Omar Khayyam (Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu’l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī), born in Nishapur, Khorasan, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire, in 1048, was a Persian polymath, philosopher and initiate, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy and Persian poetry. Intellectually Khayyam considered himself a student of Avicenna (Ibn Sina). There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt). This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world in a translation by Edward FitzGerald (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859), which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the last part of XIX century.
