The Rubaiyat

The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam is the title of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian. Omar Khayyám was a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A ruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts (or hemistichs) per line, hence the word rubaiyat (derived from the Arabic language root for "four"), meaning "quatrains". Every line of the Rubaiyat has more meaning than almost anything you could read in Sufi literature. While many read the Rubaiyat literally and hence see Omar as a materialist, he is in fact a spiritual teacher and is much maligned because people do not understand him. Abdullah Dougan says the work is deeply esoteric and "if you approach the quatrains with that in mind, the poem will have a tremendous impact on you as you try to understand it."