The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
1976 Dr. Hossein-Ali Nouri Esfandiary Edited with Hossein Behzad Paintings and Arabic and Persian Translations Edition
This 1976 edition is not declared to have a publisher but editor. For the sake of sanity, I’m calling the editor, Dr. Hossein-Ali Nouri Esfandiary, the publisher in terms of my metadata as I don’t know the actual publisher of this edition. It contains English, Persian, and Arabic translations. From my understanding of the prologue, the Persian is the original source for Fitzgerald’s translation (quatrains chosen that had matches), and the Arabic is the translation of the English translation by Mr. Safi and Mr. Orayyez. The prologue is a truly delightful and fascinating read.
This is the fourth printing of this edition, the first being in 1970, but given that it seems it was originally ‘edited’ in 1949 by Brigadier-General Dr. Hossein-Ali Nouri Esfandiary, I would assume this to be newer packaging of the content, which had been published earlier. Who put it out then and now? Unclear. But all rights are retained to the editor. I couldn’t find any information on the Dr. H.A.N. Esfandiary in terms of when he was born/died, so I suppose it’s possible it was always him. Or it was only properly printed later. Or this is a scanned/photographed re-print? It may explain an artifact on the first page of the prologue. I do not know.
It contains illustrations from Hossein Behzad, a miniature painter, and was printed by Shumposha Photo Printing Co., Ltd. in Japan.
Publisher: Dr. Hossein-Ali Nouri Esfandiary (called Editor)
Press: Shumposha Photo Printing Co., Ltd. in Japan
Year: 1976
Artist: Hossein Behzad
The Book Itself
The ‘back’ of the book contains, seemingly, non-poetry text in Persian (?). I’m guessing (emphasis on this) the Persian versions of the English prologue and such information that’s in the ‘front’ of the book plus other content. A long Persian section has English words beneath it…familiar names such as W. Aldis Wright and Quaritch, plus Trinity College and Bodlein Library. Perhaps translated reviews? Unknown. I didn’t photograph these pages.
The cover case has one side in English the other in Persian.
The Poetry
It seems like the content is a mixture of first and second editions, which tracks with what the prologue establishes. I am not sure what the quatrain order/organization is in the book, I didn’t pay analyze that, but I did order the quatrains on this page by first then second and ascending as usual.
The Illustrations
Whole edition supposedly contains 50 painting plates.
The golden background colored pages seem to have the opposite page’s text imprinted like a shadow on it.
