1 h 22 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 1 h 22 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the universe offers no answer, but a friend, a garden and a morning still await you?
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a sequence of four-line poems credited to the Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet. It opens at dawn, with light spilling across the sky and a call to wake. Its speaker faces a brief life, a silent universe and a fate no one can bend.
The quatrains move from questions about creation to the pleasures of the present. Years of study bring the speaker no firm answer about where we come from or where we go. Instead, he turns toward wine, love and friendship. Kings become dust, potters shape clay, and a writing hand moves on.
What you’ll discover
- A morning worth waking for Enter a dawn scene that urges sleepers to notice the hour already passing.
- Questions without easy answers Follow a searching speaker as learning leaves life's deepest mysteries unresolved.
- The chessboard of fate See nights and days become a board where human lives are the pieces.
- Wine, love and friendship Discover how a cup, a companion and a garden answer the pressure of passing time.
- Clay and the moving hand Meet potters shaping clay and a hand whose writing no one can erase.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy short poems to read aloud, and the gardens and taverns of old Persia, will love this collection, as will anyone drawn to a witty voice that greets life and death with a raised cup.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Omar was a scholar before he was a poet
- Wake up, the morning will not wait
- Kings and heroes end up as dust
- Wise men can name no way through
- The grape answers where logic cannot
- Fate moves the pieces and no tears alter it
- The potter's shop and the empty glass
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Les Rubâiyât d’Omar Khayyam
by Omar Khayyam
A Persian astronomer faces death with a jug of wine, a book of verses and a simple wish for roses on his grave.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to readfrançais
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In short
What do you do when you cannot answer the biggest questions? Omar Khayyam, an eleventh century Persian astronomer, mathematician and poet, answers with a cup of wine, a book of verses and a quiet spot in the grass.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Omar was a scholar before he was a poet
The poet behind these quatrains is a serious man of science. Omar Khayyam is born in Naishapur, in the Persian region of Khorassan, in the later eleventh century. The introduction tells his story through an old account by Nizam ul Mulk, a great minister who was his schoolmate.
As boys, Omar, Nizam and a third pupil named Hasan Ben Sabbah study under the Imam Mowaffak. The three vow that whoever wins fortune will share it with the others. Nizam rises to be vizier, the chief minister of the sultan. Hasan grabs for power, fails, and becomes the leader of a feared sect whose name gave Europe the word assassin.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- français
- Reading time
- 50 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Omar Khayyam. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam.
Omar Khayyam. (2026). The rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam
Omar Khayyam. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam.
@book{omarkhayyam2026rubaiyat,
author = {Omar Khayyam},
title = {The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam}
}
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What is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam about?
It is a poem of short four-line stanzas about the brevity of life, the failure of learning to explain death, the power of fate, and the pleasure of wine, spring, friendship and love in the present moment.
What does rubaiyat mean?
Rubaiyat is the plural of rubai, a Persian quatrain of four lines. Each one stands as an independent stanza, and in the English poem the third line is often left unrhymed, lifting and holding the wave that falls in the last.
Is the wine in the poem real or a symbol of God?
Readers disagree. Some Sufi readers and a French editor took wine as a symbol of the divine. FitzGerald argues in his introduction that Omar meant the juice of the grape, and the poem supports both readings.
The author
Omar Khayyam
1048–1131 · Persian mathematician and poet
Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. He was born and died in Nishapur, in present-day Iran, and also worked in Samarkand and Isfahan. He wrote about algebra in the eleventh century and helped reform the Persian calendar. Quatrains attributed to him were later collected as the Rubaiyat.
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