Moḥammad-Reḍā Qanbarī. Ḫayyām-nāme: rūzegār, falsafe va še‘r-e Ḫayyām. Tehrān, Entešārāt-e Zavvār, 1384/2005, 653 p.
Texte intégral
1Kudos to the publisher, Zavvār, for its detailed attention to the layout of this book, which among other things includes a photograph and short biography of the author on the cover flap. From this we learn that Professor Qanbarī has taught Civil Law for two decades in various universities in Iran, including the College of Law at the University of Tehrān. He currently practices law and has published on that topic, as well as on classical Persian poets (see the abstract on his book about Ṭāleb-e Āmolī), in addition to his own poetry.
2Ḫayyām-nāme is divided into twenty-five chapters, ranging over Ḫayyām’s life and the historical figures and circumstances of his era; Ḫayyām as mathematician and philosopher; the robā‘ī as a literary form; Ḫayyām’s relation to: Sufism, agnosticism, reincarnation, the Brethren of Purity, the Ismailis, epicurean thought, materialism, and Zurvanism; Ḫayyām’s views on wine, etc. Other chapters explore his works (including a separate chapter devoted to the Nowrūz-nāme and its attribution), the influences on Ḫayyām, his influences on others, and his reception in the West. The extensive endnote section (pp. 370-465) goes well beyond citation of source titles and page numbers (which are mostly found within the main text), but is unfortunately printed in a smaller font that is rather difficult to read for extended passages. A long section of (not especially well re-produced) images – including photographs of scholars, facsimiles of ms. folios and book title pages, drawings and photographs (pp. 473-535) – is followed by detailed indices (pp. 539-92). An extensive bibliography (pp. 597-631) neatly presents works in Arabic and Persian, graphically sectioned for easy reference, with each new letter of the alphabet boxed in its own rubric. A much shorter bibliography of works in western languages (pp. 631-3), and an interpretive English summary of the contents of the book, translated by the author’s son, Ḥamīd-Reḍā, round out the collection. Ḫayyām-nāme does not add anything new to our knowledge of Ḫayyām, but rather attempts to distill for an educated general readership the vast amount written about Ḫayyām into a unified narrative.
Pour citer cet article
Référence électronique
Franklin Lewis, « Moḥammad-Reḍā Qanbarī. Ḫayyām-nāme: rūzegār, falsafe va še‘r-e Ḫayyām. Tehrān, Entešārāt-e Zavvār, 1384/2005, 653 p. », Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 28 | 2007, document 348, mis en ligne le 18 septembre 2007, consulté le 22 avril 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/21031 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abstractairanica.21031
Haut de pageDroits d’auteur
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-SA 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Haut de page