197-573: Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam ( Persian : عمر خیّام ), was a Persian polymath , known for his contributions to mathematics , astronomy , philosophy , and poetry . He was born in Nishapur , the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire , and lived during the period of the Seljuk dynasty , around the time of
394-452: A day's journey away. In 1221, the city opened its gates to an invading Mongol horde, resulting in massive devastation . Historical accounts contend that the entire population (including refugees) were killed; Tolui Khan is reputed to have slaughtered 700,000 people. Though partly rebuilt after the Mongol destruction, the city never regained its former prosperity. Between 1788 and 1789,
591-452: A Circle Khayyam applied algebra to geometry. In this work, 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. Khayyam seems to have been
788-655: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to
985-440: A Persian nobleman restored a large dam (the "Soltanbent") on the river Murghab , and the settlement which grew up in the irrigated area became known as Baýramaly , as referenced in some 19th-century texts. After Shah Ismail's death, the region became a dependency of Khiva , but in 1593 Merv was conquered by Abdullah Khan II of Bukhara . The city was soon captured by Shah Abbas, and a Safavid governor (Biktash Khan Ustajlu)
1182-577: A belief in astrology and divination: "I did not observe that he ( scil. Omar Khayyam) had any great belief in astrological predictions, nor have I seen or heard of any of the great [scientists] who had such belief." While working for Sultan Sanjar as an astrologer he was asked to predict the weather – a job that he apparently did not do well. George Saliba explains that the term ‘ilm al-nujūm , used in various sources in which references to Khayyam's life and work could be found, has sometimes been incorrectly translated to mean astrology. He adds: "from at least
1379-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in
1576-531: A fellow-mystic but a free-thinking scientist who awaited punishments hereafter. Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that it is "reductive" to use a literal interpretation of his verses (many of which are of uncertain authenticity to begin with) to establish Omar Khayyam's philosophy. Instead, he adduces Khayyam's interpretive translation of Avicenna 's treatise Discourse on Unity ( al-Khutbat al-Tawhīd ), where he expresses orthodox views on Divine Unity in agreement with
1773-577: A joint team of archaeologists from Turkmenistan and the UK have made remarkable discoveries. In 2001, the Institute of Archaeology , University College London and the Turkmen authorities started a new collaboration. This Ancient Merv Project is concerned with the complex conservation and management issues posed by this site, furthering understanding of the site through archaeological research, and disseminating
1970-505: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian
2167-480: A large garden, which included an artificial lake; similar gardens were found in other Central Asian palaces. Any remnants of interior or exterior decoration have been lost because of erosion or theft. Another notable Seljuk structure within the Shahryar Ark is the kepderihana (from the Persian, " Kaftar Khaneh ", or "pigeon house", i.e., the columbarium ). This mysterious building, among the best-preserved in
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#17327723327242364-491: A law he had discovered which did not depend on geometric figures. This book was most likely titled the Difficulties of Arithmetic ( Mushkilāt al-Ḥisāb ), and is not extant. Based on the context, some historians of mathematics such as D. J. Struik, believe that Omar must have known the formula for the expansion of the binomial ( a + b ) n {\displaystyle (a+b)^{n}} , where n
2561-410: A lesser degree. For these he could not accomplish the construction of his unknown segment with compass and straight edge. He proceeded to present geometric solutions to all types of cubic equations using the properties of conic sections. The prerequisite lemmas for Khayyam's geometrical proof include Euclid VI , Prop 13, and Apollonius II , Prop 12. The positive root of a cubic equation was determined as
2758-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from
2955-770: A major mosque that contained 12,000 volumes. As the caliphate weakened, Persian general Tahir b. al -Husayn and his Tahirid dynasty replaced Arab rule in Merv in 821. The Tahirids ruled Merv from 821 to 873, followed by the Saffarids , then the Samanids and later the Ghaznavids . In 1037, the Seljuq Turkmens , a clan of Oghuz Turks moving from the steppes east of the Aral Sea , peacefully took over Merv under
3152-832: A materialist, pessimist, agnostic. Khayyam looked at all religions questions with a skeptical eye", continues Hedayat, "and hated the fanaticism, narrow-mindedness, and the spirit of vengeance of the mullas, the so-called religious scholars." In the context of a piece entitled On the Knowledge of the Principles of Existence , Khayyam endorses the Sufi path. Csillik suggests the possibility that Omar Khayyam could see in Sufism an ally against orthodox religiosity. Other commentators do not accept that Khayyam's poetry has an anti-religious agenda and interpret his references to wine and drunkenness in
3349-492: A number of other Persian scholars who occasionally wrote quatrains, including Avicenna , Ghazali , and Tusi . They conclude that it is also possible that for Khayyam poetry was an amusement of his leisure hours: "these brief poems seem often to have been the work of scholars and scientists who composed them, perhaps, in moments of relaxation to edify or amuse the inner circle of their disciples". The poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam has contributed greatly to his popular fame in
3546-486: A number of years working at the observatory in Merv. As Persian geographer and traveller al-Istakhri wrote of Merv: "Of all the countries of Iran , these people were noted for their talents and education." Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi counted as many as 10 giant libraries in Merv, including one within a major mosque that contained 12,000 volumes. Merv was also a popular place for pilgrimage , and several religions considered it holy. In Zoroastrianism , Merv (Mouru)
3743-536: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and
3940-576: A pessimistic viewpoint which is entirely consonant with the outlook of the deeply thoughtful rationalist philosopher that Khayyam is known historically to have been." Edward FitzGerald emphasized the religious skepticism he found in Khayyam. In his preface to the Rubáiyát he claimed that he "was hated and dreaded by the Sufis", and denied any pretense at divine allegory: "his Wine is the veritable Juice of
4137-690: A place of some importance: under the name of Margu , it occurs as part of one satrapy in the Behistun inscriptions (c. 515 BC) of the Persian monarch Darius the Great . The first city of Merv was founded in the 6th century BC as part of the Achaemenid expansion into the region of Cyrus the Great (559–530 BC), but later strata deeply cover the Achaemenid levels at the site. Alexander
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#17327723327244334-458: A poet by a number of biographers, according to John Andrew Boyle "it is still possible to argue that Khayyam's status as a poet of the first rank is a comparatively late development." Thomas Hyde was the first European to call attention to Khayyam and to translate one of his quatrains into Latin ( Historia religionis veterum Persarum eorumque magorum , 1700). Western interest in Persia grew with
4531-581: A recluse. Omar Khayyam died at the age of 83 in his hometown of Nishapur on 4 December 1131, and he is buried in what is now the Mausoleum of Omar Khayyam . One of his disciples Nizami Aruzi relates the story that sometime during 1112–3 Khayyam was in Balkh in the company of Isfizari (one of the scientists who had collaborated with him on the Jalali calendar) when he made a prophecy that "my tomb shall be in
4728-492: A separate soul; if we are lucky, our bodily particles would be used in the making of a jug of wine." Omar Khayyam's poetry has been cited in the context of New Atheism , such as in The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens . Al-Qifti ( c. 1172–1248 ) appears to confirm this view of Khayyam's philosophy. In his work The History of Learned Men he reports that Khayyam's poems were only outwardly in
4925-599: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are
5122-431: 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. Khayyam
5319-532: A student of Avicenna . According to Al-Bayhaqi, he was reading the metaphysics in Avicenna's the Book of Healing before he died. There are six philosophical papers believed to have been written by Khayyam. One of them, On existence ( Fi’l-wujūd ), was written originally in Persian and deals with the subject of existence and its relationship to universals. Another paper, titled The necessity of contradiction in
5516-717: A substantial Christian community. In 1009, the Archbishop of Merv sent a letter to the Patriarch at Baghdad asking that the Keraites be allowed to fast less than other Nestorian Christians. Great Persian polymath Omar Khayyam , among others, spent several years working at the observatory in Merv. As Persian geographer and traveller al-Istakhri wrote of Merv: "Of all the countries of Iran , these people were noted for their talents and education." Yaqut al-Hamawi counted as many as 10 giant libraries in Merv, including one within
5713-589: A treatise on the binomial theorem and extracting the n root of natural numbers, which has been lost. Part of Khayyam's Commentary on the Difficulties Concerning the Postulates of Euclid's Elements deals with the parallel axiom . The treatise of Khayyam can be considered the first treatment of the axiom not based on petitio principii , but on a more intuitive postulate. Khayyam refutes the previous attempts by other mathematicians to prove
5910-426: A very pious man who professed orthodox views down to his last hour. On the basis of all the existing textual and biographical evidence, the question remains somewhat open, and as a result Khayyam has received sharply conflicting appreciations and criticisms. The various biographical extracts referring to Omar Khayyam describe him as unequalled in scientific knowledge and achievement during his time. Many called him by
6107-410: A view to allaying suspicions of skepticism and confuting the allegations of unorthodoxy (including possible sympathy or adherence to Zoroastrianism) levelled at him by a hostile clergy. He was then invited by the new Sultan Sanjar to Marv, possibly 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
Omar Khayyam - Misplaced Pages Continue
6304-664: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian
6501-628: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of
6698-493: Is a positive integer. The case of power 2 is explicitly stated in Euclid's elements and the case of at most power 3 had been established by Indian mathematicians. Khayyam was the mathematician who noticed the importance of a general binomial theorem. The argument supporting the claim that Khayyam had a general binomial theorem is based on his ability to extract roots. One of Khayyam's predecessors, al-Karaji , had already discovered
6895-796: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian
7092-633: Is an effort to unify algebra and geometry. This particular geometric solution of cubic equations was further investigated by M. Hachtroudi and extended to solving fourth-degree equations. Although similar methods had appeared sporadically since Menaechmus , and further developed by the 10th-century mathematician Abu al-Jud , Khayyam's work can be considered the first systematic study and the first exact method of solving cubic equations. The mathematician Woepcke (1851) who offered translations of Khayyam's algebra into French praised him for his "power of generalization and his rigorously systematic procedure." From
7289-675: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting
7486-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of
7683-404: Is due to Omar Khayyam, and from the text, it seems clear that the latter was his inspirer." This treatise on Euclid contains another contribution dealing with the theory of proportions and with the compounding of ratios. Khayyam discusses the relationship between the concept of ratio and the concept of number and explicitly raises various theoretical difficulties. In particular, he contributes to
7880-478: Is evidence of Merv's importance during the pre-Islamic era; no pre-Islamic fortifications of comparable size have been found anywhere in the Garagum . Gäwürgala is also important for the vast amount of numismatic evidence it has revealed; an unbroken series of Sassanian coins has been found there, hinting the extraordinary political stability of this period. Even after the foundation of Soltangala by Abu Muslim at
8077-650: Is extremely soft." The Islamic world admired the elegant robes and silk turbans produced in Merv. The city was notable as a home for immigrants from the Arab lands and those from Sogdia and elsewhere in Central Asia. In the period from 813 to 818, the temporary residency of the caliph, al-Ma'mun effectively made Merv the capital of the Muslim world and highlighted Merv's importance to the Abbasids . A descendant of
Omar Khayyam - Misplaced Pages Continue
8274-404: Is generally considered the first step in the eventual development of non-Euclidean geometry , was familiar with the work of Wallis. The American historian of mathematics David Eugene Smith mentions that Saccheri "used the same lemma as the one of Tusi, even lettering the figure in precisely the same way and using the lemma for the same purpose". He further says that "Tusi distinctly states that it
8471-575: Is just the same deceit as There. Men talk of heaven,—there is no heaven but here; Men talk of hell,—there is no hell but here; Men of hereafters talk, and future lives, O love, there is no other life—but here. An account of him, written in the thirteenth century, shows him as "versed in all the wisdom of the Greeks," and as wont to insist on the necessity of studying science on Greek lines. Of his prose works, two, which were stand authority, dealt respectively with precious stones and climatology. Beyond question
8668-616: Is no evidence that he was formally a Sufi . Aminrazavi states that "Sufi interpretation of Khayyam is possible only by reading into his Rubāʿīyyāt extensively and by stretching the content to fit the classical Sufi doctrine.". Furthermore, Boyle emphasizes that Khayyam was intensely disliked by a number of celebrated Sufi mystics who belonged to the same century. This includes Shams Tabrizi (spiritual guide of Rumi ), Najm al-Din Daya who described Omar Khayyam as "an unhappy philosopher, atheist, and materialist", and Attar who regarded him not as
8865-460: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with
9062-475: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),
9259-585: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became
9456-460: Is referred to with religious honorifics such as Imām , The Patron of Faith ( Ghīyāth al-Dīn ), and The Evidence of Truth ( Hujjat al-Haqq ). He also notes that biographers who praise his religiosity generally avoid making reference to his poetry, while the ones who mention his poetry often do not praise his religious character. For instance, Al-Bayhaqi's account, which antedates by some years other biographical notices, speaks of Omar as
9653-598: Is the Bodleian MS. Ouseley 140, written in Shiraz in 1460, which contains 158 quatrains on 47 folia. The manuscript belonged to William Ouseley (1767–1842) and was purchased by the Bodleian Library in 1844. There are occasional quotes of verses attributed to Khayyam in texts attributed to authors of the 13th and 14th centuries, but these are of doubtful authenticity, so that skeptical scholars point out that
9850-495: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting
10047-400: Is the oldest and most perfectly preserved of the oasis cities along the historical Silk Road in Central Asia. A few buildings and structures still stand today, especially those constructed in the last two millennia. UNESCO has listed the site of ancient Merv as a World Heritage Site . Merv has prehistoric roots: archaeological surveys have revealed many traces of village life as far back as
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#173277233272410244-401: Is the same as the one already reported by Razi. An additional quatrain is quoted by the historian Juvayni ( Tarikh-i Jahangushay , c. 1226–1283). In 1340 Jajarmi includes thirteen quatrains of Khayyam in his work containing an anthology of the works of famous Persian poets ( Mu’nis al-ahrār ), two of which have hitherto been known from the older sources. A comparatively late manuscript
10441-491: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes
10638-506: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on
10835-410: The Achaemenid Empire , it was the center of the satrapy of Margiana . It was subsequently ruled by Hellenistic Kings , Parthians , Sasanians , Arabs , Ghaznavids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians and Timurids , among others. Merv was the capital city of several polities throughout its history. In the beginning of the 9th century, Merv was the seat of the caliph al-Ma'mun and the capital of
11032-633: The Amu Darya pillaged the city. Subsequently, Merv changed hands from the Turkmen nomads to the Ghurids in 1192, and to the Khwarizmians in 1204. According to Tertius Chandler , by 1150 Merv was the world's largest city, with a population of 200,000. By 1210, it may have had as many as 500,000 residents, preceding such medieval metropolises as Constantinople and Baghdad. In 1221, Merv opened its gates to Tolui , son of Genghis Khan , chief of
11229-545: The Ark . In about 1070 he moved to Samarkand , where he started to compose his famous Treatise on Algebra under the patronage of Abu Tahir Abd al-Rahman ibn ʿAlaq, the governor and chief judge of the city. Khayyam was kindly received by the Karakhanid ruler Shams al-Mulk Nasr , who according to Bayhaqi, would "show him the greatest honour, so much so that he would seat [Khayyam] beside him on his throne ". In 1073–4 peace
11426-668: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of
11623-468: The First Crusade . As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations , where he provided a geometric formulation based on the intersection of conics . He also contributed to a deeper understanding of Euclid 's parallel axiom . As an astronomer, he calculated the duration of the solar year with remarkable precision and accuracy, and designed
11820-544: The Hellenistic and Sassanian metropolis and also served as an industrial suburb to the Abbasid/Seljuk city, Soltangala—by far the largest of the three. The smaller Timurid city was founded a short distance to the south and is now called Abdyllahangala. Other ancient buildings are scattered between and around these four cities; all the sites are preserved in the "Ancient Merv Archaeological Park" just north of
12017-797: The Ilkhanate , and it was consistently looted by Chagatai Khanate . In the early part of the 14th century, the town became the seat of a Christian archbishopric of the Eastern Church under the rule of the Kartids , vassals of the Ilkhanids. By 1380, Merv belonged to the empire of Timur (Tamerlane). In 1505, the Uzbeks occupied Merv; five years later, Shah Ismail , the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, expelled them. In this period,
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#173277233272412214-415: The Indians one has methods for obtaining square and cube roots , methods based on knowledge of individual cases – namely the knowledge of the squares of the nine digits 1, 2, 3 (etc.) and their respective products, i.e. 2 × 3 etc. We have written a treatise on the proof of the validity of those methods and that they satisfy the conditions. In addition we have increased their types, namely in
12411-402: The Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It
12608-488: The Jalali calendar , a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle which provided the basis for the Persian calendar that is still in use after nearly a millennium. There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains ( rubāʿiyāt رباعیات ). This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world in a translation by Edward FitzGerald ( Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam , 1859), which enjoyed great success in
12805-400: The Jalālī calendar , and was inaugurated on 15 March 1079. The observatory itself was disused after the death of Malik-Shah in 1092. The Jalālī calendar was a true solar calendar where the duration of each month is equal to the time of the passage of the Sun across the corresponding sign of the Zodiac . The calendar reform introduced a unique 33-year intercalation cycle. As indicated by
13002-462: The Mongols . Most of the inhabitants are said to have been butchered. Arab historian Ibn al-Athir described the event basing his report on the narrative of Merv refugees: Genghis Khan sat on a golden throne and ordered the troops who had been seized should be brought before him. When they were in front of him, they were executed and the people looked on and wept. When it came to the common people, they separated men, women, children and possessions. It
13199-447: The Orientalism movement in the 19th century. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856) translated some of Khayyam's poems into German in 1818, and Gore Ouseley (1770–1844) into English in 1846, but Khayyam remained relatively unknown in the West until after the publication of Edward FitzGerald 's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in 1859. FitzGerald's work at first was unsuccessful but was popularised by Whitley Stokes from 1861 onward, and
13396-445: The Orientalism of the fin de siècle . Omar Khayyam was born in Nishapur —a metropolis in Khorasan province, of Persian stock, in 1048. In medieval Persian texts he is usually simply called Omar Khayyam . Although open to doubt, it has often been assumed that his forebears followed the trade of tent-making, since Khayyam means 'tent-maker' in Arabic. The historian Bayhaqi , who was personally acquainted with Khayyam, provides
13593-404: The Rubaiyat as their source of inspiration. The earliest such composer was Liza Lehmann . Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of
13790-455: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of
13987-439: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of
14184-402: The abscissa of a point of intersection of two conics, for instance, the intersection of two parabolas , or the intersection of a parabola and a circle, etc. However, he acknowledged that the arithmetic problem of these cubics was still unsolved, adding that "possibly someone else will come to know it after us". This task remained open until the sixteenth century, where an algebraic solution of
14381-491: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian
14578-437: The inverse of the unknown. Khayyam produced an exhaustive list of all possible equations involving lines, squares, and cubes. He considered three binomial equations, nine trinomial equations, and seven tetranomial equations. For the first and second degree polynomials, he provided numerical solutions by geometric construction. He concluded that there are fourteen different types of cubics that cannot be reduced to an equation of
14775-597: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,
14972-562: The "capital of the eastern Islamic world". Written sources also attest to a large library and madrasa founded by Nizam al-Mulk , vizier of the Seljuq empire, as well as many other major cultural institutions. Perhaps most importantly, Merv had a market described as "the best of the major cities of Iran and Khurasan". Sanjar's rule, marked by conflict with the Kara-Khitai and Khwarazmians , ended in 1153 when Turkmen nomads from beyond
15169-459: The 12th century. During this period Merv, like Samarqand and Bukhara, functioned as one of the great cities of Muslim scholarship; the celebrated historian Yaqut (1179–1229) studied in its libraries. Merv produced a number of scholars in various branches of knowledge, such as Islamic law , hadith , history, and literature. Several scholars have the name "Marwazi" (المروزي) designating them as hailing from Merv. The city continued to have
15366-637: The 3rd millennium BC and have associated the area culturally with the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex . The geography of the Zend-Avesta (commentaries on the Avesta ) mentions Merv (under the name of Mouru ) along with Balkh . In Zoroastrianism , the god Ahura Mazda created Mouru as one of sixteen perfect lands. Under the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BC), the historical record mentions Merv as
15563-459: The Abbasid re-planning of Baghdad. A 10th-century Arab historian, Ibn Hawqal , wrote of Merv: "and in no other city are to be seen such palaces and groves, and gardens and streams". Merv was also known for its high-quality textiles. A 12th-century Arab geographer al-Idrisi noted: "From this country is derived much silk as well as cotton of a superior quality under the name of Merv cotton, which
15760-681: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to
15957-706: The Bukharan oasis and the Samarkand region in the Zarafshan Valley. Being the last remaining Persian-speaking Shias , the deportees resisted assimilation into the Sunni population of Bukhara and Samarkand, despite the common Persian language they spoke with most natives. These Marvis survive as of 2016 —Soviet censuses listed them as " Iranis /Iranians" through the 1980s. They live in Samarkand and Bukhara and
16154-525: The Grape: his Tavern, where it was to be had: his Saki , the Flesh and Blood that poured it out for him." Sadegh Hedayat is one of the most notable proponents of Khayyam's philosophy as agnostic skepticism, and according to Jan Rypka (1934), he even considered Khayyam an atheist . Hedayat (1923) states that "while Khayyam believes in the transmutation and transformation of the human body, he does not believe in
16351-513: The Great 's visit to Merv is merely legendary, but the city was named Alexandria ( Ἀλεξάνδρεια ) after him for a time. After his death in 323 BC, it became the capital of the Province of Margiana of the Seleucid , Greco-Bactrian (256–125 BC), Parthian , and Sassanid states. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus Soter (reigned 281–261 BC) renamed it to Antiochia Margiana. He rebuilt and expanded
16548-793: The Hellenistic city and later the Arc of the Islamic city. The foundation of Gäwürgala (Turkmen from the Persian " Gabr Qala", "Fortress of the Zoroastrians ") occurred in the early Hellenistic era under the rule of the Seleucid king Antiochus I . The city was continuously inhabited under a series of Hellenistic rulers, by the Parthians , and then under the Sassanids, who made it
16745-463: The Islamic prophet Muhammad , 8th Imam of Twelver Shia Islam, Ali ar-Ridha moved to Merv and lived there for several years. Merv also became the centre of a major 8th-century Neo- Mazdakite movement led by al-Muqanna , the "Veiled Prophet", who gained many followers by claiming to be an incarnation of God and heir to Abu Muslim; the Khurramiyya inspired by him, persisted in Merv until
16942-625: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it
17139-543: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After
17336-530: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian
17533-425: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in
17730-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under
17927-886: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,
18124-484: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
18321-480: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
18518-518: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
18715-591: The Shahryar Ark (Persian, "the Sovereign's citadel"), is on its east side. In the centre of the Sharhryar Ark is the Seljuk palace, probably built by Sanjar. The surviving mud brick walls lead to the conclusion that this palace, though relatively small, was composed of tall, single-storey rooms surrounding a central court along with four axial iwans at the entrance to each side. Low areas nearby seem to indicate
18912-480: The Sufi style, but were written with an anti-religious agenda. He also mentions that he was at one point indicted for impiety, but went on a pilgrimage to prove he was pious. The report has it that upon returning to his native city he concealed his deepest convictions and practised a strictly religious life, going morning and evening to the place of worship. Khayyam on the Koran (quote 84): The Koran! well, come put me to
19109-627: The Tekkes' advance, but in about 1856, the latter became the sovereign power in the country, and remained so until the Russians occupied the oasis in 1884. By 1868, the Russians had taken most of what would become Russian Central Asia except Turkmenistan . The Russians approached this area from the Caspian, and in 1881, they captured Geok Tepe in one of the bloodiest battles in the region . Much of
19306-456: The Two ). For a compound of gold adulterated with silver, he describes a method to measure more exactly the weight per capacity of each element. It involves weighing the compound both in air and in water, since weights are easier to measure exactly than volumes. By repeating the same with both gold and silver one finds exactly how much heavier than water gold, silver and the compound were. This treatise
19503-657: The Umayyad caliphate. After the Abbasids established themselves in Baghdad, Abu Muslim continued to rule Merv as a semi-independent prince until his eventual assassination. Indeed, Merv operated as the centre of Abbasid partisanship for the duration of the Abbasid Revolution of 746–750, and became a consistent source of political support for the Abbasid rulers in Baghdad later on; the governorship of Khurasan at Merv
19700-811: The area in 1900. Valentin Alekseevich Zhukovsky of the Imperial Archaeological Commission directed the first fully professional dig in 1890 and published in 1894. Geologist Raphael Pumpelly and a German archaeologist, Hubert Schmidt, directed the American Carnegie Institute's excavations. Merv is the focus of the Ancient Merv Project (initially called the International Merv Project). From 1992 to 2000,
19897-738: The area in between on the Zarafshan river. They are listed as Persian speaking but counted separately from the local Tajiks because of their Shia religion and their maintaining of their ancient Mervi identity. Merv passed to the Khanate of Khiva in 1823. Sir Alexander Burnes traversed the country in 1832. About this time, the Persians forced the Tekke Turkmens , then living on the Tejen River , to migrate northward. Khiva contested
20094-498: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
20291-585: The author. The prose works believed to be Khayyam's are written in the Peripatetic style and are explicitly theistic, dealing with subjects such as the existence of God and theodicy . As noted by Bowen these works indicate his involvement in the problems of metaphysics rather than in the subtleties of Sufism. As evidence of Khayyam's faith and/or conformity to Islamic customs, Aminrazavi mentions that in his treatises he offers salutations and prayers, praising God and Muhammad . In most biographical extracts, he
20488-528: The axiom with the Fourth Postulate, which states that all right angles are equal to one another. Khayyam was the first to consider the three distinct cases of acute, obtuse, and right angle for the summit angles of a Khayyam-Saccheri quadrilateral . After proving a number of theorems about them, he showed that Postulate V follows from the right angle hypothesis, and refuted the obtuse and acute cases as self-contradictory. His elaborate attempt to prove
20685-421: The capital of a satrapy. Gäwürgala was the capital of the Umayyad province of Khurasan and grew in importance as Khurasan became the most loyally Muslim part of the Iranian world during Islam's first two centuries. Gäwürgala 's most visible remaining structures are its defensive installations. Three walls, one built atop the next, are in evidence. A Seleucid wall, graduated in the interior and straight on
20882-425: The centuries of prosperity which followed. Kushks (Persian, Kushk , "pavilion", "kiosk"), which comprise the chief remains of Abbasid Merv, are a building type unique to Central Asia during this period. A kind of semi-fortified two-story palace, whose corrugated walls give it a unique and striking appearance, köshks were the residences of Merv's elite. The second storey of these structures comprised living quarters;
21079-615: The city at the site presently known as Gyaur Gala fortress. Isidore of Charax wrote Antiochia was called the "unwatered" ( Ἄνυδρος ). After the fall of the Seleucid dynasty (63 BC), Bactria , Parthia, and the Kushans took control in succession. In 53 BC, some 10,000 Roman prisoners of war from the Battle of Carrhae appear to have been deported to Merv. Merv was a major city of Buddhist learning, with Buddhist monastery temples for many centuries until its Islamisation. At
21276-593: The city was razed by Shah Murad of the Emirate of Bukhara for the last time, and its population deported. By the 1800s, under pressure from the Russians, the area surrounding Merv was completely deserted. Today the site is preserved by the Government of Turkmenistan as the State Historical and Cultural Park "Ancient Merv". It was established in 1987 and is regulated by Turkmenistan's legislation. It
21473-492: The civilian population that was unable to flee was later massacred by the Russian troops. The Russians further occupied the oasis of Tejen , eighty miles to the west. The next Russian move was south toward Herat . By 1888, the city was entirely abandoned. A future viceroy of British India , George Curzon visited the remains of Merv in 1888. He later wrote: "In the midst of an absolute wilderness of crumbling brick and clay,
21670-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being
21867-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by
22064-401: The conventional metaphorical sense common in Sufism. The French translator J. B. Nicolas held that Khayyam's constant exhortations to drink wine should not be taken literally, but should be regarded rather in the light of Sufi thought where rapturous intoxication by "wine" is to be understood as a metaphor for the enlightened state or divine rapture of baqaa . The view of Omar Khayyam as a Sufi
22261-511: The cubic equation was found in its generality by Cardano , Del Ferro , and Tartaglia in Renaissance Italy . Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra and geometry are different in appearance. Algebras are geometric facts which are proved by propositions five and six of Book two of Elements . —Omar Khayyam In effect, Khayyam's work
22458-576: The difficulty of disentangling authentic from spurious quatrains: "while it is certain that Khayyam wrote many quatrains, it is hardly possible, save in a few exceptional cases, to assert positively that he wrote any of those ascribed to him". In addition to the Persian quatrains, there are twenty-five Arabic poems attributed to Khayyam which are attested by historians such as al-Isfahani, Shahrazuri ( Nuzhat al-Arwah , c. 1201–1211), Qifti ( Tārikh al-hukamā , 1255), and Hamdallah Mustawfi ( Tarikh-i guzida , 1339). Boyle emphasized that there are
22655-530: The direction of Khayyam to make large-scale astronomical observations and revise the astronomical tables. Recalibrating the calendar fixed the first day of the year at the exact moment of the passing of the Sun's center across vernal equinox . This marks the beginning of spring or Nowrūz , a day in which the Sun enters the first degree of Aries before noon. The resultant calendar was named in Malik-Shah's honor as
22852-614: The entire Islamic caliphate . It served later as the seat of the Tahirid governors of Khorasan . In the 11th–12th centuries, Merv was the capital of the Great Seljuk Empire and remained so until the latter's ultimate fall. Around this time, Merv turned into a chief centre of Islamic science and culture , attracting as well as producing renowned poets, musicians, physicians, mathematicians and astronomers. The great Persian polymath Omar Khayyam , among others, spent
23049-428: The entire tradition may be pseudepigraphic . Hans Heinrich Schaeder in 1934 commented that the name of Omar Khayyam "is to be struck out from the history of Persian literature" due to the lack of any material that could confidently be attributed to him. De Blois presents a bibliography of the manuscript tradition, concluding pessimistically that the situation has not changed significantly since Schaeder's time. Five of
23246-500: The epithet King of the Wise ( Arabic : ملك الحکماء , romanized : Malik al-Ḥukamā ). Shahrazuri (d. 1300) esteems him highly as a mathematician, and claims that he may be regarded as "the successor of Avicenna in the various branches of philosophic learning". Al-Qifti (d. 1248), even though disagreeing with his views, concedes he was "unrivalled in his knowledge of natural philosophy and astronomy". Despite being hailed as
23443-652: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak
23640-438: The exterior, forms a platform for the second, larger wall, built of mudbricks and stepped on the interior. The form of this wall is like other Hellenistic fortresses found in Anatolia , though this is unique for being made of mudbrick instead of stone. The third wall is possibly Sassanian and is built of larger bricks. Surrounding the wall were a variety of pottery sherds, particularly Parthian ones. The size of these fortifications
23837-400: The figure at more than 1,300,000. Each individual soldier of the conquering army "was allotted the execution of three to four hundred persons", many of those soldiers being levies from Sarakhs who, because of their town's enmity toward Merv, "exceeded the ferocity of the heathen Mongols in the slaughter of their fellow-Muslims." Almost the entire population of Merv, and refugees arriving from
24034-650: The first storey may have been used for storage. Parapets lined the roof, which was often used for living quarters as well. Merv's largest and best-preserved Abbasid köşk is the Greater Gyzgala (Turkmen, "maiden's fortress"), located just outside Soltangala's western wall; this structure consisted of 17 rooms surrounding a central courtyard. The nearby Lesser Gyzgala had extraordinarily thick walls with deep corrugations, as well as multiple interior stairways leading to second storey living quarters. All of Merv's kushks are in precarious states of preservation. However,
24231-430: The first to conceive a general theory of cubic equations, and the first to geometrically solve every type of cubic equation, so far as positive roots are concerned. The Treatise on Algebra contains his work on cubic equations . It is divided into three parts: (i) equations which can be solved with compass and straight edge , (ii) equations which can be solved by means of conic sections , and (iii) equations which involve
24428-599: The following phylogenetic classification: Merv Merv ( Turkmen : Merw , Мерв , مرو ; Persian : مرو , romanized : Marv ), also known as the Merve Oasis , was a major Iranian city in Central Asia , on the historical Silk Road , near today's Mary, Turkmenistan . Human settlements on the site of Merv existed from the 3rd millennium BC until the 18th century AD. It changed hands repeatedly throughout history. Under
24625-419: The form of the determination of the fourth, fifth, sixth roots up to any desired degree. No one preceded us in this and those proofs are purely arithmetic, founded on the arithmetic of The Elements . —Omar Khayyam, Treatise on Algebra In his algebraic treatise, Khayyam alludes to a book he had written on the extraction of the n {\displaystyle n} th root of natural numbers using
24822-577: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to
25019-476: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like
25216-665: The full details of his horoscope: "he was Gemini, the sun and Mercury being in the ascendant[...]". This was used by modern scholars to establish his date of birth as 18 May 1048. Khayyam's boyhood was spent in Nishapur, a leading metropolis under the Great Seljuq Empire , which had earlier been a major center of the Zoroastrian religion . His full name, as it appears in Arabic sources, was Abu’l Fath Omar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam . His gifts were recognized by his early tutors who sent him to study under Imam Muwaffaq Nishaburi,
25413-477: The greatest teacher of the Khorasan region who tutored the children of the highest nobility, and Khayyam developed a firm friendship with him through the years. Khayyam might have met and studied with Bahmanyar , a disciple of Avicenna . After studying science, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy at Nishapur, about the year 1068 he traveled to the province of Bukhara , where he frequented the renowned library of
25610-582: The interpretation of his philosophic attitude toward life as a combination of pessimism , nihilism , Epicureanism , fatalism , and agnosticism . This view is taken by Iranologists such as Arthur Christensen , Hans Heinrich Schaeder , John Andrew Boyle , Edward Denison Ross , Edward Henry Whinfield and George Sarton . Conversely, the Khayyamic quatrains have also been described as mystical Sufi poetry. In addition to his Persian quatrains, J. C. E. Bowen mentions that Khayyam's Arabic poems also "express
25807-410: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
26004-531: The last Sassanian ruler, Yazdegerd III (632–651) was killed near the city and the Sassanian military governor surrendered to the approaching Arab army. Representatives of the caliph, Umar occupied the city, which became the capital of the Umayyad province of Khorasan . In 671, Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan sent 50,000 Arab troops to Merv as a colony. This colony retained its native Kufan sympathies and became
26201-464: The latter at the Tomb of Ahmad Sanjar . Nearing the end of the 11th century, Merv became the eastern capital of the split Seljuq state . However, starting from 1118, it served as the capital of the whole empire. During this period, Merv expanded to its greatest size—Arab and Persian geographers termed it "the mother of the world", the "rendezvous of great and small", the "chief city of Khurasan" and
26398-478: The leadership of Tughril —the Ghaznavid sultan Mas'ud I was extremely unpopular in the city. Tughril's brother Chaghri stayed in Merv as the Seljuq domains grew to include the rest of Khurasan and Iran, and it subsequently became a favourite city of the Seljuq sultans. Chaghri, his son Alp Arslan (sultan from 1063 to 1072) and great-grandson Ahmad Sanjar (sultan from 1118 to 1157) were buried at Merv,
26595-434: The length of the year at the end of the 19th century was 365.242196 days, while today it is 365.242190 days. After the death of Malik-Shah and his vizier (murdered, it is thought, by the Ismaili order of Assassins ), Khayyam fell from favor at court, and as a result, he soon set out on his pilgrimage to Mecca . A possible ulterior motive for his pilgrimage reported by Al-Qifti , was a public demonstration of his faith with
26792-474: The local Qajars in the region declared independence and formed the Qajar Principality of Merv . In 1785, the Manghit amir of Bukhara, Shah Murad , attacked the city and killed the ruler, Bayram 'Ali Khan Qajar. A few years later, in 1788 and 1789, Shah Murad razed the city to the ground, and broke down the dams, leaving the area a waste land. The entire population of the city and the surrounding oasis of about 100,000 were then deported in several stages to
26989-654: The mathematical relationship among notes, minor, major and tetrachords . 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 ( Kharidat al-qasr , 1174). One of the earliest specimens of Omar Khayyam's Rubiyat is from Fakhr al-Din Razi . In his work al-Tanbih ‘ala ba‘d asrar al-maw‘dat fi’l-Qur’an ( c. 1160 ), he quotes one of his poems (corresponding to quatrain LXII of FitzGerald's first edition). Daya in his writings ( Mirṣād al-‘Ibad , c. 1230) quotes two quatrains, one of which
27186-414: The middle of the tenth century, according to Farabi 's Enumeration of the Sciences , that this science, ‘ilm al-nujūm , was already split into two parts, one dealing with astrology and the other with theoretical mathematical astronomy." Khayyam has a short treatise devoted to Archimedes' principle (in full title, On the Deception of Knowing the Two Quantities of Gold and Silver in a Compound Made of
27383-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following
27580-475: The modern period as a direct result of the extreme popularity of the translation of such verses into English by Edward FitzGerald (1859). 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. Khayyam considered himself intellectually to be
27777-400: The modern village of Baýramaly and 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of the large Soviet-built city of Mary. Erk Gala (from Persian, "the citadel fort") is the oldest part of the city of Merv complex. Built in the 7th century BC, Erk Gala was built as a Persian Style fortress controlling the oasis on the Murghab River . The Erk Gala fortress later served as the acropolis for
27974-407: The more recent ones are more literal than that of FitzGerald. FitzGerald's translation was a factor in rekindling interest in Khayyam as a poet even in his native Iran. Sadegh Hedayat in his Songs of Khayyam ( Taranehha-ye Khayyam , 1934) reintroduced Khayyam's poetic legacy to modern Iran. Under the Pahlavi dynasty , a new monument of white marble, designed by the architect Houshang Seyhoun ,
28171-420: The most important of Soltangala's surviving buildings are Seljuq constructions. Seljuq leader Toghrul's conquest of Merv in 1037 revitalised the city; under his descendants, especially Sanjar, who made it his residence, Merv found itself at the centre of a large multicultural empire. Evidence of this prosperity is found throughout the Soltangala. Many of these buildings are concentrated in Soltangala's citadel,
28368-411: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as
28565-411: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created
28762-448: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal
28959-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian
29156-549: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became
29353-423: The nucleus of Khurasan. Using the city as their base, the Arabs, led by Qutayba ibn Muslim from 705 to 715, brought large parts of Central Asia, including Balkh , Bukhara , and Fergana under subjection. Merv, and Khorasan, in general, became one of the first parts of the Persian -speaking world to become majority- Muslim . Arab immigration to the area was substantial. A Chinese man captured at Talas, Du Huan ,
29550-513: The official Sassanid Zoroastrianism , including Buddhists, Manichaeans , and Christians of the Church of the East . Between the 5th and 11th centuries, Merv served as the seat of an East Syrian metropolitan province . The first bishop was Barshabba (c.360/424). The Hephthalite occupation from the end of the 5th century to 565 AD briefly interrupted Sassanid rule. Khuzestan Central Persia Caucasus Pars Khorasan Other geographies Sassanian rule ended when
29747-418: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in
29944-427: The other parts of the Khwarazmian Empire , were slaughtered, making it one of the bloodiest captures of a city in world history. Excavations revealed the drastic rebuilding of the city's fortifications in the aftermath of their destruction, but the city's prosperity had passed. The Mongol invasion spelled the eclipse of Merv and other major centres for more than a century. After the Mongol conquest, Merv became part of
30141-633: The parallel postulate was significant for the further development of geometry, as it clearly shows the possibility of non-Euclidean geometries. The hypotheses of acute, obtuse, and right angles are now known to lead respectively to the non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry of Gauss-Bolyai-Lobachevsky, to that of Riemannian geometry , and to Euclidean geometry . Tusi 's commentaries on Khayyam's treatment of parallels made their way to Europe. John Wallis , professor of geometry at Oxford , translated Tusi's commentary into Latin. Jesuit geometer Girolamo Saccheri , whose work ( euclides ab omni naevo vindicatus , 1733)
30338-537: The poet-astronomer was undevout; and his astronomy doubtless helped to make him so. One contemporary writes: "I did not observe that he had any great belief in astrological predictions; nor have I seen or heard of any of the great (scientists) who had such belief. He gave his adherence to no religious sect. Agnosticism, not faith, is the keynote of his works. Among the sects he saw everywhere strife and hatred in which he could have no part...." Persian novelist Sadegh Hedayat says Khayyám from "his youth to his death remained
30535-524: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
30732-420: The proposition, mainly on grounds that each of them had postulated something that was by no means easier to admit than the Fifth Postulate itself. Drawing upon Aristotle 's views, he rejects the usage of movement in geometry and therefore dismisses the different attempt by Ibn al-Haytham . Unsatisfied with the failure of mathematicians to prove Euclid's statement from his other postulates, Khayyam tried to connect
30929-450: The quatrains later attributed to Omar Khayyam are found as early as 30 years after his death, quoted in Sindbad-Nameh . While this establishes that these specific verses were in circulation in Omar's time or shortly later, it does not imply that the verses must be his. De Blois concludes that at the least the process of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam appears to have begun already in the 13th century. Edward Granville Browne (1906) notes
31126-477: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in
31323-441: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali
31520-468: The results of the work to the widest possible audience. Merv consists of a few discrete walled cities very near to each other constructed on uninhabited land by builders of different eras, used, and then abandoned and never rebuilt. Four walled cities correspond to the chief periods of Merv's importance: the oldest, Erkgala, corresponds to Achaemenid Merv, the smallest of the three. Gäwürgala (also known as Gyaur Gala), which surrounds Erkgala, comprises
31717-409: The revision of the Persian calendar. The undertaking probably began with the opening of the observatory in 1074 and ended in 1079, when Omar Khayyam and his colleagues concluded their measurements of the length of the year, reporting it as 365.24219858156 days. Given that the length of the year is changing in the sixth decimal place over a person's lifetime, this is outstandingly accurate. For comparison,
31914-435: The site of Gyaur Kala and Baýramaly , Buddhism was followed and practised often at the local Buddhist stupas . After the Sasanid Ardashir I (220–240 AD) took Merv, the study of numismatics picks up the thread: the unbroken series of coins originally minted at Merv document a long unbroken direct Sassanian rule of almost four centuries. During this period Merv was home to practitioners of various religions beside
32111-554: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced
32308-422: The spectacle of walls, towers, ramparts and domes, stretching in bewildering confusion to the horizon, reminds us that we are in the centre of bygone greatness." Some exploratory excavations at Merv were conducted in 1885 by the Russian general A. V. Komarov, the governor of the Transcaspian oblast, 1883–1889; Komarov employed his troops as excavators and published his collection of trophy artifacts and coins from
32505-452: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses
32702-458: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,
32899-467: The start of the Abbasid dynasty, Gäwürgala persisted as a suburb of the larger Soltangala. In Gäwürgala are concentrated many Abbasid-era "industrial" buildings: pottery kilns, steel, iron and copper-working workshops and so on. A well-preserved pottery kiln has an intact vaulted arch support and a square firepit. Gäwürgala seems to have been the craftsmen's quarters throughout the Abbasid and pre-Seljuk periods. Soltangala (from "Sultan Qala",
33096-448: The structures in Merv is the 12th-century mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar , also in Sultan Gala. It is the largest of Seljuk mausoleums and is also the first dated mosque-mausoleum complex, a form which was later to become common. It is square, 27 metres (89 ft) per side, with two entrances on opposite sides; a large central dome supported by an octagonal system of ribs and arches covers the interior (Ettinghausen, 270). The dome's exterior
33293-471: The sultan's fortress) is by far the largest of Merv's cities. Textual sources establish it was Abu Muslim, the leader of the Abbasid rebellion, who symbolised the beginning of the new Caliphate by commissioning monumental structures to the west of the Gäwürgala walls, in what then became Soltangala. The area was quickly walled and became the core of medieval Merv; the many Abbasid-era köshks (fortified building) discovered in and outside Soltangala attest to
33490-423: The test, Lovely old book in hideous error drest, Believe me, I can quote the Koran too, The unbeliever knows his Koran best. And do you think that unto such as you, A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew, God gave the Secret, and denied it me? Well, well, what matters it! believe that too. Look not above, there is no answer there; Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer; Near is as near to God as any Far, And Here
33687-415: The theoretical study of the concept of irrational number . Displeased with Euclid's definition of equal ratios, he redefined the concept of a number by the use of a continued fraction as the means of expressing a ratio. Youschkevitch and Rosenfeld argue that "by placing irrational quantities and numbers on the same operational scale, [Khayyam] began a true revolution in the doctrine of number." Likewise, it
33884-418: 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 that it is now known as Omar Khayyam's triangle. In 1074–5, Omar Khayyam was commissioned by Sultan Malik-Shah to build an observatory at Isfahan and reform the Persian calendar . There was a panel of eight scholars working under
34081-422: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in
34278-520: The victims of an age when men of science are discredited, and only a few remain who are capable of engaging in scientific research. Our philosophers spend all their time in mixing true with false and are interested in nothing but outward show; such little learning as they have they extend on material ends. When they see a man sincere and unremitting in his search for the truth, one who will have nothing to do with falsehood and pretence, they mock and despise him. A literal reading of Khayyam's quatrains leads to
34475-496: The whole Merv oasis, comprises one long and narrow windowless room with many tiers of niches across the walls. Some sources Believe the kepter khana (there are more elsewhere in Merv and Central Asia) was a pigeon roost used to raise pigeons, to collect their dung, which was used in growing the melons for which Merv was famous. Others see the kepderihanas as libraries or treasuries, because of their location in high status areas next to important structures. The best-preserved of all
34672-418: The work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites . In 1872 FitzGerald had a third edition printed which increased interest in the work in America. By the 1880s, the book was extremely well known throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent of the formation of numerous "Omar Khayyam Clubs" and a "fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat". Khayyam's poems have been translated into many languages; many of
34869-440: The works of Khazini , Khayyam's group implemented an intercalation system based on quadrennial and quinquennial leap years . Therefore, the calendar consisted of 25 ordinary years that included 365 days, and 8 leap years that included 366 days. The calendar remained in use across Greater Iran from the 11th to the 20th centuries. In 1911 the Jalali calendar became the official national calendar of Qajar Iran . In 1925 this calendar
35066-564: The world, determinism and subsistence ( Darurat al-tadād fi’l-‘ālam wa’l-jabr wa’l-baqā’ ), is written in Arabic and deals with free will and determinism . The titles of his other works are On being and necessity ( Risālah fī’l-kawn wa’l-taklīf ), The Treatise on Transcendence in Existence ( al-Risālah al-ulā fi’l-wujūd ), On the knowledge of the universal principles of existence ( Risālah dar ‘ilm kulliyāt-i wujūd ), and Abridgement concerning natural phenomena ( Mukhtasar fi’l-Tabi‘iyyāt ). Khayyam himself once said: We are
35263-487: Was a memorable day for shrieking and weeping and wailing. They took the wealthy people and beat them and tortured them with all sorts of cruelties in the search for wealth ... Then they set fire to the city and burned the tomb of Sultan Sanjar and dug up his grave looking for money. They said, "These people have resisted us" so they killed them all. Then Genghis Khan ordered that the dead should be counted and there were around 700,000 corpses. A Persian historian, Juvayni , put
35460-416: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of
35657-461: Was appointed to the governorship in 1600. In 1608, Mihrab Khan Qajar became governor, beginning two centuries of Qajar governorship over Merv. From 1715, the Qajar elite began to assert Merv's independence from the Safavid government, but within a decade the oasis became insecure due to raids by Tatars and Turkmens. Nader Shah launched military campaigns that cowed the Turkmens and Tatars and restored Merv's irrigation system. After Nader Shah's death,
35854-400: Was born and started his movement in Merv. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Merv may have been the world's largest city, with a population of up to 500,000. During this period, Merv was known as "Marw al-Shāhijān" (Merv the Great), and frequently referred to as the "capital of the eastern Islamic world". According to geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi , the city and its structures were visible from
36051-401: Was brought to Baghdad and toured the caliphate. He observed that in Merv, Khurasan, Arabs and Persians lived in mixed concentrations. Merv gained renewed importance in February 748 when the Iranian general Abu Muslim (d. 755) declared a new Abbasid dynasty at Merv, expanding and re-founding the city, and, in the name of the Abbasid line, used the city as a base of rebellion against
36248-409: Was concluded with Sultan Malik-Shah I who had made incursions into Karakhanid dominions. Khayyam entered the service of Malik-Shah in 1074 when he was invited by the Grand Vizier Nizam al-Mulk to meet Malik-Shah in the city of Marv . Khayyam was subsequently commissioned to set up an observatory in Isfahan and lead a group of scientists in carrying out precise astronomical observations aimed at
36445-455: Was defended by Bjerregaard, Idries Shah , and Dougan who attributes the reputation of hedonism to the failings of FitzGerald's translation, arguing that Khayyam's poetry is to be understood as "deeply esoteric". On the other hand, Iranian experts such as Mohammad Ali Foroughi and Mojtaba Minovi rejected the hypothesis that Omar Khayyam was a Sufi. Foroughi stated that Khayyam's ideas may have been consistent with that of Sufis at times but there
36642-489: Was erected over his tomb. A statue by Abolhassan Sadighi was erected in Laleh Park , Tehran in the 1960s, and a bust by the same sculptor was placed near Khayyam's mausoleum in Nishapur. In 2009, the state of Iran donated a pavilion to the United Nations Office in Vienna , inaugurated at Vienna International Center . In 2016, three statues of Khayyam were unveiled: one at the University of Oklahoma , one in Nishapur and one in Florence, Italy. Over 150 composers have used
36839-430: Was extensively examined by Eilhard Wiedemann who believed that Khayyam's solution was more accurate and sophisticated than that of Khazini and Al-Nayrizi who also dealt with the subject elsewhere. Another short treatise 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
37036-547: Was famous during his life as a mathematician . His surviving mathematical works include (i) Commentary on the Difficulties Concerning the Postulates of Euclid's Elements ( Risāla fī Sharḥ mā Ashkal min Muṣādarāt Kitāb Uqlīdis ), completed in December 1077, (ii) Treatise On the Division of a Quadrant of a Circle ( Risālah fī Qismah Rub‘ al-Dā’irah ), undated but completed prior to the Treatise on Algebra , and (iii) Treatise on Algebra ( Risālah fi al-Jabr wa'l-Muqābala ), most likely completed in 1079. He furthermore wrote
37233-503: Was in the 12th century. A final set of Seljuq remains are the walls of the Soltangala. These fortifications, which largely remain, began as eight-to-nine-metre-high (26 to 30 ft) mud brick structures, inside of which were chambers for defenders to shoot arrows from. There were horseshoe-shaped towers every 15 to 35 metres (49 to 115 ft). These walls, however, did not prove to be effective because they were not of adequate thickness to withstand catapults and other artillery. By
37430-411: Was noted by D. J. Struik that Omar was "on the road to that extension of the number concept which leads to the notion of the real number ." Rashed and Vahabzadeh (2000) have argued that because of his thoroughgoing geometrical approach to algebraic equations, Khayyam can be considered the precursor of Descartes in the invention of analytic geometry . In the Treatise on the Division of a Quadrant of
37627-437: Was one of 16 perfect lands created by god Ahura Mazda . Between the 5th and 11th centuries, Merv served as the seat of an East Syrian metropolitan province . A descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad , 8th Imam of Twelver Shia Islam , Ali ar-Ridha , moved to Merv from Baghdad and resided there for several years. Al-Muqanna , the "Veiled Prophet", who gained many followers by claiming to be an incarnation of God,
37824-542: Was one of the most important political figures of the Caliphate . The influential Barmakid family, based in Merv, played an important part in transferring Greek knowledge (established in Merv since the days of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians ) into the Arab world. Throughout the Abbasid era, Merv remained the capital and most important city of Khurasan. During this time, the Arab historian Al-Muqaddasi (c. 945/946–991) called Merv "delightful, fine, elegant, brilliant, extensive, and pleasant". Merv's architecture inspired
38021-484: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in
38218-463: Was simplified and the names of the months were modernized, resulting in the modern Iranian calendar . The Jalali calendar is more accurate than the Gregorian calendar of 1582, with an error of one day accumulating over 5,000 years, compared to one day every 3,330 years in the Gregorian calendar. Moritz Cantor considered it the most perfect calendar ever devised. One of his pupils Nizami Aruzi of Samarcand relates that Khayyam apparently did not have
38415-488: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in
38612-425: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راهآهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in
38809-427: Was turquoise, and its height made it imposing; it was said that approaching caravans could see the mausoleum while still a day's march from the city. The mausoleum's decoration, in typical early Seljuk style, was conservative, with interior stucco work and geometric brick decoration, now mainly lost, on the outside. Except for the recently "reconstructed" exterior decoration, the largely intact mausoleum remains just as it
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