"The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" by Omar Khayyam is a translation published in 1859 by Edward FitzGerald, rendering Persian quatrains into English. Initially a commercial failure, the work became wildly popular throughout the English-speaking world by the 1880s, inspiring clubs and a "fin de siècle cult." The poems spark enduring debate: Are they expressions of religious skepticism and Epicurean philosophy, or mystical Sufi verses misunderstood by their translator? The authenticity of the quatrains themselves remains deeply uncertain. (This is an automatically generated summary.)