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‘Umar Khayyam as an Arabic poet

‘Umar Khayyam as an Arabic poet. A.S. Tritton.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27 (1964) 2 (June), pp. 431-433.

Edward FitzGerald

Edward FitzGerald. Maurice Bowra.
Iran. Journal of the Iran Society 1 (1963), p. 1-12

In the nineteenth century, England, despite its reputation for ruthless conventionality, was a happy home for eccentrics, for men who with an almost unconscious confidence pursued their private whims and maintained a curious innocence from the world around them. To this select and agreeable company belonged Edward FitzGerald. He was not, strictly speaking, English, but Anglo-Irish, coming from a family long settled in Ireland but regarding itself as an outpost of English manners and superiority, and confirmed in its belief by an ample income and several large houses. Though FitzGerald lived to be 74, his life was undramatic, and such dramas as befell him he took with a philosophical calm. Even when his father lost his money trying to find coal on his Manchester estate and was declared bankrupt, FitzGerald’s existence was not troubled.

ʻOmar Khayyām miscellanea

ʻOmar Khayyām miscellanea. B. Csillik.
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 11 (1960), nr. 1-3, p. 57-68.

It was in 1859 that Edward FitzGerald published at his own cost a small booklet of translations which since has, with the passing of many years, earned world fame for the name of ‘Omar Khayyäm — known until then in Europe only as an astronomer, geometrician and mathematician — and also for the name of the translater. It is to this centenary occasion that I wish to contribute the following minor notes and observations.

The real Omar Khayyam

The real Omar Khayyam. B. Csillik.
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 10 (1960), p. 58-77.

Review of Arberry's edition of 1949.
This edition, as the Author-Editor himself tells us in his Introduction, had to fulfill the purpose of quickly presenting to the public, with a minimum of critical apparatus, the newly discovered facts in order to give share to others in the exciting work of further research. Beside the Introduction the book contains nothing but the printed text of the MS with the critical apparatus, the English versions and an alphabetical list of the quatrains. The Editor restored the dotted däl’s wherever the copyist omitted them by obvious inadvertency and — what the copyist did not even try to do — he distinguished the pä and gäf letters from the bä and käf letters. This peculiar employment of the däl, bä and käf letters speaks for the antiquity of the MS. The dots supplied by the Editor are not indicated, and this may be regretted in view of the potential hints which the presence or absence of the dots of the däl’s might have given to the student of phonology and linguistic history.