Tomorrow

Tomorrow!  Why, tomorrow I may be myself with yesterday’s seven thousand years

-       Omar Khayyam[1]

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[1] Omar al-Khayyami of Nishapur, Khorasan (now Iran) was born in 1048. He was a Shia Muslim, but did not practice the religion. He made a name for himself as a mathematician with his 1070 Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra. He also excelled at astronomy, being invited by the sultan to help build an observatory in 1073. He and his colleagues measured the solar year; the resulting Jalalian calendar has only a one-hour error every 5,500 years—more accurate (though more difficult to calculate) than the Gregorian calendar. Omar’s fame as a poet, however, has in Western society eclipsed his scientific accomplishments. This is due to Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of about 1,000 quatrains, known as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In these, he makes clear his disdain for Islam in general and its taboos and divine revelations in particular. A line from the Rubaiyat that has entered the lexicon of Western culture gives insight to his personal philosophy: “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou…” Omar died in 1122.  (Source: Wikipedia)