rubaiyat

Rubaiyat refers to a corpus of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) attributed to Omar Khayyám, a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer active in the city of Nishapur during the 11th–12th centuries. The name comes from rubāʿ, a four-line stanza; rubaiyat is the plural designation for these four-line poems. Khayyam's quatrains are part of a larger Persian diwan and survive in several manuscripts, with attribution to Khayyam widely accepted though the corpus varies in size across sources.

In the Persian tradition, a rubai is typically a four-line poem with a monorhyme, often set in the rhyme scheme aaba, where the first, second, and fourth lines end with the same sound. The third line usually contains a separate image or reflection. The rubaiyat commonly explore existential topics such as fate and time, mortality, the limits of religious authority, and the pleasures and uncertainties of earthly life. Imagery frequently includes wine, nature, and friendship as means of expressing insight.

The best-known edition in the English-speaking world is Edward FitzGerald's translational version, published in 1859. FitzGerald selected about 75 quatrains and presented them as a cohesive collection, shaping Western reception of Khayyam's poetry. Since then, numerous translations and adaptations have appeared, with varying degrees of fidelity to the original Persian text.

Scholarly discussion centers on authorship, the integrity of the transmitted text, and whether later poets added or altered quatrains. Despite debates, the Rubaiyat remains widely read and influential, noted for its concise, contemplative voice and its cross-cultural appeal.