Rubaiyat of Hakim Omar Khayyam, Persian edition cover (2013)

What it is

This is a photograph of the front cover of a modern Persian edition of the Rubaiyat of Hakim Omar Khayyam, uploaded by ANBI on 29 June 2013. The cover is dark navy with a marbled texture, a gold Persian title, a gold decorative border along the spine edge, a subtitle and editor credit in Persian, and a publisher name at the bottom. The quatrains inside are attributed to Khayyam, but this edition is a later printing.

Why it matters

The Rubaiyat are short four-line poems linked to Omar Khayyam (1048 to 1131), the Persian mathematician and poet. Many quatrains attributed to him were collected and printed long after his lifetime, so modern editions show how his poetry has been passed down and presented. This cover shows a twentieth or twenty-first century publishing choice, not Khayyam's own book.

Look closer

• What does the design of the cover, including its colors and gold lettering, suggest about how the book wants readers to see the poems?
• Who prepared this edition, and why might an editor be named on the cover?
• How can we tell whether the poems in a later edition really come from Khayyam himself?