Age ~52. Khayyam is the most famous scientist of the Seljuk world — the algebraist who classified the cubic equations, the astronomer who led the Isfahan observatory and reformed the calendar for Malik-Shah into the Jalali year, more accurate than the Gregorian. But Malik-Shah and the vizier Nizam al-Mulk are a decade dead, the observatory's patronage has collapsed, and Khayyam lives in Nishapur under suspicion from the religious establishment, teaching a little, traveling warily, writing nothing he calls poetry. The quatrains — skeptical, death-haunted, wine-praising — circulate privately and are first attributed to him only decades after his death in 1131; which are his is the permanent open question of Persian literature.

poem The Rubaiyat 1100 AD