Nishapur · Khorasan · 1048 – 1131 CE

عمر خیام

Omar Khayyam

Mathematician · Astronomer · Poet · Persian Polymath

He built the most accurate solar calendar in history — a thousand years ago, in a city of roses and scholarship on the ancient Silk Road. Then he went home and wrote poetry about wine.

Khayyam's Calendar Reform of 1079

In 1074, Sultan Malik Shah summoned eight of the greatest scientific minds of the Islamic world to the royal court in Isfahan. Their task: fix the calendar. The Persian solar year had drifted. Seasons no longer aligned with months.

Omar Khayyam led the observatory. Five years of observation, calculation, and mathematical refinement. In 1079, they presented the Jalali Calendar — named for the Sultan, but Khayyam's creation entirely.

It accumulates one day's error every 3,770 years. The Gregorian calendar — introduced five centuries later — accumulates one day every 3,226 years. Khayyam built the more precise instrument. With instruments a modern watchmaker would refuse.

Jalali Calendar
Omar Khayyam
3,770
years per day of error
1079 CE · Most Precise
Gregorian Calendar
Pope Gregory XIII
3,226
years per day of error
1582 CE · 503 years later
Julian Calendar
Julius Caesar
128
years per day of error
46 BCE · Superseded
هر آنچه هست از روز و شب چیزی نمی‌ماند

“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line.”

Omar Khayyam · Rubaiyat

From Nishapur, Khorasan

نیشابور
Nishapur · Khorasan

Nishapur in the 11th century was one of the four great cities of the Islamic world — where caravans from China, India, Persia, and the Mediterranean converged, where scholars debated in gardens.

This calendar is that city's gift to the world. It is still in use. The Silk Road is gone. Nishapur is a fraction of what it was. But the calendar survives, telling the date every morning to over 100 million people.

نیشابورNISHAPURN1079 CE

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

FitzGerald's Translation · 1859

The mathematician who fixed time also spent his life writing about its passage. The Rubaiyat circle the same obsessions: the shortness of life, the unknowability of God, the consolation of beauty, and the quiet courage of a man who looked clearly at the universe and was not afraid.

Rubaiyat Verse Explorer — All 75 Quatrains

Browse all 75 quatrains from Edward FitzGerald's 1859 first edition translation. Filter by theme.

Showing 12 of 75 quatrains

Life & Legacy

1048 CE
Born in Nishapur, Khorasan — the intellectual capital of the eastern Islamic world, a city of a hundred thousand souls on the Silk Road.
1070s
Studies in Samarkand. Writes his Treatise on Algebra — solving cubic equations five centuries before Europe.
1074 CE
Sultan Malik Shah invites him to Isfahan: reform the calendar. Eight great minds assembled.
1079 CE
The Jalali Calendar is complete. One day's error in 3,770 years. More accurate than the Gregorian calendar introduced 500 years later.
1080–1122
Writes the Rubaiyat — hundreds of quatrains on time, mortality, wine, beauty, and the universe's indifference.
1859 CE
Edward FitzGerald translates the Rubaiyat into English. It becomes one of the most-read poems of the Victorian era.
1963 CE
Hooshang Seyhoun completes the Khayyam mausoleum in Nishapur — a hyperbolic concrete shell echoing Persian geometric tradition.
Today
His calendar is still the official calendar of Iran and Afghanistan. Over 100 million people wake to a date he calculated.
خوش باش که این لحظهزندگی توست

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

Omar Khayyam · Nishapur · born 1048 CE