The Poet Scientist Khayyam as Philosopher

 

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

 

            ‘Umar ibn Ibrahim Khayyam-i Nayshapuri (439/1048-526/1131) known in the West simply as Omar Khayyam is the most famous Asian poet in the West[1] and since the 19th century efforts by historians of science such as Amelie Sedillot and Franz Woepke followed by many 20th century scholars, he has also become established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period, the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times,[2] as well as a significant work on the criticism of the Euclidean parallel lines postulate.[3]  His reputation is therefore well established as both a poet and a scientist.  What is much less known about him, however, is his significance as a philosopher and his few remaining philosophical works have not received anywhere the same attention in the Occident as have his scientific or poetic writings to the extent that he hardly figures in general histories of Islamic philosophy written in Europe.[4]  It has become usually forgotten that in traditional Islamic sources he was known essentially as a philosopher-scientist.  Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”[5] and his son-in-law, Muhammad Baghdadi, is said to have stated that Khayyam was busy teaching the metaphysics (ilahiyyat) of Ibn Sina's al-Shifa’ (“The Book of Healing”) when he died.[6]  Many other sources have also testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Ibn Sina in Nayshapur where Khayyam lived most of his life, breathed his last, and was buried and where his mausoleum remains today a famous site visited by many people every year.

It is in light of these contradictory evaluations of Khayyam and especially the eclipse of his significance as a philosophy in the line of the Islamic philosophical tradition that we wish to turn to a study of his philosophy on the basis of what has remained of his writings.  Before embarking upon this task, however, it is necessary to confront the question of his quatrains and the “philosophical” meaning that many have associated with it in the West and also in other areas of the world, including those parts of the Islamic world where people's knowledge of Khayyam has come primarily through Western sources.  The quatrains in Fitzgerald's translation convey at least superficially a hedonistic, fatalistic and this worldly philosophy combined with much skepticism about religious teachings if not God Himself.  One might ask how could this Khayyam be the same man who wrote the extant philosophical works or who was so respected as a scholar of religious stature that the Islamic judge of the province of Fars would send him a letter asking him philosophical and theological questions?  Several responses are possible, each of which needs to be stated and then examined.  One is that the philosopher-scientist Khayyam was not the same Khayyam who is the author of the quatrains bearing his name.  A number of scholars in East and West have accepted this position and many have sought to give as proof the fact that Nizami ‘Arudi Samarqandi in his Chahar-maqalah mentions Khayyam in the third chapter of his work as an astronomer and not in the second chapter as a poet.[7]  A second group has doubted the authenticity of most of the quatrains and has accepted that Khayyam may have written a few of these as a pastime without meaning to describe his complete philosophy of life therein.  Another group asserts that the world loving, skeptical, and fatalistic philosophy expressed in the quatrains expresses the thought of the “real” Khayyam, while the existing philosophical treatises are simply formalities which he produced because the conditions of the world in which he lived required his composing such works.

 

It is of interest to note that as modernism brought a wave of religious lukewarmness and even skepticism among a number of Iranians, it also made the Khayyam “packaged” in the West a cultural hero of those who had become philosophically skeptical and agnostic.  For example, Taqi Irani, who was the intellectual leader of the Iranian communists in the period before the Second World War, was much interested in Khayyam but because of his own “scientific materialism” turned to the study of Khayyam's mathematics rather than his poetry which did not accord with communist teachings.  Also Iran's most famous modern writer, Sadegh Hedayat, who was an agnostic and anti-religious activist, did much to introduce the new skeptical view of Khayyam among modernized Persians[8] to the extent that some by mistake think of him as the founder of Khayyam studies in Iran.[9]  In fact no figure in Persian literature has been used as often as Khayyam in modern times to depict whatever sense of rebellion, doubt, hedonistic tendency or even feeling of suicide might have existed within the mind of the modern interpreter of Khayyam in question.  In dealing with the philosophy of Khayyam and its interpretation we are therefore dealing not only with an intellectual question but also with one which for some is an existential matter and touches the very foundations of their worldview for which they have sought historical legitimacy by identifying their personal and subjective states with Khayyam.  Nevertheless, for the sake of intellectual honesty and the truth all these possibilities must be examined in light of Khayyam's written works even if there is a popularized Khayyam out there after whom night clubs are named all over the world, a figure whose image is difficult to erase in the minds of those, including a number of modernized Iranian writers, wooed by the Victorian Khayyam cult began by Fitzgerald and its aftermath which survives in a new form to this day.

As far as positing two Khayyams is concerned, we believe that there is no cogent reason for doing so especially if one accepts that only a few dozen of the quatrains are most likely authentic and the rest by other poets such as Hayyani or Hayati (as mentioned in some manuscripts of the Ruba‘iyyat in Persia and Paris) which could have been easily mistaken (in the Arabic/Persian script) by later scribes for Khayyam.  If we take this fact into consideration, there is no need to accept all of the poems in his name as being his or go to the other extreme to negate the authenticity of all the poems attributed to Khayyam.  Furthermore, the poems found in the most ancient manuscripts do not contradict his philosophical writings in principle as we shall see later in this essay.  In fact it was common among Persian Islamic philosophers to write a few quatrains on the side often in the spirit of some of the poems of Khayyam singing about the impermanence of the world and its transience and similar themes.  One need only recall the names of Suhrawardi, Afdal al-Din Kashani, Nasir al-Din Tusi and Mulla Sadra who wrote some poems along with their extensive prose works not to speak of such philosophers as Nasir-i Khusraw, Mir Damad, Mulla ‘Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji and Sabziwari who in contrast to the earlier group, wrote poetry extensively.  And this tradition has continued to our own day.[10]  I therefore tend to agree with those who believe that some of the quatrains attributed by Khayyam were actually by him and must be considered as a source but not the source of his philosophical views.

As for those who rely solely on the quatrains, believing that Khayyam was hiding his skeptical and hedonistic views because of expediency, I find no logic in this argument except the psychological need of some modern skeptics to find historical precedence and therefore legitimacy for their innovations based on the premises of modernism.  To accuse Khayyam of blatant hypocrisy while seeking to make of him a cultural hero for modern skeptics is itself the worst kind of hypocrisy hardly worthy of serious consideration.

In trying to understand the philosophy of Khayyam, therefore, we must turn to his own works in light of the intellectual and social conditions of his day and evaluations of Khayyam's works by such figures as Zahir al-Din Bayhaqi, Nizami ‘Arudi Samarqandi and Jar Allah Zamakhshari, as well as the Sufi poets and writers who came shortly after him such as ‘Attar and Najm al-Din Razi.  In this essay it is not possible to investigate the secondary sources but a word can be said about the intellectual conditions of Khayyam's time before turning to the three sources of his philosophy: namely, his scientific works, the philosophical texts and the poetry.

The establishment of Seljuq rule over Persia, Anatolia, Iraq and Syria led to a new political situation which also possessed consequences for the cultivation of philosophy.  After over two centuries, the Seljuqs united Western Asia under the aegis of Sunni power, a power of which the Abbasid caliph remained the symbol although in fact military and political power remained in the hands of the Seljuq sultans.  To strengthen the central  power of Sunni authority, the Seljuqs, like the Abbasid caliphs, supported Ash‘arite kalam and by extension combated the propagation of falsafah to which Ash‘arism was opposed.  It is not accidental that from the middle of the 5th/11th century onward, kalam came to dominate the intellectual scene in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, especially Khurasan from which Khayyam hailed.  One needs only to recall the name of such important figures of Ash‘arite kalam as Imam al-Haramayn Juwayni and Abu Hamid Muhammad Ghazzali, both from Khurasan, to confirm this fact.  Ghazzali was not only an Ash‘arite mutakallim, but in his opposition to falsafah he certainly joined the Ash‘arite ranks.

During this period the teaching of philosophy was marginalized to the extent that the Seljuq prime minister, Khwajah Nizam al-Mulk, in his conditions for the endowment of the Nizamiyyah madrasah system, stipulates that philosophy should not be taught therein.  This was the period of such works as the Tahafut al-falasifah (“Incoherence of the Philosophers”) of Ghazzali, the Musari‘at al-falasifah (“Wrestling with the Philosophers”) of Abu’l-Fath Shahrastani and the Sharh al-isharat (“Commentary upon the Book of Directives [and Remarks]) of Fakhr al-Din Razi, all works opposed to falsafah.  It is usually said that between the middle of the 5th/11th century and the beginning of the 7th/13th century, falsafah was eclipsed in the eastern lands of Islam and flourished only in the Maghrib where Ibn Rushd was to write his response to Ghazzali in his Tahafut al-tahafut (“Incoherence of the Incoherence”).  Furthermore, the observation has often been made that in the east at the end of this period of Ash‘arite domination, that is, in the 7th/13th century, Khwajah Nasir al-Din Tusi answered both Shahrastani and Razi and resuscitated Ibn Sina's philosophy.  In general one points to Suhrawardi as the only major philosopher in this period of the eclipse of philosophy in the east whose influence, however, really began in the decades which coincides with Tusi's revival of Ibn Sina.

These statements are generally correct but should not be taken to mean that there was no philosophical activity in Persia and lands nearby during this period of domination of kalam.  The most important proof of the continuation of the school of Ibn Sina in the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries is, in fact, ‘Umar Khayyam himself.  He lived in the middle of  this period of eclipse of Ibn Sinan philosophy, between Ibn Sina's students and Tusi, and must be considered an eminent philosophical figure during this period of suppression of philosophical thought in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam.  His very existence is proof of the fact that philosophy had not disappeared totally from the scene even during this period of eclipse.  Nevertheless, the period during which he lived is also one of the reasons why in general histories of Islamic philosophy there is usually no mention of him as a philosopher belonging to the school of Ibn Sina.  Had he lived earlier or later he would have been probably studied more extensively as a mashsha’i philosopher like many others of the 4th/10th or 7th/13th century.  But he was destined to remain a solitary figure between Ibn Sina's students Bahmanyar ibn Marzban and Abu’l-‘Abbas Lukari on the one hand and Nasir al-Din Tusi and other philosophers of the 7th/13th century on the other.  Yet, although a lonely figure who preferred solitude and did not like to accept students, he was highly revered as both philosopher and mathematician by scholars of his own generation as well as those who came thereafter.

 

 

            Although much attention has been paid during the past century both in the West and to some extent in the Islamic world itself to the history of mathematics in Islamic civilization, much less attention has been paid to the Islamic philosophy of mathematics with which many Islamic scientists such as Khayyam dealt.  Needless to say, from the point of view of philosophy, the most important contribution of Khayyam's mathematical works is to the philosophy of mathematics.  To illustrate this assertion; it is sufficient to draw attention to three basic mathematical ideas with which Khayyam deals and which possess a strong philosophical dimension.  The first is the question of mathematical order.  Where does this order issue from and why does it correspond to the order dominant in the world of nature?  Khayyam was fully aware of this basic problem but answered it in one of his philosophical treatises on being to which we shall turn shortly rather than in a mathematical treatise.  Khayyam's profound answer is that the Divine Origin of all existence not only emanates wujud or being by virtue of which all things gain reality, but It is also the source of order which is inseparable from the very act of existence.  To speak of wujud is also to speak of order which the science of mathematics studies in turn as do certain other disciplines.

A second mathematico-philosphical point with which Khayyam was concerned is the significance of postulate in geometry and the necessity for the mathematician to rely upon philosophy in order to prove the postulates and principles of his own science, hence the importance of the relation of any particular science to prime philosophy.  More specifically Khayyam was interested in the pertinence of the fact that the fifth postulate of Euclid, called the parallel postulate, cannot be proven on the basis of existing axioms.  Khayyam refused to enter motion into the attempt to prove this postulate as had Ibn al-Haytham because Khayyam associated motion with the world of matter and wanted to keep it away from the purely intelligible and immaterial world of geometry.[11]  In providing his proofs, Khayyam had to have recourse to some non-Euclidean theorems.[12] Moreover, in his study of the fifth postulate Khayyam discussed concepts of space and geometric order which are of much importance for the philosophy of mathematics.  This question is also dealt with in another manner in his Algebra where the relation between algebraic equations and geometric figures plays a central role and where Khayyam in a sense geometrizes algebra.

A third important issue worth mentioning is the clear distinction made by Khayyam, on the basis of the work of earlier Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Sina, between natural body (al-jism al-tabi‘i) and mathematical body (al-jism al-ta‘limi).  The first is defined as a body which is in the category of substance and which stands by itself while the second, also called volume (hajm), is of the category of accident which does not subsist by itself in the external world.  The first is the body with which the natural sciences deal and the second is the concern of mathematics.  Khayyam was very careful in respecting the boundaries of each discipline and criticized Ibn al-Haytham in his proof of the parallel postulate precisely because he had broken this rule and had brought a subject belonging to natural philosophy, that is, motion which belongs to the natural body, into the domain of geometry which deals with mathematical body.

In this distinction between al-jism al-tabi‘i and al-jism al-ta‘limi by Khayyam, Tusi and others there is a basic metaphysical principle involved that is of great significance even for the philosophy of quantum mechanics.  Many people today think of atomic particles such as the electron and proton as if they were corporeal objects such as apples and pears except on a much smaller scale.  In fact, however, the two classes of things belong to two different realms of existence and not to  a single domain of reality.  Wolfgang Smith in his brilliant work, The Quantum Enigma, calls the first, that is electrons, etc., physical and the second, that is ordinary objects such as apples, corporeal.  The first is potential and the second actual with the modification that needs to be made in such Aristotelian terms when dealing with modern physics.[13]  The distinction made by Khayyam and others between the two types of body in question is in many ways related to the issue brought up by Wolfgang Smith and is of great significance for the philosophy of mathematics and the relation between mathematics and physics envisaged from a philosophical point of view.

In turning to Khayyam's properly speaking philosophical works, it is necessary to deal with each work separately since our concern in this essay is after all with his philosophy.[14]  Let us first turn to Khayyam's translation with brief commentary of Ibn Sina's al-Khutbat al-gharra’ (“The Splendid Sermon”) dealing with the praise of God.[15]  This beautifully composed treatise on Divine Unity is somewhat reminiscent of the poems of such figures as Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn ‘Ali Khusrawi.  Also after Khayyam, the famous poet laureate Fakhr al-Din As‘ad Gurgani in his Wis wa Ramin (“The Romance of Wis and Ramin”) composed lines similar to Ibn Sina's.  The significance of this treatise is first of all in Khayyam's strong attestion to the reality of God and His Unity.  In fact the content of the treatise, which he chose to translate and elucidate rather than criticize, meaning that he accepted and identified with its content rather than opposing it, stands diametrically opposed to the religious skepticism and agnosticism that some have read into Khayyam's philosophy basing themselves solely on some of the poems attributed to him.  Secondly, in light of the fact that Khayyam rarely praised or repeated predecessors, the very fact that he chose to translate a work of Ibn Sina proves the extent of his respect for Shaykh al-ra’is and only confirms the assertion of all the traditional sources that in philosophy Khayyam was a follower of him.  Some in fact have considered Khayyam to be a direct student of Ibn Sina, but this assertion cannot be taken as being literally true because of the dates of the birth and death of the two figures involved.  Rather, it means that Khayyam was a student of the school of Ibn Sina and his philosophical lineage in fact goes back through Lukari and Bahmanyar to Ibn Sina himself.  This direct intellectual descent is of great importance in the case of Khayyam in situating him in the matrix of the general Islamic intellectual tradition.  Moreover, such intellectual lineage is very pertinent for Islamic philosophical figures in general.

The Arabic treatise al-Risalah fi’l-kawn wa’l-taklif (“Treatise on the Realm of Existence and Human Responsibility”) is one of Khayyam's substantial philosophical writings in which he mentions Ibn Sina explicitly as his master.[16] Much of the first part of this work in fact follows Ibn Sina closely and furthermore some of its phrases are almost identical to those of Ibn Sina's al-Isharat wa’l-tanbihat (“The Book of Directives and Remarks”).  The treatise consists of answers provided by Khayyam to a number of questions sent to him by Abu Nasr Nasawi, the judge (qadi) of the province of Fars concerning the creation of the world and man's responsibility toward his Creator.[17]  Khayyam, who in all of his works was to the point and disliked unnecessary verbiage, begins by stating that the subject of philosophy is essentially the response to three questions: Whether something is, what it is and why it is what it is.  The answer to the first question leads in the discussion of being (wujud), the second quiddity (mahiyyah) and the third causality (‘illiyyah).  Then he directs his attention to ontology following closely Ibn Sina in discussing the descending and ascending arcs of existence and the hierarchic chain of being.[18]

Khayyam then turns to the question of responsibility towards both God and His creatures, responsibility which according to him, has been put within the very substance of man through the act of his creation.  Being what he is, man is in need of others and therefore bears responsibility towards them.  Khayyam also speaks of the necessity of prophecy.  The prophets are the most perfect of all men and can therefore propagate and promulgate divine laws among men in justice.  As far as differences among men in virtue and evil character are concerned, Khayyam relates them on the one hand to the difference of tempraments, themselves based on bodily fluids and the elements mentioned in traditional Islamic medicine, and on the other to the different make ups of their souls.  According to Khayyam prophets reveal rites of worship so that God will not be forgotten and so that the teachings of God's laws will remain in human society.  He then explains more fully the benefits of rites of worship for both the individual human soul and society as a whole.  One can hardly imagine a greater difference between the Khayyam who is the author of this treatise and the modern version of him based on free translations of often spurious quatrains interpreted in such a way as to support the skeptical attitudes of certain modern readers of Khayyam in both East and West.

In his Arabic treatise Darurat al-tadadd fi’l-‘alam wa’l-jabr wa’l-baqa’ (“The Necessity of Contradiction in the World and Determinism and Subsistence”), which Sayyid Sulayman Nadwi[19] considers as a continuation of Risalah fi’l-kawn wa’l-taklif, Khayyam responds to three further questions which some like Nadwi consider to be answers to questions also posed to him by Nasawi.  The first question concerns theodicy, that is, how can evil issue from the Necessary Being who being pure goodness cannot be the author of evil and oppression.  After analyzing different kinds of attribution, Khayyam states that although it is absolutely true that the Necessary Being alone bestows existence upon things, the very bestowal of existence implies contradiction which is non-existence and it is non-existence which appears to us as evil and privation.  That is why evil cannot be compared either in quantity or quality with the good.

The second question asks which of the two schools, that of determinism or free will is correct.  In a short answer Khayyam leans in favor of determinism, adding that this position is correct provided its followers do not exaggerate and fall into superstition.

The third questions involves the quality of subsistence in relation to existence.  Khayyam criticizes severely what he considers as a sophism concerning this question.  He asserts that wujud and baqa’ have a single meaning and should not be separated from each other.

In the short Arabic work, Risalat al-diya’ al-‘aqli fi mawdu‘ al-‘ilm al-kulli (“Treatise of Intellectual Light concerning Universal Science”)[20] Khayyam discusses the relation between existence and quiddity following the views of Ibn Sina to whom he refers indirectly.  Khayyam makes a clear distinction between quiddity in itself and wujud which is distinct from mahiyyah and is added to it in order to existentiate a quiddity objectively.

One of the important philosophical works of Khayyam is the Persian treatise Risalah dar ‘ilm-i kulliyyat-i wujud (“Treatise on the Science of the Universal Principles of Being”) also known as al-Risalah fi ‘ilm al- kulliyyat (“Treatise on Universal Principles”) and al-Risalah mawsumah bi-silsilat al-tartib (“Treatise Known as The Hierachic Chain”).[21]  In this treatise Khayyam discusses the chain of being and the ten intelligences following the views of Ibn Sina.  It is also in this treatise that Khayyam discusses his classification of those who seek knowledge.  Because of the singular significance of this classification for the understanding of Khayyam's philosophical perspective we quote this section in full:

“First, the theologians, who become content with disputation and ‘satisfying’ proofs, and consider this much knowledge of the Creator (excellent is His Name) as sufficient.

’Second, the philosophers and sages who use only rational arguments to know the laws of logic, and are never content merely with ‘satisfying’ arguments.  But they too cannot remain faithful to the conditions of logic and become helpless with it.

“Third, the Isma‘ilis who say that the way of knowledge is not verifiable except through receiving instructions from a truthful instructor; for, in bringing proofs about the knowledge of the Creator, His Essence and Attributes, there is much difficulty; the reasoning power of the opponents and the intelligence [of those who struggle against the final authority of the revelation, and of those who fully accept it] is stupefied and helpless before it.  Therefore, they say that it is better to seek knowledge from the words of a truthful person.

“Fourth, the Sufis, who do not seek knowledge by ratiocination or discursive thinking, but by purgation of their inner being and the purifying of their dispositions.  They cleanse the rational soul of the impurities of nature and bodily form, until it becomes pure substance.  When it then comes face to face with the spiritual world, the forms of that world become truly reflected in it, without any doubt or ambiguity.

“This is the best of all ways, because it is known to the servant of God that there is no reflection better than the Divine Presence and in that state there are no obstacles or veils in between.  Whatever man lacks is due to the impurity of his nature.  If the veil be lifted and the screen and obstacle removed, the truth of things as they are will become manifest and known.  And the Master of creatures [the Prophet Muhammad]--upon whom be peace--indicated this when he said: ‘Truly, during the days of your existence, inspirations come from God.  Do you not want to follow them?’

“Tell unto reasoners that, for the lovers of God [gnostics], intuition is guide, not discursive thought.”[22]

 

What is astonishing in this classification is Khayyam's defense of the Sufis and knowledge attained through inner purification, which they call kashf, as the most perfect and highest form of knowledge.  One cannot make any judgement about Khayyam without paying full attention to this classification.  Since this work is without doubt authentic and Khayyam was not a kind of thinker to write a pie'ce d'occasion to satisfy this or that worldly authority, this assertion by him cannot but confirm his devotion to Sufism and makes even more plausible a Sufi interpretation of the authentic verses of Khayyam.

Perhaps the most important single philosophical opus of Khayyam is his Arabic text al-Risalah fi’l-wujud (“Treatise on Being”) also known as al-Risalah fi tahqiqat al-sifat (“Treatise concerning Verifications of the Qualities”).[23]  It begins with two Quranic verses which contain the essence of the content of the treatise: “He gave unto everything its creation, then guided it right” (XX;50), and “He counteth the number of all things” (LXXII; 28).  The first asserts that the being of all things issues from God and the second that there is an order to all things.  And it is precisely these two issues that comprise the basic elements of this treatise.

Khayyam emphasizes that quiddities receive their existence from another existence (al-wujud al-ghayri) and calls this process emanation (fayadan).  But at the same time Khayyam asserts that for each existent, it is the quiddity that is principial while wujud is a conceptual (i‘tibari) quality.  Although the distinction between the principiality of wujud (asalat al-wujud) and the principiality of mahiyyah (asalat al-mahiyyah) goes back to the School of Isfahan and especially Mulla Sadra,[24] later students of Islamic philosophy have tended to look upon the whole earlier tradition from this point of view and sought to determine who belonged to which school.  If we apply this later distinction with its own particular terminology to Khayyam, then we could say that Khayyam, like Suhrawardi, Nasir al-Din Tusi, Ghiyath al-Din Mansur Dashtaki and Mir Damad belongs to the school of principiality of quiddity, although he does not use the term asalat al-mahiyyah as was done by Mulla Sadra and many other later philosophers.

In addition to emphasizing emanation and its continuous nature, following the views of both Ibn Sina and Suhrawardi, Khayyam also insists that this emanation is based on and contains order and laws.  The two verses of the Quran stated at the beginning of the treatise are for Khayyam revealed proofs of this assertion, namely, the continuity of emanation from the Divine Reality which bestows existences upon all things and the orderly nature of this emanation.  Consequently, the so-called “laws of nature” and what one observes everywhere in the created realm as order and harmony issue from the very reality which bestows existence upon things and are inseparable from their ontological reality.

Khayyam is also concerned with the difficult question of God's knowledge of the world, a question which has concerned nearly all Islamic philosophers throughout the ages.  He asserts that knowledge or ‘ilm is a quality of wujud and therefore since God bestows wujud upon all creatures, He knows all of His creation simply by virtue of having brought them into being.  As for wujud, it is itself an attribute of the Divine Reality (al-Haqq) and identical to Its Essence.  Divine Knowledge, while being none other than the Divine Essence, is also none other than emanation.  Divine Knowledge is the same as the presence of God in all beings even that which possesses only mental existence.  Furthermore, since God is the source of reality of all quiddities and essences, all that is thus existentiated is good and what appears otherwise as non-existence and hence evil is the result of the necessity of contradiction (darurat al-tadadd).

Finally among the specifically philosophical treatises of Khayyam there is one that is almost certainly by him, although not noted in the list given by some of the scholars of the subject, and that is a series or responses entitled Risalah jawaban li-thalath masa’il [25](“Treatise of Response to Three Questions”).  In one manuscript the person posing the questions is Jamal al-Din ‘Abd al-Jabbar ibn Muhammad al-Mishkawi, while in another manuscript he is referred to as Amin al-Hadrah and at the end of the treatise as al-Shaykh Jamal al-Zaman.  Although the identity of this person is not clear, it seems that he was a philosopher from Fars.  In any case the questions, which are as follows, display the philosophical interests and preoccupations of the questioner:

 1.  If the rational soul survives after death, it would be necessary for each rational soul to have a specific personal existence.

2.  If happenings in the domain of contingent beings have a single cause, this will lead to an infinite regression.

3.  It has been proven that time depends on movement and is the quantity of movement of the spheres and that movement is not steadfast by itself...[Khayyam does not complete the question].

All of Khayyam's responses are based on Ibn Sina's views to whom he refers as al-faylasuf, the philosopher.  More specifically he refers to the Fann al-sama‘ al-tabi‘i, the first book of Tabi‘iyyat (Natural Philosophy) of the Shifa’ as well as to the works of Aristotle as sources for response to these questions.  Khayyam makes an important philosophical assertion by saying that the Fann al-sama‘ al-tabi‘i (which means literally “the art of natural hearing” or that which one should hear first in the study of the natural sciences) contains the principles of all the natural sciences but is itself a branch of universal knowledge.  In other words the principles of the sciences are to be sought not in themselves but in metaphysics.

There are a few other short philosophical fragments of Khayyam which deal more or less with the same issues that one finds in the treatises mentioned already.  When one examines all of these philosophical treatises together, one sees Khayyam as essentially an Avicennan philosopher with particular acumen in mathematics and interest in mathematical and natural order on the one hand and in Sufism on the other.  There are also philosophical insights which are Khayyam's own and he is far from being simply a repeater of Ibn Sina's words.  Furthermore, as in the case of the master whom he calls the philosopher, Khayyam's whole philosophical discourse is based on the Necessary Being, the One, who is the Reality which in religious language is called God.  Khayyam goes in fact a step further than many mashsha’i philosophers in using religious references in his philosophical treatises including Quranic verses to which we have already referred.

X

                                                            X                   X

Let us in conclusion turn to some of the quatrains more strongly attributed to Khayyam and consider their philosophical significance.  One of the most famous quatrains states,

 

 

 

 

Thou hast said that Thou wilt torment me,

But I shall fear not such a warning.

For where Thou art, there can be no torment,

And where Thou art not, how can such a place exist?[26]

           

            This quatrain confirms the utter goodness of God, the fact that the Supreme Reality is Pure Goodness, an idea also confirmed in Khayyam's prose philosophical works.  This quatrain re-confirms in a novel language an assertion to be found in many Sufi utterances in prose and poetry and also indicates the ultimate victory of good over all that appears as evil.  In a sense it is a commentary upon the sacred saying of the Prophet (hadith qudsi), “Verily My Mercy precedeth My Wrath”.

            Another quatrain states,

           

 

 

 

            Thrown in before Fate's Mallet, O man Thou goest,

Struck by blows to left and right, remain silent.

He who hast flung thee with this mad course,

He knoweth, he knoweth, he knoweth and knoweth.[27]

 

 The message in this poem is that qada’, translated here as Fate but which must be understood as a decree by the Divine Will and not some kind of natural and cosmic fate in the manner of certain Greek philosophers, governs all human existence and that God has knowledge of all things.  It is a poetic commentary upon the meaning of the two Divine Names al-Qadir, the Omnipotent, and al-‘Alim, the All-Knower or Omniscient.

A quatrain, which appears outwardly more problematic, sings of the relativity of human knowledge as follows:

 

 

 

 

With neither truth nor certitude in scope,

Why waste our lives in doubt or futile hope?

Come, never let the goblet out of hand,

In fog, what if you drunk of sober grope?[28]

 

This quatrain might seem to be preaching out and out skepticism if taken literally.  But would a person who accepted such a philosophy spend so much time and effort writing a work on algebra or reform the calendar?  If seen in the context of the Islamic intellectual tradition, the content of these verses reveals its inner meaning to be something else which is the relativity of all human or rational knowledge[29] and the certitude derived from gnosis that is symbolized by wine as again found universally in Sufi poetry.  In fact, many leading Islamic thinkers, philosophers and scientists alike not to speak of Sufis, have composed poems in this vein.  In our own times the poems of even such religio-political figures as Mawlana Mawdudi and Ayatollah Khumayni contain many verses in the same vein.  The holding of the goblet of wine and drinking it here and now, a theme repeated in several other quatrains of Khayyam, also refers to the preciousness of the present moment which is our only access to the Eternal and the gaining of absolute certitude.  One must not forget in this context the Sufi addage al-sufi ibn al-waqt, that is, the Sufi is the son of the moment.

Many Khayyamian quatrains also refer to the transience of the world and our rapid journey through it.

 

 

 

The rotating wheel of heaven within which we wonder,

Is an imaginal lamp of which we have knowledge by similitude.

The sun is the candle and the world the lamp,

We are like forms revolving within it.[30]

Also,

 

 

 

            A drop of water falls in on ocean wide,

A grain of dust becomes with earth allied;

What doth thy coming, going here denote?

A fly appeared a while, then invisible he became.[31]

            In the first quatrain the cosmos is likened not only to just any lamp, but to an imaginal lamp indicating the significance of the “world of imagination” (‘alam al-khayal) with all the metaphysical and cosmological significance that it possesses in Islamic thought as we see expounded later in the works of Suhrawardi, Ibn ‘Arabi, Mulla Sadra and others.[32]  There is no reason to believe that here Khayyam is using khayal in the modern debased sense of imagination which implies simply irreality.  Rather, by calling the cosmos an imaginal lamp, he not only alludes to the cosmic significance of ‘alam al-khayal, but also indicates for the philosophically unsophisticated reader the fact that the cosmos is not ultimate reality but that there is a reality beyond it which it reflects as a lamp is the locus wherein light shines upon a scene.  And then he points to our transient earthly existence which is constituted of images and forms caused by the light of a lamp on the shade around it.  The second quatrain confirms the same thesis from another point of view starting with the assertion that all things in this world return to their source and principle according to the famous philosophical dictum kullu shay’in yarji‘u ila aslihi, “all things return to their source or root.”  And in this great coming and going which marks the life of this transient world, our earthly existence is like that of a fly which appears and then disappears in a fleeting moment.  It is metaphysically very significant that in this quartrain Khayyam uses the Persian words padid and napayda and not life and death.  These two Persian terms mean to become manifest and then non-manifest, to enter into phenomenal existence and then disappear from that realm or become literally “devoid of appearance” or napayda which also means not to be found.  Can one not understand this verse as meaning that we, even if compared to a lowly fly in this vast world of change, come from the unmanifested and the invisible into the world of manifestation and phenomenal existence and then return to that unmanifested and invisible world?

In a quatrain with profound eschatological significance a Khayyamian quatrain asserts,

 

If the heart knew the secret of life as it is,

It would also know the Divine Mysteries at death.

Today when with thy self, thou knowest nothing,

Tomorrow when stripped of self, what wilt thou know?[33]

 

This quatrain speaks in poetic language of one of the most important doctrines of Islamic eschatology which has been fully developed by later Islamic metaphysicians and philosophers such as Ibn ‘Arabi and Mulla Sadra.  According to this doctrine, the soul while in this world can both act and know.  At the moment of death, it is cut off from both acting on the world and knowing it and will take with it only the fruits of its action and the knowledge which it has gained of spiritual matters while on this earthly journey.  These are its “provisions” for the journey of the after-life which Mulla Sadra discusses in these very terms in one of his works entitled Zad al-musafir (“Provisions of the Traveler”).  This quatrain is nothing but a simple poetic description of a major Islamic eschatological teaching.

Finally, it is necessary to mention at least one quatrain that speaks of man's nothingness in face of the Absolute.

 

 

 

 

O Thou, unversed in ways of the world, thou art naught;

The bedrock is based on air, hence thou art naught.

Two voids define the limits of thy life,

On thy two sides nothing, in the middle thou art naught.[34]

 

Many have construed this and similar quatrains in a modern nihilistic manner as if Khayyam were an existential nihilist a' la certain schools of twentieth century Continental philosophy.  But this interpretation is totally false if one considers the fact that Khayyam never denied the reality of God, the Absolute.  Besides referring to the metaphysical understanding of nothing or void which is none other than the Quintessential Naught or Beyond Being to which Khayyam alludes in several verses,[35] this poem can be seen as a clear statement of the relativity of the human state and that from the point of this relativity, if taken only in itself, man and indeed the world are literally nothing in the face of the Absolute.  In Avicennan language, which Khayyam confirms in his prose philosophical works, man, like all beings in this world, is “contingent” (mumkin) and receives his reality from the source of Being through that process of fayadan discussed above.  This and similar quatrains can be read with perfect logic as poetical assertions of the status of contingency, which is complete poverty of existence or nothingness of the world, in contrast to the Necessary Being (wajib al-wujud) which alone possesses and bestows wujud upon all that exists.  And all that exists exists by virtue of existentiation by the Necessary Being.  In addition, in these poems there is an allusion to the relativity of even Being vis-a*-vis the Beyond Being which alone is real in the ultimate sense.[36]  The deepest message of such quatrains is that all that is relative is by nature relative and therefore transient only the Absolute possessing absoluteness as such, or more simply put, only the Absolute is absolute.

These few quatrains chosen among those attributed with more certainty to Khayyam provide a sampling of ideas which, if understood in the context of traditional Islamic philosophy and Sufism, do not only not negate but confirm in poetical language Khayyam's prose philosophical and scientific works in addition to revealing certain Sufi themes of which Khayyam must have had intimate knowledge.  His classification of knowers cited above reveals his reverence for and understanding of the Sufi path of knowledge.  The major themes of the more authenticated quatrains is the transience of the world, the limited nature of all rational knowledge before that veritable sophia which transcends ratiocination and taking advantage of the present moment and experiencing the effect of that wine which symbolizes realized knowledge or gnosis.  None of these themes is contradictory to his prose works.  On the contrary, the prose and poetry complement each other and together reveal a fuller picture of Khayyam as metaphysician and philosopher.

It might be said that there are three types of human beings: those who deny all eschatological realities and the Day of Judgement to which Persian Sufis refer as “Tomorrow” (farda)[37]; those who believe in the traditional eschatological realities and seek to live a virtuous life in this world in fear of hell and hope of paradise; and those who seek God here and now beyond fear of hell and hope of paradise.  Since extremes meet, the views of the first and third group might appear to some people who look at the matter superficially to be the same in that both emphasize the here and now at the expense of man's final end in that “tomorrow” which is beyond time.  The first view, however, is the denial of religion from below and the third view which is esoteric, is the transcendence of the exoteric view from above.  For the exoteric pious believers it is sometimes difficult to make a distinction between the two.  That is why they have often condemned not only the first view but also the third, their condemnation being in fact justified on its own level which is not the case of modern agnostics who have deliberately associated the two opposite views together in order to attack those who hold on to the second view.  The limited understanding of ordinary believers is the reason why not only Khayyam but a number of other figures, mostly Sufis, have been condemned by some traditional exoteric authorities over the ages.  In the case of other Sufi figures, however, their distinction from hedonists has remained clear enough despite their having received condemnation from some quarters.  In the case of Khayyam, a number of factors among them the intrusion of poems not by him into the corpus of the quatrains attributed to him, caused a number of traditional authorities, including even a few Sufis, to condemn him even before modern times despite the fact that he certainly did not lead a hedonistic life but was deeply revered as an Islamic scholar by his contemporaries.  Furthermore, the free translations of Fitzgerald created a Western image of Khayyam one of whose strong components was pleasure seeking and immediate gratification of the senses.  In today's Western world where much more than the Victorian period instant sensual gratification has become practically a pseudo-religion, it is even more difficult than at the time of Fitzgerald to absolve Khayyam of the guilt of being a hedonist.  Yet, there is no authenticated poem of Khayyam dealing with the after-life which cannot be interpreted as belonging to the third rather than the first view stated above.  And when this celebration of the present moment and taking advantage of life while we have it is taken into consideration in conjunction with everything he has written and also what his contemporaries wrote about him and even the honorific titles bestowed upon him,[38] it becomes more evident that far from being a hedonist, Khayyam sought to point out the preciousness of human life and the reality of the present moment as the door to the Eternal Realm in a manner consonant with the teachings of the great Sufi masters.

X

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In conclusion, one can assert with assurance that if one studies all of the works of Khayyam, including the more authenticated ruba‘iyyat, one is able to discern the philosophical worldview of a major Islamic thinker who in philosophy was mostly a follower of Ibn Sina with certain independent interpretations of his own.  He was also a major scientist with important views concerning the philosophy of mathematics.  In addition he was a poet, who like many other Islamic philosophers and scientists who wrote works with rigorous logical structures, wrote poems on the side with metaphysical and gnostic themes.  He was also without doubt personally attracted to Sufism.  If we were asked to compare him to another Islamic figure who would most resemble him, we would choose Nasir al-Din Tusi who was, like Khayyam, an Avicennian (mashsha’i) philosopher and a mathematician, who also wrote some poetry and was interested in Sufism in which he also wrote a treatise Sayr wa suluk (“Spiritual Wayfaring”)[39].  Of course Tusi was also a Twelve-Imam Shi‘ite theologian and authority on Isma‘ili philosophy in contrast to Khayyam who was not concerned with these subjects to any appreciable extent.

Khayyam must be resuscitated as an Islamic philosopher even if such an act will take a cultural hero away from modern Arab, Turkish and especially Persian skeptics and hedonists.  His philosophical works need to be translated and studied in their totality.  The present study should, however, be sufficient to reveal the great significance, philosophical, scientific and also religious, of a remarkable Islamic philosopher, whose very fame on the mundane plane has caused his philosophical importance to become veiled from the world at large.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr