Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam, who lived from 1048 to 1131, was a Persian polymath born in Nishapur during the Seljuk Empire who made substantial contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and poetry before dying in his hometown at age eighty-three. His philosophical output consisted of six treatises, of debated authenticity, addressing existence in On Existence, and the necessity of contradiction, determinism and free will, alongside further treatises on being, necessity and transcendence; his approach followed the Peripatetic school and was explicitly theistic, engaging metaphysical questions through close study of Avicenna's Book of Healing, of which he considered himself an intellectual student. Scholars continue to debate his genuine beliefs, since his poetry has been read as expressing agnosticism and skepticism while his prose treatises argue more orthodox positions.