[IO Islamic 2420] رباعيّات عمر خيّام

Rubâ’iyyât-i-’Umar Khayyâm.

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 906 in the India Office collections.

[metadata: Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, 2 vols. (Oxford: India Office, 1903): volume 1, number 2420 here with notations and hyperlinks].

Poets who died between A.H. 500 and 600.

906

Rubâ’iyyât-i-’Umar Khayyâm (رباعيّات عمر خيّام).

The quatrains of the famous astronomer, mathematician, and freethinker, Maulânâ Abû-alfatḥ ‘Umar bin Ibrâhîm al-Khayyâm (or al-Khayyâmî), whose death is generally fixed in A.H. 517 (A.D. 1123), see the fullest account of his life and tendencies of his poetry in Whinfield’s Introduction to his edition of ‘The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam,’ and C. J. Pickering, ‘Umar of Nishapur,’ in the National Review, 1890, December; comp. also Meinsma, Omar Chajjam van Nishapoer etc. in De Gids, 1891, iii. pp. 504-535. Other copies are found in the Bodleian Library (Bodleian Cat., Nos. 524 and 525), the British Museum (Rieu ii. p. 546), in Gotha (W. Pertsch, p. 25), Berlin (W. Pertsch, Berlin Cat., p. 86), Vienna (G. Flügel i. p. 496), Calcutta, (Asiatic Society, No. 1548), Paris (two MSS.), and Cambridge; see also A. Sprenger, Catal., p. 464; Garcin de Tassy in Journal Asiatique, 5e série, vol. ix. P. 548, etc. Eastern editions: Calcutta, A.H. 1252 (A.D. 1836); Ṭahrân, A.H. 1278 (A.D. 1861, 1862), and Lucknow, 1878 and 1883; also a fragmentary edition (containing sixty-two rubâ’îs) by H. Blochmann. European editions by J. B. Nicolas (a reprint of the Ṭahrân text with French translation), Paris, 1867; by E. H. Whinfield (with English metrical translation), London, 1883; and by the Oriental Faculty of the University of St. Petersburg, 1888 (lithographed after a copy made A.H. 1285 by Mîr Ḥusain in Tabrîz). English translations (without the text) by E. Fitzgerald, London, 1859, 1868, 1872, 1879, and 1890; E. H. Whinfield, London, 1882; J. Leslie Garner, Milwaukee, 1888; also some selection in verse in the appendix to the ‘Dialogue of the Gulshan-i-Raz,’ London, 1887. German translation in verse by A.F. Schack, Stuttgart, 1878, and by Bodenstedt, Breslau, 1881.

The present copy begins with a short biographical notice of the poet:رباعيّات افصح المتقدّمين ملك الحكما مولانا عمر خيّام رحمة الله عليه’ در تأريخ قدما مسطور و مذكور است كه وفات الخ.

Beginning of the first rubâ’î (the same as the initial poem in Bodl. 367):

اى سوختۀ سوختۀ سوختنی

وى آتش دوزخ زتو افروختنى

(=No. 488 in Whinfield’s edition).

The third rubâ’î is identical with the initial one in Rieu’s first copy:

آمد سحرى ندا زميخانۀ ما الخ

(=No. 1 in Whinfield).

This modern copy, dated 1811, contains 512 rubâ’îs in alphabetical order, except the first.

Bibliotheca Leydeniana.

No. 2420, ff. 212-264, 5 rubâ’îs in a page; distinct Nasta’lîḳ; size, 9½ in. by 6 in.