Category Archives: New books

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The John Roger Paas Collection

Edward FitzGerald’s „Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám“ and Related Materials.The John Roger Paas Collection. Edited by John Roger Paas. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2023. 1184 pages, 3 parts. Part 1+2: Text, XXII, 872 pages; Part 3: Plates, 312 pages.

This catalog describes the private collection of Rubáiyát-related books and materials, covering more than 7,000 items. Part I lists the versions of the Rubáiyát, Part II shows references to the Rubáiyát, Part III describes the Rubáiyát in popular culture whereas Part IV includes related FitzGerald items. All this is recorded in three beautifully edited, large volumes. Volume III is an absolute eye-catcher showing over 2,000 book covers in colour.
What makes this catalog absolutely unique is the enormous amount of editions and publications, described in detail, but even more so the records of the individual versions issued by the commercial publishers like Crowell, Barse and Hopkins, Hurst and Company, Collins, Macmillan, Harrap and many more.
Besides that, there is a wealth of bi(bli)ographic information on publishers, translators, artists, which makes this work an indispensable instrument for the serious study of the translations, editions and reference material of the Rubáiyát.

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Omar Khayyam’s Secret

Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination is the title of a twelve-book series in which the transdisciplinary sociologist Mohammad H. Tamdgidi shares the results of his decades-long research on Omar Khayyam. Tamdgidi’s purpose has been to find definitive answers to the many puzzles still surrounding Khayyam, especially regarding the existence, nature, and purpose of the Robaiyat in his life and works. To explore the questions posed, he advances a new hermeneutic method of textual analysis, informed by what he calls the quantum sociological imagination, to gather and study all the attributed philosophical, religious, scientific, and literary writings of Khayyam.

Four volumes have been published until now:

  • Book 1: New Khayyami Studies. Quantumizing the Newtonian Structures of C. Wright Mills’s Sociological Imagination for A New Hermeneutic Method.
    ISBN-13: 9781640980020 (hard cover)
    ISBN-13: 9781640980037 (soft cover)
  • Book 2: Book 2: Khayyami Millennium: Reporting the Discovery and the Reconfirmation of the True Dates of Birth and Passing of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123)
    ISBN-13: 9781640980068 (hard cover)
    ISBN-13: 9781640980075 (soft cover)
  • Book 3: Khayyami Astronomy: How Omar Khayyam’s Newly Discovered True Birth Date Horoscope Reveals the Origins of His Pen Name and Independently Confirms His Authorship of the Robaiyat.
    ISBN-13: 9781640980143 (hard cover)
    ISBN-13: 9781640980150 (soft cover)
  • Book 4: Khayyami Philosophy: The Ontological Structures of the Robaiyat in Omar Khayyam’s Last Written Keepsake Treatise on the Science of the Universals of Existence.
    SBN-13: 9781640980181 (hard cover)
    ISBN-13: 9781640980198 (soft cover)

In volume 3, chapter VII, Tamdgidi translates and discusses fifty representative quatrains that in his view offer “intersectional illustration in their meaning of the findings of this study so far”. Numbers are added to (almost) each of these quatrains indicating corresponding quatrains in other sources, such as Avery (1979), Hedayat (1925), Dashti (1966), Tirtha (1941), Whinfield (1883) and FitzGerald. 

For more information see: OKCIR

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The Confluence of wisdom …

The Confluence of Wisdom Along the Silk Road. Omar Khayyam’s Transformative Poetry. Mostafa Vaziri. [S.l.] : Vernon Press, 2021. 208 p. ISBN: 9781648893162.

For centuries along the vibrant cultural corridor of the Silk Road of Central Asia, philosophers and thinkers from Hellenic, Chinese and Indian traditions debated existential issues. Out of this stimulating milieu, the iconic poet-mathematician Omar Khayyam emerged in the eleventh century, advancing a transformative intercultural philosophy in his poetic work, the Rubaiyat.
Vaziri traces the themes of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat back to the highly influential philosophical traditions of the Silk Road and uncovers fascinating parallels in original works by Heraclitus, Zhuangzi (Daoism), Nagarjuna (Mahayana Buddhism), and the Upanishads. In addition, Vaziri’s elegant translation and unique classification of the verses of the Rubaiyat reveal an existential roadmap laid out by Khayyam.
In this pioneering volume, Vaziri not only fuses the multiple disciplines of literature, philosophy, culture, history and medicine but also takes the approach of the Rubaiyat to a new level, presenting it as a source of wisdom therapy that stands the test of time in the face of doubt and confusion, offering a platform for self-restoration.

Contents

  • List of Figures
  • Prelude
  • Part I: Interwoven Philosophies of Life
  • Chapter 1 A Nexus of Wisdom on the Silk Road
  • Chapter 2 Life is Like a River: Heraclitus and Khayyam
  • Chapter 3 The Liberated Drunkard: Daoism and Wine in the Rubaiyat
  • Chapter 4 Self-Rule, Joy and Emptiness: The Bedrock of the Buddhist and Khayyamian Paths
  • Chapter 5 The Immortal Clay: An Echo of the Chandogya Upanishad in Khayyam’s Allegory
  • Part II: Therapeutic Approach: Four Essays
  • Chapter 6 Poetry-Philosophy as Medicine: A Historical Background
  • Chapter 7 The Entrapped Mind and Psychosomatic Alarms
  • Chapter 8 Wisdom Therapy and Khayyam’s Poetry
  • Chapter 9 Khayyamian Thought as a Psychological Alternative
  • Conclusion
  • Part III: The Quatrains
  • Chapter 10 The Flow of the Rubaiyat: New Translation and Classification
  • Bibliography
  • Index
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Friedrich Rosen: orientalist and diplomat

In the recently published Friedrich Rosen. Orientalist scholarship and international politics Amir Theilhaber describes the diplomatic career and scholarly-literary productions of Friedrich Rosen “to investigate how politics influenced knowledge generated about the “Orient” and charts the roles knowledge played in political decision-making regarding extra-European regions. This is pursued through analyses of Germans in British imperialist contexts, cultures of lowly diplomatic encounters in Middle Eastern cities, Persian poetry in translation, prestigious Orientalist congresses in northern climes,leveraging knowledge in high-stakes diplomatic encounters, and the making of Germany’s Islam policy up to the Great War.”

An extensive chapter 6 deals with Omar Khayyam’s Ruba’iyat and Rumi’s Masnavi, in the context of politics and scholarship of translating Persian Poetry.

Friedrich Rosen. Orientalist scholarship and international politics. Amir Theilhaber. Berlin, Munich, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020. viii, 627 pp. ISBN: 978-3-11-063925-4.
Also available as Open Access document.

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“The Golden Age of Rubáiyát Art”

A three volume catalog of the first artists of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát, “The Golden Age of Rubáiyát Art, 1884-1913” is now available. The volumes are compiled  by Danton H. O’Day, “to stimulate new interest in detailing the complete artistic history of the amazing collection of Fitz’s and Omar’s four-line verses. Another was to provide in one place detailed examples of each of the artists who contributed to The Golden Age of Rubáiyát Art.”

The 8 x 10” hard-cover books are printed on photo-quality paper with a full colour printed cover.
The lavishly illustrated books contain photos not available since their first publication, two new artists, charts and tables, and more.

The books are available from Blurb Bookstore.

Volume ISBN # Pages Hardcover
I. The Illustrators 9781366232786 168 US$ 84.99
II. Popular Themes 9781366232717 68 US$ 59.99
III. The Decorators 9781366232656 90 US$ 64.99

 Please contact: Danton H. O’Day for more information (danton.oday@utoronto.ca)