Explore the Craft of Writing Arabic Verse
Rubai and Omar Stanzas, Rubaiyat
The Rubai stanza is best known from poems by the Persian poet, Umar at-Khayyam (1122) who created an interlocking chain of exotic quatrains. His poems were loosely translated and the form adapted by Edward Fitzgerald, English poet in 1859 and presented to the western world as the Rubaiyat of Omar Kyayyam. Just the title conjures thoughts of exotic romance in my head. About a third of the poems of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat are from the original 7th century Persian poems.
The elements of the Rubai stanza are: