A Transnational Approach to 'Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī's 'Umar Khayyām

[...]I draw on this case study to argue that we must begin accounting for the transnational connections that have defined modern Near Eastern literatures like Arabic and Persian. First of all, despite his popularity in both the West and the East and the numerous studies devoted to his life and work, Khayyâm, the author of the famous Rubā'iyyāt (quatrains usually rhyming AABA), has long had a mythical status, and the poems ascribed to him are likely an amalgamation of the works of numerous authors.19 Khayyäm's popularity skyrocketed in Europe after Edward FitzGerald's (d. 1883) translations of his quatrains, which appeared over the course of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The dead-alive, with nothing to live on or place to go blows into the ashes Perhaps (la'alla) Nishapur will, like a snake, shed the robe of her sadness and break the chains.32 The Iranian city of Nishapur, Khayyäm's supposed hometown,33 also provides the setting for Bayātī's 1962 play, A Trial in Nishapur.34 This play offers yet another instance in which Bayātī plays on Khayyäm's mythical status to offer a critique of political authority, tradition, and ungenerous readers of literature. [...]once his accuser recites the lines, Khayyâm 'looks at the University Professor in astonishment and opens his mouth for the first time: "I didn't write this rubāciyyah"'38 Bayātī thus plays on Khayyām's mythical status throughout the play as he does in the collection He Who Comes and Does Not Come, using a mythos that formed over time in Iran, was 'discovered' again in Europe, and made its way back to the Near East following FitzGerald's translations.