Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN -- The University of Oklahoma finally became the home to one of three statues of Persian classic poet Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), which were created by Iranian sculptor Hossein Fakhimi.

The two-meter tall statue was unveiled in the courtyard of the university on Wednesday during a ceremony, which was attended by a large number of U.S. academics and Persian literature enthusiasts, the Persian service of IRNA reported on Thursday.

The ceremony was organized with the help of the International Society for Iranian Culture.

In a short speech, the director of the society, Mehdi Faridzadeh, read some verses of Khayyam’s poems and called him “a pious man” and “an admirer of life” whose poetry expresses the Iranian spirit.      

President of the University of Oklahoma David L. Boren, a former governor of Oklahoma and U.S. senator, also attended the ceremony.

He expressed his appreciation to those involved in the cultural activity and expressed his hope that U.S. students would show more interest in learning the Persian language.

Earlier in May 2015, Fakhimi announced that officials in some U.S. states were conferring with each other to find a suitable site to place the statue, which was sent from Tehran to New York in September 2014.

He said that the statue would be installed somewhere in Manhattan based on a decision made by Manhattan municipal officials during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s trip to New York in September 2013.

However, no comment has been made so far as to why the statue was erected at the University of Oklahoma.

Fakhimi made two other copies of the statue, one of which was installed in Khayyam’s hometown of Neyshabur, and the other is to be sent to Florence, Italy.

Khayyam, a Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet, was renowned in his own country and in his own lifetime for his scientific achievements, but is chiefly known to English-speaking readers through the translation by the English writer Edward Fitzgerald of a collection of his Rubaiyat (“quatrains”) in “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (1859).

Photo: Hossein Fakhimi poses beside one of his Khayyam statues at his workshop in Tehran in an undated photo.

MMS/YAW

END