The Book on Nowrooz), and for the first time my new English translation of it, followed by my careful analysis of its text. I will then visit recent findings about the possible contribution of Khayyam to the design of Isfahan’s North Dome. The texts and my Persian (where needed) and English translations and analyses of Khayyam’s other Arabic and Persian poems will then follow. Next, I will study the debates surrounding the attributability of the Robaiyat to Omar Khayyam, before offering the book’s conclusion.

Abstract

This essay titled Book 7 Preface: Recap From Prior Books of the Series, is an opening to the book Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability, which is the seventh volume of the twelve-book series Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, authored by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi. It offers a summary of prior books of the series.

In the overall series, Tamdgidi shares the results of his research on Omar Khayyam, the enigmatic 11th/12th centuries Persian Muslim sage, philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, physician, writer, and poet from Neyshabour, Iran, whose life and works still remain behind a veil of deep mystery. The purpose of his research has been to find definitive answers to the many puzzles still surrounding Khayyam, especially regarding the existence, nature, and purpose of the Robaiyat in his life and works. To explore the questions posed in the series, he advances a new hermeneutic method of textual analysis, informed by what he calls the quantum sociological imagination, to gather and study all the attributed philosophical, religious, scientific, and literary writings of Khayyam.

In the first book of the series, subtitled New Khayyami Studies: Quantumizing the Newtonian Structures of C. Wright Mills’s Sociological Imagination for A New Hermeneutic Method, following a common preface and introduction to the series, Tamdgidi developed the quantum sociological imagination method framing his hermeneutic study in the series.

The second book of the series, subtitled Khayyami Millennium: Reporting the Discovery and the Reconfirmation of the True Dates of Birth and Passing of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123), was dedicated to exploring in depth the hitherto findings and controversies surrounding the dates of birth and passing of Omar Khayyam. Therein, Tamdgidi discovered the true dates of birth and passing of Omar Khayyam.

The third book of the series, subtitled Khayyami Astronomy: How the Newly Discovered True Birth Horoscope of Omar Khayyam Reveals the Origins of His Pen Name and Independently Confirms His Authorship of the Robaiyat, was devoted to a close examination of Omar Khayyam’s newly discovered true birth date horoscope, and what information its hermeneutic study can offer for understanding Khayyam’s life and works, especially the origin, nature, and the purpose of his Robaiyat. Therein, Tamdgidi discovered the horoscope origins of Omar Khayyam’s pen name and independently confirmed his authorship of a collection of robaiyat.

The fourth book of the series was subtitled Khayyami Philosophy: The Ontological Structures of the Robaiyat in Omar Khayyam’s Last Written Keepsake Treatise on the Science of the Universals of Existence. It was devoted to an in-depth examination of Omar Khayyam’s treatise Resaleh dar Elm-e Kolliyat-e Vojood (Treatise on the Science of the Universals of Existence) which was written originally in Persian for keepsake toward the end of his life.

The fifth book of the series was subtitled Khayyami Theology: The Epistemological Structures of the Robaiyat in All the Philosophical Writings of Omar Khayyam Leading to His Last Keepsake Treatise. It was devoted to an in-depth examination of all of Omar Khayyam’s philosophical treatises written before his last keepsake treatise on the science of the universals of existence, one Tamdgidi examined already in depth in Book 4 of the series. The purpose of the study of these texts, applying the quantum hermeneutic method developed for the series, was to arrive at an understanding of the structures of the theological epistemology informing any collection of quatrains or Robaiyat Khayyam may have written in his life.

The sixth book of the series, subtitled Khayyami Science: The Methodological Structures of the Robaiyat in All the Scientific Works of Omar Khayyam, was devoted to a hermeneutic study of all of Khayyam’s scientific works. The study was undertaken for the specific purpose of gaining hermeneutic insights into the methodological structures of Khayyam’s scientific thinking that can shed light on his literary works, especially his poetry writing.

In the book, Tamdgidi shared the Arabic texts, his new English translations (based on others’ or his new Persian translations, also included in the volume), and hermeneutic analyses of five extant scientific writings of Khayyam: a treatise in music on tetrachords; a treatise on balance to measure the weights of precious metals in a body composed of them; a treatise on dividing a circle quadrant to achieve a certain proportionality; a treatise on classifying and solving all cubic (and lower degree) algebraic equations using geometric methods; and a treatise on explaining three postulation problems in Euclid’s book Elements. Khayyam wrote three other non-extant scientific treatises on nature, geography, and music, while a treatise in arithmetic is differently extant since it influenced the work of later Islamic and Western scientists. His work in astronomy on solar calendar reform is also differently extant in the calendar used in Iran today. A short tract on astrology attributed to him has been neglected.

The present volume, the seventh book of the series, is subtitled Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan’s North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability. In this book Tamdgidi will share his updated edition of Omar Khayyam’s Persian book Nowrooznameh, and for the first time his new English translation of it, followed by his careful analysis of its text. He will then visit recent findings about the possible contribution of Khayyam to the design of Isfahan’s North Dome. The texts and his Persian (where needed) and English translations and analyses of Khayyam’s other Arabic and Persian poems will then follow. Next, he will study the debates surrounding the attributability of the Robaiyat to Omar Khayyam, before offering the book’s conclusion.

Introduction to Book 7: Tracing the Robaiyat in Omar Khayyam’s Artwork

This seventh book of the Omar Khayyam’s Secret series is devoted to a careful study of Omar Khayyam’s works of art. I use the expression works of art broadly since the works may contain more than writings in poetry or prose, and include possible contributions to architecture, for instance, to which a chapter in this book will be devoted.

We are now at a turning point of studying Khayyam’s writings in this series. It has to do with the extent of controversy surrounding the attributability to him of the works being studied. In the preceding books of this series, the primary works of Khayyam that we studied have been universally regarded as having been written by him. These included Khayyam’s scientific treatises studied in Book 6 and philosophical and theological writings studied in Books 4 and 5, following an effort I made in establishing his true dates of birth and passing on the basis of a detailed hermeneutic analysis of his birth chart or horoscope as an expression of his astronomical and astrological knowledge (in Books 2 and 3); although Khayyam’s birth horoscope has been questioned in one of its aspects related to a Gemini degree, there has been no controversy surrounding the attributability of the horoscope itself to Omar Khayyam, as shared by Beyhaqi in Tatemmat Sewan el-Hekmat (Supplement to the Chest of Wisdom). The above followed Book 1, which I devoted to introducing the method for conducting research in this series as a whole, framed in what I have called the quantum sociological imagination.

In this Book 7 of the series, however, we will be studying works whose authorship attributions to Khayyam have been more or less disputed, justifiably or not. Least disputed are several Arabic and Persian poems (other than the Robaiyat) attributed to him, although one may find questions by one or another scholar about one or another poem’s attributability. The attributability of the book generally known as Nowrooznameh (The Book on Nowrooz) has been questioned over the decades, even though Khayyam’s name as its author appears in its main extant manuscript; however, the views of those who have doubted its attributability to him have increasingly fallen on troubled grounds, as we shall examine in this book. Furthermore, I am devoting a chapter in this book to an interesting new development in recent decades about the possible contributions of Omar Khayyam to the architectural design of the North Dome, a part of the Masjed