Iranian Poets   Omar Khayyam   Hakim Omar Khayyam, the gifted and famous astronomer-poet of Persia, was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in the latter half of Eleventh Century, and died within the First Quarter of Twelfth Century. He was not only a great philosopher but also an internationally acclaimed poet, whose Rubayyat were translated in the form of poetry into English by the English poet Edward Fitzgerald. Khayyam, the highly talented and mystical scholar, revised the Persian calendar. Omar Khayyam, Hassan Sabbah (of Alamoot Castle) and Khajeh Nizam ul Mulk were all friends and pupil of a great Sufi. The slender story of his life is curiously twined about that of two other very considerable figures in their time and country: one of whom tells the story of all three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizyr to Alp Arsalan the son, and Malik Shah the grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded the Seljukian Dynasty (see the History of European Crusades). This vizyr in his testament relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review, No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins. "One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was the Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored and reverenced.     I was sent to Naishapur, that I might employ myself in study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of my own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Hassan Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship together. Now Omar was a native of Naishapur, while Hassan's father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practice, but heretical in his creed and doctrine. The three of us compromised to pledge that whoever attains a great fortune shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself. Years rolled on, and I was invested with office, and rose to be Vizyr and administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arsalan. " Hassan initially had a place in the government but later being disgraced became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailian, a party of fanatics engaged in guerrilla war against the central government. In A.D. 1090 he seized the Castle of Alamoot, in the province of Rudbar south of the Caspian Sea. Nizam-ul-Mulk was one of the victims of Ismailians' dagger.     "Omar Khayyam also came to the visyr to claim his share; but not to ask for title or office. "The greatest boon you can confer on me, 'he said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of science." The vizyr tell us, that, when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him an annual pension of 1200 mithkals of gold, from the treasury of Naishapur. "At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, "busied,' adds the Vizyr, "in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Marv, and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon him.' When Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar Khayyam was the head of the learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali era -'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' Omar Khayyam is also the author of some astronomical tables. Not all the quatrains in the available Khayyam's Rubaiyat are attributed to him. The authenticity of some of the quatrains is doubted. It is said that some of these quatrains are Spurious and some others are interpolated.