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An Image of Omar Khayyam Portrait. Photo by Atilin.

Top 10 Remarquable facts about Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam was a renowned mathematician, philosopher, poet, and astronomer.

He was the first mathematician to think about the Saccheri quadrilateral in the 11th century.

He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire

 Khayyam was a religious man one of the most renowned scholars of Khorasan province, where he used to work as an advisor to Malik Shah I. After the death of Shah I, he performed Hajj.

He died on December 04, 1131, and was buried in the Khayyam Garden.

1. He was born of Khorasani Persian Ancestry, in Nishapur

Omar Khayyam was born on 18^th may 1048, in the great trading city of Nishapur in northern Persia.

Nishapur, present-day Iran, where he used to teach medicine, astronomy, and mathematics

His father Ebrahim Khayyami was a wealthy physician and a tent maker.

Khayyam was a religious man one of the most renowned scholars of Khorasan province, where he used to work as an advisor to Malik Shah I.

After the death of Shah I, he performed Hajj.

2. He Worked as the Court Astrologer

Malik-shah appointed him to work as the court astrologer after coming from the Hajj pilgrimage.

After the assassination of Malik-shah and his vizier, his wife turned against him, and Omar fell from favor at court.

As a result, he set out on his pilgrimage to Mecca.   

Ali-Qifti reported that Omar had an ulterior motive and public demonstration of his faith with skeptical and unorthodox allegations.

Later, the new sultan Sanjar to Marv invited him to work as a court astrologer.

He was later allowed to return to Nishapur owing to his declining health. Upon his return, he seems to have lived the life of a recluse.

 3. On his  18^th Birthday Halley’s Comet Appeared in the Heavens 

An Image of a Comet Halley. Photo by Liller.

Omar Khayyam celebrated his eighteenth birthday in 1066, and a lot of events happened.

In the same year, Halley’s Comet appeared in the heavens, William the Conqueror’s Norman Army invaded England, and Omar’s father Ebrahim died. A few months after Ebrahim’s death, Omar’s tutor Bahmanyar also died.

It was the end of an era in Omar Khayyam’s life. It was time to put his family’s affairs in order and move on.

4. He Discovered Pascal’s Triangle and Triangular Array of Binomial Coefficients

Omar came up with several theorems related to the triangle  known as the binomial theorem, which describes the algebraic expansion of powers of a binomial

 Khayyam used a method of finding nth roots based on the binomial expansion, and therefore on the binomial coefficients.

One of Khayyam’s predecessors, Al-Karaji, had already discovered the triangular arrangement of the coefficients of binomial expansions that Europeans later came to know as Pascal’s triangle.

 Khayyam popularized this triangular array in Iran so it is now known as Omar Khayyam’s triangle.

5. He also Wrote, Problems of Arithmetic, a Book on Music and Algebra

He had another short treatise that is concerned with music theory in which he discusses the connection between music and arithmetic

 Khayyam’s contribution was in providing a systematic classification of musical scales and discussing the mathematical relationship among notes, minor, major, and tetrachords.

6. His Poetry was not Popularized until Edward FitzGerald Studied and Translated them

The earliest allusion to Omar Khayyam’s poetry is from the historian Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, a younger contemporary of Khayyam, who explicitly identifies him as both a poet and a scientist.

There are twenty-five Arabic poems attributed to Khayyam which are attested by historians such as al-Isfahani and Shahrazuri.

FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam contains loose translations of quatrains from the Bodleian manuscript.

 It enjoyed such success in the fin de siècle period that a bibliography compiled in 1929 listed more than 300 separate editions, and many more have been published since.

7. Together with his Colleagues Developed the More Accurate Jalali calendar

He and his colleagues are credited with accurately creating a calendar, including leap years that depicted a correct average year length.

Khayyam’s invitation came from  Malik Shah, Sultan of the empire, and Nizam al-Mulk, his vizier.

Khayyam recruited other talented scientists to accompany him to Isfahan in 1074.

During his time in Isfahan, Khayyam measured the length of a year – to be specific the tropical year length – with remarkable accuracy and precision.

Khayyam found that 1,029,983 days made 2,820 years. This gives a tropical year length of 365.2422 days to seven significant figures.

Malik Shah introduced Khayyam’s new calendar in the Seljuk Empire on March 15, 1079. It was used until the 20th century.

8. He Developed his Passion for Mathematics, Working as an Algebra and Geometry Teacher

His famous works include ‘Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra’ which he completed in 1070.

In The Treatise on the Division of a Quadrant of a Circle Khayyam applied algebra to geometry.

He devoted himself mainly to investigating whether it is possible to divide a circular quadrant into two parts such that the line segments projected from the dividing point to the perpendicular diameters of the circle form a specific ratio.

His solution, in turn, employed several curve constructions that led to equations containing cubic and quadratic terms.

9. He Collected Errors in Euclid’s Elements

Sir Henry Billingsley’s first English version of Euclid’s Elements, 1570.Photo by Charles Thomas. Wikimedia.

The 13 Books of Euclid’s Elements were the most influential in the entire history of Mathematics.

The fifth of Euclid’s five postulates was the parallel postulate. The parallel postulate proved to be a source of puzzlement, irritation, and joy for mathematicians for millennia.

But the joy was short-lived after the mathematicians who thought they had proven the postulate only to be disappointed when an error was identified in their proof.

Euclid had considered a straight line crossing two other straight lines

He looked at the situation when the interior angles add to less than 180 degrees

In these circumstances, he concluded  that the two straight lines will eventually meet on the side of the two angles that add to less than 180 degrees

10. He Prophesied that his Tomb Would have Scattered Roses

Omar Khayyam died at the age of 83 in his hometown of Nishapur on 4^th December 1131.

in 1963 the Shah of Iran had his grave exhumed and Khayyam’s remains moved to a huge purpose-built mausoleum in Nishapur where tourists could pay homage to the great poet.

One of his disciples Nizami Aruzi said that Omar had made a prophecy that his tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it.

Four years after his death, Aruzi located his tomb in a cemetery in a then large and well-known quarter of Nishapur on the road to Marv.

As it had been foreseen by Khayyam, Aruzi found the tomb situated at the foot of a garden wall over which pear trees and peach trees had thrust their heads and dropped their flowers so that his tombstone was hidden beneath them.