Adam LeBor
Drunk Again, Khayyam?
Omar Khayyam: Poet, Rebel, Astronomer
By Hazhir Teimourian
Sutton Books 365pp £20 order from our bookshop
The oil-fuelled rise of the Wahhabis, the austere, even puritanical (if such a word can be applied to Muslims) literalists from Saudi Arabia, has eclipsed far older Muslim traditions of independent scholarship, mysticism and even sensuality. From Pakistan to Morocco, young believers learn the Koran by heart, certain that they need enquire no further. Nowadays in Omar Khayyam’s native Iran, radical Shiite clerics run a tyrannical regime where teenagers are hanged from cranes in public for having sex.
Looking at the rage pouring out of the Muslim world, and the clash of ideas between radical Islamism and Western liberalism, it is sometimes hard to remember that several centuries ago the Islamic lands were the crucible for scientific advancement, where thinkers and scientists fused Indian arithmetic with Greek philosophy
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger