This
is the most nuanced and balanced study of the elusive Omar Khayyam
that I have yet encountered. Aminrazavi acknowledges the problems we
face in reconciling the personas of the respected mathematician and
natural scientist, the questing philosopher and metaphysician, and the
skeptical, antinomian poet, and shows himself to be fully conversant
with the scholarly arguments involved. He rejects those treatises and
couplets which are obviously spurious, but concludes nevertheless that
Khayyam the scientist and philosopher was indeed the author of the
famous quatrains - more Buddhist or Epicurean at heart than Sufi -
which resonated so strongly with like minds in medieval Persia, the
later world of Islam, and the modern West. Khayyam is clearly a man for
all ages, and Mehdi Aminrazavi does a fine job of introducing him anew
to our insecure post-modern world. John Perry, Center for Middle
Eastern Studies, University of Chicago The English speaking public have
now access to Dr. Aminrazavi's extensive account of Omar Khayyam's
scientific and philosophical work, and will become acqauainted with the
thinking of this unique Persian intellectual figure. Hossein Ziai,
Professor of islamic and Iranian Studies, UCLA "It is the most
important book published on Omar Khayyam during the past few decades.
For the first time, it deals not only with Khayyam's poetry, but also
with his philosophical and scientific works that have not received the
treatment that they deserve in the West. It also debunks the myths about
Omar Khayyam of having been either an Epicurean drunkard or a mystic.
It provides one of the best and most comprehensive analyses of his
philosophy and introduces Khayyam as a deep thinker with a rationalist
philosophy that is as fresh today as when it was first enunciated. The
discussion of the influence of the Ruba'iyyat on leading Western poets
and writers such as Mark Twain, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and others is
also very impressive. Farhang Jahanpour, University of Oxford
