^B00:00:02 >> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. ^M00:00:24. >> So good afternoon. Good afternoon everyone. I'm Mary Jane Deeb, Chief of the African Middle East Division and I would like to welcome you all to our reading room to our division and to this very special program that we're hosting today. As many of you know, we have a division that has three sections. A break section, the [inaudible] section and the African section. We cover 78 countries. And our collections are intervernacular [assumed spelling], the ones that we are custodians of. But of course, the collections that cover the countries, our 78 countries, can be found all over the library, whether it's in the map division, whether it's in the lower library, whether it's in the general collection, of course or western languages. But you will find that our division also attempts, not only to collect and to serve the collections, but also to bring many of the people who have done research and used our materials and written about the countries to come and talk about their work and their research and in order to enlighten us all about the regions the countries the subjects that they cover. And today is a case in point. I'm absolutely delighted that we have Dr. Mehdi Aminrazavi here who is a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Mary Washington. He'll be talking about his book, "The One of Wisdom," and the book is going to be available for purchase later and he has kindly agreed to sign the books. So I would like now to have Persian, our reference library who is doing all kinds of very exciting projects here in this division introduce the speaker. So Hirad Dinavari. >> Thank you very much Mary Jane. Truly, thank you very much to everyone for coming. It's in the middle of the day. I realize it's not easy too get to us especially for folks that have come far away. Dr. Mehdi Aminrazavi, himself has driven from Fredericksburg, which is quite a distance away. Mehdi Aminrazavi was born in 1957 in the city of Mashhad in Iran. Following the completion of his high school he came to the U.S. in 1976, where he attended the University of Washington in Seattle. Having earned his bachelor's degree in Urban Planning and Philosophy, his master's degree in Philosophy, he continued his graduate work at Temple University in Philadelphia where he received his master's degree in Comparative Religion and a doctorate in Philosophy of Religion. Dr. Aminrazavi's area of specilizations are Islamic studies, Islamic philosophy, theology, and mysticism, philosophy of religion and medieval philosophy. Dr. Aminrazavi has published over 12 books and 50 articles. Among his major works we can mention, Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination, The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia. The Wine of Wisdom, the Life and Poetry of Philosophy of Omar Khayyam. Islamic Philosophy in Theology. A textbook reader in two volumes and a five volume work entitled An Anthology of Philosopy in Persia, co-editted with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, which we all know at George Washington University. He is currently a professor of philosophy and religion. Director of the Middle Eastern studies program and codirector of the Leidecker Center for Asian Studies at the University of Mary Washington. Without taking more time I'm going to ask Dr. Aminrazavi to come up here and take over. Thank you very much again. [ Applause ] >> Thank you very much. First and foremost, let me thank the Library of Congress, our dear friends Dinavari, Mary Jane and all the guests who took the time to come to Washington. It's not easy to get here, to park here and to be here. Speaking from experience. So I'm grateful to you all lovers of Omar Khayyam. It was -- this room brings back a great deal of memory. It was actually here that I first was inspired by the idea of doing -- by doing work on Omar Khayyam. In my brief remarks, I think I have about 45 minutes or so and then we'll need 15 to 20 minutes for Q and A session. I'm going to devote just a few minutes to the life and works of Omar Khayyam. That's by in large, is part of public knowledge you can easily access that so I won't put much emphasis on it. But something has to be said about the remarkable life of this man. And then I'll address the central question, which I have tried to unravel and unearth in this book. I was sitting here many, many years ago when, in the beginning stages of this book when I realized that there Are 11,000 books on Omar Khayyam and so who would want to write yet another book on the subject matter? And that's in all languages in the world. So I was prompted by a particular riddle, as it were, and my investigation into that led to other discoveries and that was the fundamental irony or contradiction that exists between the Ruba'iyyat of Omar Khayyam and his less known philosophical works and I'll address that. In the Ruba'iyyat, we read the work of a poet who is stoic, who appears to be promoting wine and love and sex and sort of a carpe diem attitude and then when you read his philosophical works, they are very, very serious. He writes from the perspective of a Muslim philosopher and so naturally one tends to ask the question of how do we account for this contradiction. I'll come to that, but first and foremost, Omar Khayyam was born and raised about an hour and a half from where I was born and raised. He is from the city of Nishapur in northeastern part of Iran and I'm from the city of Mashhad and as a child we used to make numerous trips to his beautiful mausoleum and I still remember the beautiful Ruba'iyyat which was -- which would be resited in the Khorasani -- the old Khorasani accent. Omar Khayyam was born in the 11th century. He was born in the city of Nishapur. The word Khayyam means tent maker. His father in all likelihood was a tent maker. And just to say one particular incredible issue about his early life, Omar Khayyam was about five and a half years old when he asked his father to let him go to school. He wanted to study and the father said we are a poor family. We can't afford it. You are the son of a tent maker. You will be continuing in that tradition. And so Omar insisted and finally he takes him to the local emom [assumed spelling] of the mosque and says my son wants to study -- study, become literate. And he with a condescending attitude he said what do you know about knowledge? About reading? About writing? Why do you need it? And he says I know a great deal about it. I know the Qur'an, for example. The emom laughs at him and says what do you know about him about the Qur'an? Read something. And he says why don't you tell me which verse from which chapter do you want me to read and I will do so. So the emom who thought he was joking says such and such a verse from such and such chapter and the young Omar recites it. And another verse and another verse and another verse and the emom is said to have fainted. When he recovers, he says who is this child? Where does he come from? How did you learn this? Omar says it's very simple. My father has been taking me to the mosques since I was a very, very young boy, two or three years old and I listened to the resiting of the Qur'an and I memorized it. ^M00:10:00 He had incredible memory, a memory that served him well for the rest of his life. Omar Khayyam goes through several teachers usually lasting about two years. At the end of every two or three years the teacher asks his father, tells his father that there's nothing else I can teach this child, take him somewhere else. So he goes up and up and up and finally he is allowed to sit and benefit from the same tutors that the children of nobility at the court were benefiting because of his outstanding intellect. Omar Khayyam is now 16 years old. He says there was nothing else to read in Horasan [assumed spelling] at this Nishapur area. He travels. He goes to Herot [assumed spelling]. Benefits from the library. Comes back to Nishapur and then he makes a series of trips which I'm going to just summarize. He goes to the city of Ray near two days Tehran. He goes to Estahan [assumed spelling] where he meets with the [foreign language] Grand Basheer and Chamberlain of the Saju [assumed spelling] Empire. He is asked to stay at the court and become a court philosopher, scientist. He refuses to do that. Then he is offered to become the governor of Farhasan [assumed spelling] he refuses that as well. Then he the asked to become the chief judge of Farhasan, which he refuses again. He says in that capacity, I will have to pass sentences of all kinds, harsh sentences and I'm not the type of person. This also bares testament to the fact that Omar Khayyam was well versed fep in jurisprudence, Islamic jurisprudence. He was not the antireligious person, which so many people have made him to be. He is referred to [speaking foreign language] Islam and all sorts of religious titles, which means he was well versed in religious sciences as well. So they asked him what do you want? And Omar was intelligent enough to say give me stipend so I can be a scholar and devote the rest of my life in scholarship. He goes back to Nishapur. They grant him an apple orchard. A beautiful one apparently in a town in a village near Nishapur, named shadyah, which was leveled during Mongols about ten years ago Iranian government began to excavate That. I personally visited the area that was excavated. It's about the size of this hall, maybe even a little less and you see homes and reminiscent of huts, which Omar liked to use as an imagery. Omar lives to be a very old man. We don't know exactly when he died but in one of his poems he says, I am 72 years old and I have learned that I -- I have come to know that I know nothing. The famous Socratic code. So let me move on from his life, which was both remarkable in the scientific sense but not particularly eventful. And then comes the major issue and that is Omar Khayyam's writings. He writes 11 or 12 books depending on how we divide them. One of them is had geographic. It's not his. A triotus on the reality of no rules, which is filled with mistakes. It is definitely not his. Probably one of his students wrote it and it talks about [speaking foreign language] rituals and so on. It is entirely possible that Omar Khayyam's father was his [foreign language] and Omar Khayyam was a convert. But we do know that he knew some [foreign language] That also he employed later on in the convening of the calendar. How much, we don't know but probably some. Omar Khayyam writes five -- five of his treatises are on mathematics. Algebra, non-nucledian, geometry, calculus. He invents a geometric way of solving problems of calculus which is unique to him and so there are purely scientific. There is nothing philosophical about that. Then five of his works, treatises, are philosophical in nature and they treat a variety of philosophical questions from the question of existence, being, essence, accident. Traditional ice tealon problems, commentaries on emanation and he has one treatise on existence of proof on the existence of God and one treatise on the problem of the theodicy or the problem of evil. All of them are written in Arabic except one and they are very, very much written in the style of abasinner or ebbenseno[assumed spelling]. He tells us he considers himself to be a student of abasinner. Time wise it's not possible. He must have lived an extra 33 years if he were to be a student of abasinner. But in all likelihood, he was a student of the student of the best student of abasinner which was Babanyarr[assumed spelling]. And several of his biographers have alluded to that. When I was -- when I checked out a single volume from Mr. Hooradi who is no longer here and these were unedited. They were not very legible, these five philosophical treatises were very, very brief. Omar Khayyam wrote very, very brief. He did not like to lecture publicly. He did not like to accept students. They told him that he was an old grumpy man who did not like to share his knowledge with others. There are reasons for that and I'll allude to that. He partially explains that. Let me read why I think he was reluctant to share his knowledge with others. I won't read too many of these poems in Persian. I know some of you are Persian speakers. A couple of them I do, but I'll translate it. [ Speaking in Persian ]. >> The secrets which my book of love has bread can not be told for fear of loss of head. Since none is fit to learn or cares to know, it's better all my thoughts remain unsaid. He kept a very, very private number of students around him. Five, all in all. And I'll explain why he liked the secrecy so much. So now we come to the real heart and soul of my book and that is the number of rubaiyat quatrains that are considered to be authentic, there's a major problem on the question of authenticity of Omar Khayyam's rubaiyat, which I have not dealt with extensively in this book because part of the 11,000 books that have been written on him in the last two centuries have dealt with that. It's a question for masters of literature. But the number of authentic literature are estimated to be anywhere from 12 to 72, even though a Hindu scholar by the name of Buvinda has gathered 1300 of these rubaiyats which he attributes to him but they are most definitely not authentic. These rubaiyats when you read them, they question almost every facet of religion. I'm a little hesitant to say questions exist tense of God but pokes at God. How can God's justice, God's fairness, victims of -- religion tenements of faith, hell, heaven. He really loves to poke fun of hell and heaven. The hoories, the virgins that are waiting for us and so on and so forth. So there is a systematic -- I call it sarcastic deconstructionism of religion through his rubaiyat and whether we take^M00:20:00the 12 authentic ones or the 12, 1300 unauthentic ones there's a family resemblance amongst all of them, and that is a criticism of the central tenants of Islam. He does not question the existence of God but he does question God's justice. Now, then we shift to this other little genre, philosophical genre. We read them. They are very brief. The shortest one is about three and a half page. The longest is about 12. And when you read them they all begin with the standard way that Muslim philosophers begin a treatises [ Speaking Muslim. ] In the name of God most merciful and most compassionate. He uses several moronic verses in there and then he offers his praise and then he ends. So if you didn't know it's Omar Khayyam that's written this, you'd think this was [foreigh language] a sin of, [foreign language], one of the later philosophers and so on. So how do we reconcile this discrepancy? He was speaking with two hats. It was almost intellectual schizophrenia. There must be some way to explain this. There is one theory proposed many years ago by professor [ Inaudible ] What proposed the idea of several Omar Khayyams. He is right. There were four men living at the same time but the name Khayyam or Khayyami and one of them was a poet. And so one theory says that Omar Khayyam never wrote these rubaiyats. That's one. The second one says that he wrote them but he didn't publicize them for, as he said, fear of losing his head. But I have come up with a different theory, which explains how to account for the discrepancy for the irony for the outright contradiction in the writings of one person. All right. For that, I became a student of history for a while and I read sociopolitical context of his time. Omar Khayyam's time was very much, I neither want to politicize this lecture nor is this the place for it, but there are a great deal of analogies between Omar Khayyam's time in which we live and what's happening in my native land of Iran. The period is 12th century. Sal juice [assumed spelling]. Sal juice are ruling Iran. Nothing wrong with being Turks but it becomes a problem if you're trying to rule Persians. So these are Turkish tribes from central Asia who are ruling over Persia and they need to justify and consolidate their position, they need the backing of the orthodox elements. If you lived in the first four centuries of Islamic calendar, the word philosophy, theology, intellectual sciences was a highly praised phrase or concept. People like [ Inaudible ] Some of the early they were all highly respected. And then comes the 5th and 6th and hurry in which we have a complete shift of intellectual paradigm. Now the fundamentalist take over. Now the coming of the orthodox Suni sa juice when the Islamic empire was entering into it as survival mode against the crusades, intellectual sciences became a bad word. I have always analogized that the impact of crusade on Islamic world was like 911 on America. After 911 all the fuzzy headed intellectuals were pushed aside and the generals and hardliners rightly so came to the forefront and so at a time when empire wanted to not only consolidate this position in Persia and its territories in its empire but also has a big fight with the crusade, intellect philosophers theologians, let's sit around and talk about these issues, they were sort of moved aside. In fact, being a philosopher was a bad word. Omar Khayyam was accused of being a philosopher. Two centuries later he would be rewarded by the king for that but he has to defend him. In rubaiyat says a philosopher I am, opponents erroneously say, God knows I am not who they say. Why I am in this sorrow layden nest, I know not who and why I am nor why I should stay. So they furthermore issue a [ Indiscernible ] Religious edict against him. To prove he's a good Muslim. He goes to ma kick and he comes back and it gives him a certain degree of immunity. So Omar Khayyam a mathematician, astronomer, rationalist, philosopher, who appreciated the rationalistic legacy and tradition of the Islamic civilization. The legacy that brought Islam to its golden era from Andelucia all the way to Persia and to the mathematics of [ Inaudible ] To medical discoveries of and so on, it was all accomplished civilizations thrive if or when they are rational people in charge of it. And Omar Khayyam was witnessing, witnessing the decline of rationalism through out the Islamic war. He was angry. In fact, they were, they were -- what I did -- one of the things I found which was incredibly exciting were to have found all the edicts which conservative clerics had issued against all sorts of things. Mathematics, astronomy, even medicine was considered to be meddling in the affairs of God. There was -- if I can, if I can find that -- they even came with a -- so [speaking foreign language] one of the major jurists said philosophers are heretics. [ Speaking foreign language] another major jurist rejected logic and astronomy. Asolly in the first chapter of the famous Ali he control in the construction of religion sciences, rejected mathematics and geometry and said from all that, enough is permissible to calculate religious taxes. The rest are not necessary. And they came up with a saying a profit allegedly said the following. In medicine there is no benefit. In geometry, there is no truth. Natural sciences are heretical those who believe in such are heretics. This is not authentic -- so Omar Khayyam is living at a time where the dark ages of Islamic civilization is beginning. He is upset. He is angry and on one hand if he were to write about it, he would lose his head. On the other hand, as a respectable intellectual he can't stand by and let the alter write, dictate and drag Islamic civilization to its dark ages. He decides to follow a two track policy that, which was the only thing he could have done. Here is a glass of water. He tries to defend rationalism and by doing so, tries to revive the tradition, the par [speaking foreign language] pathetics so philosophically he writes in that tradition. He defends logic. He defends rationalism, he defends the first master being Aristotelian he does so in a very, very condensed but ^M00:30:00skillful way. And so he can get away with that. Philosophy was looked down upon but still you could get away with it. But then, what about criticizing other aspects of the dark ages, which was falling or befalling upon Islamic empire. Well he couldn't write about it. He would have been killed. He couldn't have talked about it. And so on one hand he lived a semi hermetic life which shielded him from the public and I'll say a few words about that. And then on the second mode of communication, second [ Inaudible ] When he adopted poetry. Poetry in all likelihood composed and recited to his students but did not write them. And his students, in all likelihood wrote it. Also teaching, it's a traditional Persian way of teaching that professors, masters who walk into a classroom they often use poetry. Poetry to traditional Persian culture is like baseball to American culture. You just at one time or another you have to get involved and so use it. And so our teachers from K through 12 always would throw a few poems to address this and that issue. So Omar Khayyam, first of all used quatrains, rubaiyats, which is the shortest version of Persian poetry. It contests of four parts. It's designed to deliver a message, kind of in a punch message and go. These are much, much longer. You can't just sort of touch and go so to speak so he chooses the shortest version of it and he begins to treat issues that were of concern to the two intellectual camps at a time. In the 12-century, we had a major, major debate between the fundamentalists and the modernists. Exactly the kind of discourse we have in just about every Islamic country in the world. You know, in Egypt we have [ Inaudible ] Came to power and the demonstrations for them. Demonstrations against them so the two intellectual paradigm at the time Omar Khayyam and Faith-based theologians. Now Faith based theologians had the upper hand. In fact, the largest center offish ride learning was just about a few hundred feet literally from where Omar Khayyam lived and died. The greatest master of them, two of the greatest master of them, one was due say me, [ Inaudible ] And the other one [ Inaudible ] Were both living within a few hundred feet from Omar Khayyam. But ironically, neither Khayyam new any of them nor any of the masters new Omar Khayyam, at least biographers said nothing about them. Duevaney had a major, major school it's said that he had several-hundred students all of whom were very, very orthodox theologians and yet Omar Khayyam managed to live in the shadow of orthodoxy without having been harassed by them. So you have to -- you have to lay low. You have to remain aloof, you have to write in very, very cryptic way, which his philosophical writings are and then the best thing you want to do if you want to criticize religion, do it in a poetic form and don't write it down, in the oral tradition and that's precisely how rubaiyat came to be. I'm going to read a few of these so you get a taste for his criticisms. And these are not, not random. These are questions, which were being debated publicly between the rationalists and the fundamentalists. One of the questions was the question of certainty. A Muslim who is not certain of the truth of religion, will go to hell and so Khayyam says [ In foreign language. ] ye do not grasp the truth but ye grope. Why waste in life and sit in doubtful hope? Be aware and hold forever holy name from trooper sane in death or slope. One of the things I did in this book was to find all the intellectual issues that mattered to both sides. If you make a list of them and then I made a list of all the authentic quatrains, rubaiyats and tried to match them. Incredibly they actually came together. Omar Khayyam was responding through poetry to a specific issues of concern between the two camps, so to speak. He, by today's standard would be a modernist, a rationalist who was trying to respond at least poetically, rationally to issues of contention between the two. So, of course, there is the question of life after death. One of the central issues that a Muslim must accept on the basis of faith is the existence of paradise an hell and so on and so forth. And on that, Omar Khayyam was roughly about 20 authentic verses and several inauthentic ones who mocks this concept. A none, the bias people would advise that as we die, we rise up fools or wise. It's for this cause we keep with lover and wine, for in the end would same we hope to rise. In another one he says in paradise our Angels as men throe and fountains with pure wine and honey flow. If these bee lawful in the woe to come, may I not love the like down here below? All right. We see, we see a large number of poems that goes through the ash right sort of the heart of ash right thinking and tries to tear them apart. There's the question of God created us and there is a purpose for that and of course, you know, there is an end in site and so on on the other side. So which he says, I'm enlightens race of humankind, ye are a nothing, bell on empty wind. Ye a mere nothing hovering in the abyss, a void before you and a void behind. And so on, we don't have time for me to go through all of them, but my humble contribution to studies as we're approaching to quarter to 12, we have 45 minutes. Is that correct? I want to stick to the time frame. My humble contribution to Khayyam studies has been to unlock the mystery of the rubaiyat, above and beyond their beauty. Traditionally, the rubaiyat, especially a translation is read not only for its ingenious translation, the beauty of the language but it also addressed human condition. The problems all humans university experience. Pain and Joy and fear and death and so on. So that of course is there. There are enduring questions in which Omar Khayyam has wrestled with but there is also a social political context, which has been neglected.^M00:40:00 Namely Omar Khayyam did not get up one day and say why didn't I write poetry? There were reasons. There were social reasons, political reasons. Closing of the Islamic mind, as it were. The collapsing of the empire. The beginning of the dark ages. The decline of rationalism. So this was Omar Khayyam's way of defending the legacy, the golden ages of Islamic empire. That with which Islam was turned from the religion of bedwinds to an empire which thrived as you all know produced some of the most exquisite examples of art and literature and philosophy and so on. In two minutes I want to talk about a chapter of my book, which ended up being the largest chapter and I didn't expect it at all. And hopefully that will become a book unto itself. And that was the impact of Omar Khayyam in the west. I was aware of Omar Khayyam club of London. I began to do some reading about Omar Khayyam club of London but then soon I realized that not too far after its formation, right around 1832, Omar Khayyam Club came to America. It went to New England. It was established in young town, Massachusetts and then a large number of Omarians poets began to pop up And the country and a genre began to take place in America as Omarians. So Omarians club we had in Georgetown, which I couldn't find anymore. Omar Khayyam was placed by the likes of emmerson New England trance dentalises. I'm doing a book on that called [ Inaudible ] American literary masters which will be published by Suni Press. So Omar Khayyam because the champion of humanism in North America and was labeled as the antichrist in the south. I have lots and lots of notes, which I want to turn that into a book called Omar Khayyam in America. That will be a lecture five years from now. Thank you. >>[ Applause ] >> Thank you again Dr. Mehdi Aminrazavi. I want to thank everyone again for being here. If you have questions feel free to ask but just be cognizant of the fact by speaking you are giving us permission to tape you and subsequently webcast your questions. So essentially you're consenting and I -- for him to repeat the questions since we don't have microphones back there. Thank you very much. >> [ Inaudible ] >> Yes. He addresses some of the core existential issues that deals with human condition in a universal sense of the word. All humans ask the fundamental questions, why am I here? Where am I going. What is the purpose of life? And then there is a fundamental irony between what I call the transcendental and the eminent. It is one thing to bring a philosophical treatises and justify the existence of pain and suffering in the world as what philosophers did but another thing if you have a horrible tooth ache. Omar Khayyam was well aware of this inconsistency. On one hand he looks around and he sees pain, he sees suffering, he sees death. Northern part of hasan was an area that was not only on the seismic belt and had experienced major, major earthquakes but lots of tribes from central Asia come and massacred and so on. So Omar Khayyam was addressing the question of temcrality of life, suffering, evil and how do we reconcile that with the existence of a God and in that sense -- and then of course translation. It's a rendition. He himself says it's a rendition and his Persian was actually very poor but he captured the essence of it. Absolutely beautiful. Go ahead. And then you. Oh sorry. I forgot. Yes. Yes. >> [ Inaudible ] >> Yes. We don't know very much about that. When we went to mecca to prove that he was bias and then he went to Baghdad. In Baghdad, we know he met with a number of scholars and in Baghdad at the time, there was a school of thought called eastern Abyssinians. I'm actually working on a translation of [ Inaudible ] The logical easterners [ Inaudible ] Deals with that. We know that Omar Khayyam met with scholars in Baghdad where people [ Inaudible ] As you said and then a group of suefies [assumed spelling] came and -- who considered him to be a suefy master and he refused to accept that he had anything to do with suefies then. And so he left. That's the extent of what we know by way of speculation and conjecture. We can't really name names as in the case of others. Yes. >> [ Inaudible ] >> That's a very good question. At the end of my own book, I was daring enough to say that it is ironic that some 800 years ago, a man was able to write just about everything he wanted about religion, or at least poetically and live to be 80 or 90 years old. I said this explicitly, if Omar had lived in Iran today, he would have been in prison for life. So answer to your question is no. I think -- the fundamentalist discourse gobbled Omar Khayyam 800 years ago fought and fortunately won for the time being. Just to add -- as you know, his engagement -- I didn't repeat it again, did I. Engagement with the rubaiyat was it was an obsession. He weren't through five different versions of it. And so each one about 6-7 years ago. He had moved and replaced and with with. He has put a comma here, a comma there. The fifth version was in a coffee cup next to his bed when they found him dead. The changes were so, so, so minuscule and pedantic that it makes you wonder but said that these are not translations of the rubaiyat. These are renditions of his poetry and poetic inspirations. I'm quoting him verbatim. " Poetic inspirations from one poet to another. They are like bubbles that come from the depth of my being to the surface and pop and then I write them." So they are not very truthful to the origin, original text, but from all the translations that I had time to review, none, none come close to capturing the essence of what he said. The only problem is when he was being read was Victorian period, Victorian Romanticism so Omar Khayyam doesn't really mean live it up and sex, drugs and Rock and Roll and so on. There's a great deal of symbolism there. Yes. >> [ Inaudible ] >> The question was since Omar Khayyam lived a solitary life and did not accept administrative positions, what was his purpose in life? I think his purpose in life was, you know, in today's standards publish or parish. He didn't have that problem because the sultan had [ Inaudible ] Had given him 10,000 dinar for a year. I think Omar Khayyam knew the power of his own intellect. He knew his own war and he knew that if he were to become involved in that administrative position, politics and so on, that talent would be wasted. Imagine if Albert Einstein became assistant secretary of state. I'm not quite sure if he would have had of him. So made the same choice that Einstein made he lived a life in some laboratory in Princeton and Omar knew what he was capable of doing. He wrote, extensively. He made the most accurate calendar that has ever been made far more accurate than the Gregorian calendar of the west and the order of the king. And so he made tremendous amount of work. Unfortunately when Mongols attacked and when I went to [ Indiscernible ] Not as part of the excavating team but sort of observer and a friend of mine made documentary on Omar Khayyam, called the intoxicating rimes and sobering wine. When we went there, the Mongols had flattened, just literally had flattened anything that was on the ground. And so it is entirely possible that some of his works may be unearthed at some point but he was a scholar all the way, a genius. >> [ Inaudible ] >> Yes. That's the thorniest we one can ask about Omar Khayyam. >> Since we don't have the original manuscript by Omar Mayan, how close are they to the original? The real answer is we don't know. The earliest one, the earliest ones appear 85 years after his death. And so -- and then within the next 35 years after that, we have another 60 to 70 of the rubaiyat appearing here and there. And then ironically, they show up in two different -- from two different venues. Those who liked him and spoke well of him and those that called him a heretic. Those like [ Inaudible ] The famous teacher of [ Inaudible ] Absolutely hated him. Said this man was lost. He had no idea what he was talking about. Had he seen the truth he wouldn't have been saying this, but then he's repeating something that someone else said. So all [ Indiscernible ] Came one about 85 years or so and then they start growing. >>[ Inaudible ] >> That's correct. Yes. Yes. >> That has survived and in fact, is one of the -- for centuries, he was known in the west as a mathematician, not a philosopher and since 18th century as a poet his mathematical writings have survived. There are a number of mathematicians that have written on him but there is an entire school of mathematics in Russia. By Russian mathematicians who have stressed a non-nucleadean nature of his approach. >>[ Inaudible ] >> Yes. Yes. Exactly. Professor [ Inaudible ] Who taught mathematics at university of Texas has done some work on that. >>[ Inaudible ] Iranian government has a love hate relationship with a number of figures like Khayyam beginning with [ Indiscernible ] Who is the father of Persian methodology and epic. Depending on the internal politics of it. On one hand they cannot ignore the major achievements of people like him but on the other hand, if you take it as its face value, well, it goes contrary to the government's version of Islam at least and so they have this love hate relationship, at best. [ Inaudible ] >> That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. But his poetry was critical of orthodoxy so it didn't matter. >> Thank you everyone for coming. The books are available and [ Inaudible ] [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the library of congress. Visit us at LOC.gov ^E00:57:50