TEHRAN – Persian literature aficionados and experts on Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet Omar Khayyam will come together at Tehran’s Niavaran Cultural Center today to celebrate the Khayyam millennium.

This is one of the numerous meetings arranged to mark the millennium, the Iranian Society of Cultural Works and Luminaries that is the organizer of the meetings said in a press release on Wednesday.

Serbian professor Darko Tanaskovic, who is also the permanent delegate of Serbia to UNESCO, is among the foreign scholars that will attend the first meeting. 

In addition, Hungarian sculptor András Sándor Kocsis, whose statue of Khayyam is set up in a Hungarian city, will attend the meeting.

A Hungarian translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Sándor Kocsis was previously published with illustrations by Gizella Varga Sinai, a Hungarian artist who lives in Iran. Varga Sinai has also been invited to the meeting.

Experts from Russia and Qatar are among the guests and Iranian experts, including Gholamhossein Dinani, Abdollah Anvar, Gholamreza Avani, Ahmad Tamimdari and Yunes Keramati, will deliver speeches. 

Iranian musician Christophe Rezai is scheduled to give a performance based on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Khayyam 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).

“Khayyam, Geometry, Mathematics”, “Khayyam, Iranian Islamic Philosophy”, “Khayyam and Wisdom” and “Khayyam and Music” are among the topics to be discussed at the meeting. 

Photo: A marble statue of the Persian poet and scientist Omar Khayyam by Iranian sculptor Hossein Fakhimi is seen after being unveiled during a special ceremony at the David L. Boren College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma on March 30, 2016. (The Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans) 

RM/MMS/YAW