Welcome

to this website about the various relations between translations of Omar Khayyám's rubáiyát

Information about new additions and changes to this website.

The quatrains from the French translation by Arthur Guy that have a parallel in the Bodleian set of quatrains, are now being added to the quatrains database. Of the 328 quatrains in this edition 119 quatrains are identified by Guy as "Bodl. I", followed by a number refering to the Bodleian verses.
For details of this edition see the Sources page.

A quatrains database is constructed of the verses from the Bodleian MS., as translated by Edward Heron-Allen, showing direct links to corresponding translations.

New tables were added to the Tables section, showing concordances of the Rubáiyát: listings from the edition by M. Mahfuz-ul-Haq, published in Calcutta 1939; from the edition by A. Christensen, København, 1927; from the edition by P. Kasra, Delmar, 1977; and from the article by E. Denison Ross on Zhukovski's study of the 'wandering' quatrains (1898)

A new page Polyglot editions was added, to show more detailed data to accompany a recent article "Bois du vin", published in Persica, vol. 26 (2017-2018). The article presents an analyses of a number of polyglot editions published in Iran between 1955 and 2016. It identifies the often anonymous translators and their translations and the original editions from which they were taken.

A table has been added to the site showing the numbers of FitzGerald's quatrains from the first, second and third/fourth verions as well as the Latin version.

The last series of Calcutta quatrains, nrs. 401 - 500 and nrs. 501 - 511 are now online again.

Douglas Taylor (1938-2019)
End of May 2019 came the sad news of the death of Douglas Taylor (Boulder, Colorado USA). Douglas had been studying the rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám for a long time and his work has been a major source for the concordances and correspondences between the various translations as presented in this website. More studies were on their way (on Gilkin, Hermelin, Lyy), the results will be listed here as far as possible. Thank you, Douglas.

Calcutta quatrains no. 101 - 200 and 201 - 300 are now online again. The remaining quatrains are still under reconstruction.

The text of the Calcutta quatrains as transcribed from Heron-Allen's notebooks, is now published in a separate chapter, see Heron-Allen's translation

A first series of quatrains, nrs. 1-100, from the Calcutta manuscript and the translations, is now online again. On this page an index is available at the sidebar to select a specific quatrain for corresponding translations. For the remaining series, 101-200 and so on, this feature will also be available as soon as the translations are posted again.

Access to this website has been problematic since early this year due to unidentified problems. It is still in the process of rebuilding, which means that some features are not yet working as they should. Also the section concerning the Calcutta manuscript and its quatrains is still under reconstruction. I'm working hard on repairs. Thank you for your patience.