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Ghiyath al-Din Abul Fateh Omar Al-Khayyam

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;

 

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:

 

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