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Ghiyath al-Din Abul Fateh Omar Ibn
Ibrahim Al-Khayyam was born at Nishapur,
the provincial capital of Khurassan,
(now Iran) around year 1044 A.D. He died
at the same town when he was 85 years
old.
Omar Al Khayyam was a Muslim Persian
mathematician, astronomer, philosopher,
physician and poet.
“Khayyam” means "the
tent-maker" in the Arabic language,
most probably he was called by this
name, because of his father’s
profession.
Omar Al Khayyam wrote about his own name
saying;
"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 for nothing! "
Although he is considered a Persian, it
has also been said that he could have
belonged to the “Khayyami” tribe of
Arab origin who might have settled in
Persia.
There are not so much details about his
early life, except for the fact that he
was educated at Nishapur, where he was
born and where he lived. He also spent
most of his life in Samarqand.
Omar Al Khayyam devoted all his time to
the search for knowledge, he traveled to
the great centers of learning,
Samarqand, Bukhara, Balkh and Isphahan
seeking knowledge and there he exchanged
views with other scholars.
His major accomplishments were in
Algebra, he made early trials to
classify most algebraic equations,
including the third degree equations and
he also offered solutions for a number
of them.
His book “Maqalat fi al-Jabr wa al-Muqabila”
is a masterpiece on algebra and has
great importance in its development.
Omar Al Khayyam is also considered to be
the first to find the binomial theorem
and determine binomial coefficients.
In geometry, he studied generalities of
Euclid and contributed to the theory of
parallel lines.
Omar Al Khayyam was also a renowned
astronomer and a physician. He developed
primitive astronomic tables, and
invented methods for the accurate
determination of specific gravity, etc.
The Saljuq Sultan, Malikshah Jalal
al-Din, invited him to the new
observatory at Ray around 1074 and
assigned him the task of determining a
correct solar calendar.
Al Khayyam introduced a calendar that
was remarkably accurate, and was named
as “Al-Tarikh-al-Jalali”. It had an
error of one day in 3770 years and was
thus even superior to the Georgian
calendar (error of 1 day in 3330 years).
In metaphysics, he wrote three books
“Risala Dar Wujud” and the recently
discovered “Nauruznamah”.
Besides science and Mathematics, Al
Khayyam was also a well-known poet.
Although he wrote a number of important
mathematical and scientific studies, Al
Khayyam's fame as a scientist has been
greatly outweighed in the West by the
popularity of his “Rubaiyat”,
epigrammatic verse quatrains. He is
thought to have written about a thousand
and four-line verses.
He was best known in the Western world
in 1839, when Edward Fitzgerald
published an English translation of his
“Rubaiyat”.
This book has since become one of the
most popular classics in the world of
literature. Although the “Rubaiyat”
was translated form its original
language into English, it conveyed the
complicated mystical and philosophical
message of Al Khayyam. This proves the
wealth of his rich thought.
Al Khayyam wrote many other books and
monographs, out of which, only 10 books
and thirty monographs have been
identified. Of these, four are about
mathematics, three physics, three
metaphysics, one about algebra and
another about geometry.
Al Khayyam, who could be described as a
“man in despair”, was always hiding
his sorrows behind a smile. He pursued
the truth through his whole life. He
made great contributions to science,
astronomy, poerty, philosophy, and
mathematics.
The outcome of his restless search for
knowledge, could not be expressed better
than in one of his quatrains:
Our great wide world - a
piece of dust. All human knowledge -
words.
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