Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

"e;Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"e; is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and numbering about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A 'ruba'i' is a two-line stanza with two parts per line, hence the word rubaiyat (derived from the Arabic language root for "e;four"e;), meaning "e;quatrains"e;. As a work of eng literature FitzGerald's version is a high point of the 19th century and has been greatly influential. Indeed, the term "e;Rubaiyat"e; by itself has come to be used to describe the quatrain rhyme scheme that FitzGerald used in his translations: AABA. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)