Identifying Khayyam’s true intellectual and philosophical personality through barely reclining on few quatrains is to some extent impossible. The reason is the complexities existed in excessive dispersion of his contradict attitudes toward life, religion and philosophy. The ideological frequencies of the poems shows Khayyam as a person who used to change his standpoints about the philosophy of the existence very often from Mysticism to Materialism, and from Fatalism to a free- will proponent figure. Should we believe him an Agnostic poem as FitzGerald sees,[8] or the same believer Muslim as the biographer Imam Muhammad Baghdadi reported[9], or trust on his few quatrains, which introduce Khayyam as a mystic thinker[10]? For instance, some Khayyamologists have tried to introduce him as a Sufi of his time.
But he himself denies of being a Sufi via critisizing them and calling some Sufis haypocrots and double faces (Froughi, Quatrains 105,52)[11]. Otherwise, although Khayyam criticizes the Sufis in some of his poems, but in several poems he is in line with the Sufis and emphasizes the instability of the world and understanding the value of time. These uncertainties and contradictions between the contexts and approaches of some quatrains have made Khayyam for us a multi- dimensional figure that has changed his standpoints time to time. Of course it is obvious that the gross differences between the numbers of quatrains contributed to Khayyam intrinsically ends in such illusive atmospheres.
Khayyam has many unanswered questions about life, its purpose, and the Hereafter life and rationally searches for logical responses. As he does not find any persuasive response to any of his doubts, subsequently, questions the life and everything in it. These ambiguities are the origin of emerging doubts and skepticism about the true philosophical and theological school to which Khayyam belongs. It is necessary to mention that, in none of his quatrains he denies God. As he sees some sorts of failures, insufficiencies, and contradictions in this worldly life, starts criticizing and avoids addressing a specific founder and source of such anarchies:
دارنده چو ترکیب طبایع آراست از بهر چه او افکندش اندر کم و کاست
گر نیک آمد شکستن بهر چه بود ور نیک نیامد این صور عیب کراست
None answer’d this; but after Silence spake A Vessel of a more ungainly Make:
They sneer at me for leaning all awry; What? did the Hand then of the Potter shake? [12]
A critical question arouses concerning the reality of Khayyam. It is this that; how come a scholar with bright mind who has read The Quran and Hadith (the prophet Muhammad traditions) which gives answer to all questions he used to ask, becomes so puzzled and wanderer about the purpose of creating the universe and human being respectively? He has fourteen treatises which all has been began in the name of The Almighty God and has sought help from Him.
His son-in-law, the Imam Muhammad al- Baghdadi narrates that Khayyam was studying the Metaphysics in Avicenna’s Shifa. When he came to the chapter on ‘the One and the Many’ he put down the book and said; ‘summon the righteous ones that I make my testament’. He then made his testament, arose and prayed. Neither ate nor drank. When he prayed the last evening prayer, he prostrated as saying: ‘O God! You know I have sought to know you to measure my power. Forgive my sins, for my knowledge of you is my means of approach to you’, and died[13].
In another treatise, Khayyam has classified the various types of God’s lovers and searchers: first, they are the Theologians who try to know God through only the verbal arguments. Second class, are Philosophers and Sages who are searching the knowledge of God’s recognition via mere logical and intellectual reasons. The third are Sufis who not by contemplation and reason but through purifying the soul and refinement of the morality have cleaned their sprits from natural and corporal dirtiness and lusts. In this way the soul is being refined and is raised to heaven and joins to the reality. Without any doubt, this is the best chosen way to know God[14].
Unlike the divinely and spiritual personality shown by Al-Baghdadi, the European and Russian followers of Khayyam has illustrated far different perspective. Khayyam for them is a symbol of intoxication and drowsiness who sees sexuality as the only way of salvation. By concentrating on the illustrations produced for each quatrain translated by FitzGerald or others[15], Khayyam gets very different image from his own books like Al- Kaun va-Ttaklif and treatises.
Khayyam, according to some of his quatrains, has a personality similar to Socrates, for which his rationalization was a goal, not a means to achieve the goal. From a philosophical point of view, he essentially is a rationalist who gives value to reason and everything that is verifiable. Instead of all the metaphysical and philosophical hypotheses of the philosophers and the Sufis disordered emotions, Khayyam selected a logical position and method in his life. A Quatrain of Khayyam shows such conceptions:
این صورت کون جمله نقش است و خیال عارف نبود هر که نداند این خیال
بنشین، قدح باده بنوش و خوش باش فارغ شو از این نقش خیالات محال
This form of existence is all patterns and imagination
It’s not a mystic who does not know this fantasy
Sit, drink the cup of wine and enjoy
Get out of this impossible patterns and imagination[16]
Khayyam in his quatrains has been purposely bounded to the worldly conceptions such as dust, clay, clod, pot, potter, wine, and short-term ecstasy, which he clearly is aware of its termination late or soon. All applied signs and symbols illustrate a hapless life to which its predestined pains and problems are unavoidable. Three agents; Potter, Saki, and the Universe in his quatrains play crucial rules in leading human being toward so many disasters and disappointments. One can frankly witness the essence of Naturalistic approach in his poems.
In order for further understanding the complexity of the Khayamology process, we will examine some of his quatrains, which have been contributed to him and elicit each quatrain’s background philosophy.Bibliography:
[8] Razavi Amin, 2006, p. 237, quoted by Bridge Charles, 1921, p. 10
[9] Abul- Hassnan Beihaghi, tatammah Suan al- Hekmah: Pp. 116-117, quoted in Amin Razawi, 2006, p. 46)
[10] Nakhjwani Seddigh, Khayyap Pendari, 1941, Pp. 1344- 1350)
[11] Razavi Amin, 2006, p. 237, quoted by Bridge Charles, 1921, p. 74
[12] FitzGerald, Quatrain 86
[13] Abul- Hassnan Beihaghi, Tarikh-e Beihaghi p.46
[14] Rezazadeh Malek Rahim, 1998, pp. 389-390
[15] 1. P. Bunin, reproduced in: Omar Khayyam, How marvelous the face of the beloved, M. Reisner (comp.) Moscow, EKSMO-PRESS, pp.46-47
2. Vladimir S. Vasil’kovskiy, ‘White beauty’, reproduced in Omar Khayyam in translations by Kh. Manuvakhov: Ruba’I, St. Petersburg: Novaya Niva, 2009, p. 11
3. Omar Khayyam, Drawings, paintings and decoupages by Henri Mattisse, Sergiev Posad: Folio, 2010, p. 113
[16] The Wine if Wisdom, Life and Philosophy of Omar Khayyam, Dr. Amini Mehdi, translated by Dr. Majd-al-din Keyvani, 2006 Tehran. Pp. 159-161
