Denied!!!

The Rubáiyát is a collection of quatrains attributed to the Persian genius Omar Khayyám (1048 - 1131), who was called “the Astronomer-Poet of Persia” because they had a fetish for alliteration in those days. I say “attributed to” since scholars can only pin down 100 or so quatrains directly to Mr Khayyám, making him the Yogi Berra of the Ancient World - a million clever things are claimed to be his but most likely aren’t. In the 1930s, one academic went so far as to insist the name Omar Khayyam "is to be struck out from the history of Persian literature". This however was regarded as bad PR for Persia which had really nasty stuff going on at the time, so they let it slide. As a sophisticated man of letters, I can tell you The Rubáiyát’s whole idea is to eat, drink and be merry and religion is a load of bunk, though it’s more complicated than that. Here’s what I mean.