Description

Abstract

This essay, titled “In Search of the Correct Gemini Degree: The Story of How Omar Khayyam’s True Date of Birth Was Discovered Shortly Before Its Imminent Millennium,” is the second chapter of the second book of the twelve-book series Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, authored by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi. The second book is subtitled Khayyami Millennium: Reporting the Discovery and the Reconfirmation of the True Dates of Birth and Passing of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123).

Tamdgidi devotes this chapter to a search for Khayyam’s true date of birth. Although Swāmī Govinda Tīrtha deserves credit for bringing scholarly attention to Omar Khayyam’s horoscope as reported in Zahireddin Abolhasan Beyhaqi’s Tatemmat Sewan el-Hekmat (Supplement to the Chest of Wisdom) as a pathway toward solving the problem of Khayyam’s birth date, he erred in the effort, causing more confusion. Something in the way Tīrtha handled the information implied in Khayyam’s reported horoscope prevented him from truly solving his birth date puzzle. So, what did go wrong in Tīrtha’s efforts?

To answer this question, the author adopt the procedure of step by step peeling away one or another false lead toward a core solution. The reason for this procedure is to eliminate any other possibilities that may, one way or another, exist and thus cast doubt on the definitive solution we hope to reach for the puzzles at hand. After all, if there is more than one solution that may plausibly compete with, let alone nullify, the solution the author offer, we cannot claim for sure that a definitive solution has been found.

Finding that Khayyam’s birth date considerations on the basis of either the 3rd or the 8th degree for the Gemini to be incompatible with the requirements of Khayyam’s reported horoscope, and encountering a wide range of manuscript source variations as reported in the chapter, Tamdgidi takes an alternative route by directly consulting and reporting the ephemeris data for the entire years during AD 1018-1055. 

His procedure for compiling his data was follows. He first consulted the Swiss Ephemeris data that is not Neyshabour location specific, and the dates are given for day intervals only and not for the variations during the day. If the data came close to fulfilling the Gemini ascendance and Samimi (Cazimi) requirements, he reported it, cross-checking with the search engine for the more exact Neyshabour location and time variations, to the extent that it was necessary to rule out a date or regarding all the requirements of the horoscope, including the Taslees (Trine) requirement. He annotated each date sufficiently to explain why that date can be ruled out, or that it fulfilled a given requirement.

He discovered that there was one, and only one, date between years AD 1018 and AD 1055 that definitively fulfilled all the requirements of Khayyam’s reported horoscope, including the degree of the Ascendant, when considering a degree of the Gemini in which the horoscope’s Cazimi/Ascendant conjunction must fall. This date was, in the Gregorian calendar, June 10, AD 1021, at sunrise, Neyshabour’s time. It was nearly a four minute period from 4:43:56 to 4:47:55 a.m. exactly at sunrise. During this short interval of time, the Gemini was Ascendant, the Sun and the Mercury were Cazimi on the same degree of the Ascendant 18˚ of Gemini (being in the Samimi distance of 8 minutes from each other), and Jupiter was positioned on the 11th degree of Libra, within a Taslees/Triangulation/Trine-fulfilling distance of about 113 degrees from both the Sun and Mercury. 

Following his discovery, Tamdgidi tried further to understand how the Gemini degree 18 on which the date fell provides any hints about how the ambiguities surrounding the Gemini degree given across the various extant manuscript copies of Khayyam’s reported horoscope can be reconciled with one another. While explaining the various variations, he discovers that through the process of successive recopying by various scribes, the letter ى became gradually corrupted, the letter being misread as the word فى such that later scribes assumed that the word was not a part of a degree given in abjad for ى but the word فى in the normal part of the sentence. He also offers explanations for why and how Soviet Russian scholars and astronomers failed in catching Tīrtha’s mistakes regarding Omar Khayyam’s date of birth, as well as, in part, his date of passing.

Based on the findings, the renderings of the horoscope of Omar Khayyam as reported by Beyhaqi in his Tatemmat Sewan el-Hekmat (Supplement to the Chest of Wisdom) should be corrected to the following in its Arabic, Persian, and English expressions:

«طالعه الجوزا و الشمس و عطارد على درجه الطالع ى ح من الجوزا و عطارد صميمى و المشترى من التثليث ناظر اليهما».

«طالعش جوزا بود و آفتاب و عطارد بر درجۀ طالع ى ح از جوزا و عطارد صميمى و مشترى از تثليث ناظر بر آن دو».

“His ascendant was the Gemini, and the Sun and the Mercury were on the degree of the ascendent 18 of Gemini, and the Mercury was Samimi [Cazimi], and the Jupiter from Taslees [Trine aspectation] observing them both.”

Recommended Citation

Tamdgidi, Mohammad H. 2021. “CHAPTER II — In Search of the Correct Gemini Degree: The Story of How Omar Khayyam’s True Date of Birth Was Discovered Shortly Before Its Imminent Millennium.” Pp. 63-132 in Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 2: Khayyami Millennium: Reporting the Discovery and the Reconfirmation of the True Dates of Birth and Passing of Omar Khayyam (AD 1021-1123).  (Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge: Vol. XV, 2021. Tayyebeh Series in East-West Research and Translation.) Belmont, MA: Okcir Press.

Where to Purchase Complete Book: The various editions of the volume of which this Book Section is a part can be ordered from the Okcir Store and all major online bookstores worldwide (such as Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Google Play, and others).

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