Şarap Testisinden Süzülen Fikir: Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Aydınların Hayyam’ı Yeniden Keşfi
Ideas Flowing from the Wine Jug: Intellectuals’ Rediscovery of Hayyam from the Ottoman Era to the Republic

Summary/Abstract: This article examines how Omar Khayyam was perceived, interpreted, and reconstructed by Turkish intellectuals from the Ottoman period to the Republican era. In the tradition of Ottoman poetry, interest in Khayyam is relatively limited. In the classical period, it was his scientific contributions in mathematics and astronomy that were recognized, while his literary identity remained in the background. However, starting in the 19th century, particularly through Edward FitzGerald’s popular free translations, Khayyam became known in the West as a ‘fatalistic, wine-loving sage,’ a figure that went on to influence Ottoman intellectual circles, especially after the Tanzimat reforms. Khayyam’s presence in Ottoman cultural life has remained quite limited. One of the most notable indicators of this limitation is that his Persian quatrains have not been translated into Turkish, based on current information. This situation may be seen as stemming not only from a technical shortcoming, but also from the theological and cultural sensitivities of the period. During this period, Khayyam was viewed as a hybrid figure combining the ancient wisdom of the East with the rational skepticism of the West; he was reinterpreted in diverse intellectual contexts by such figures as Muallim Feyzî, Abdullah Cevdet, and Rıza Tevfik. In the Republican period, however, Khayyam was interpreted in line with the ideals of modernization of the time; he was embraced as a libertarian individual, a rational philosopher, and even as a poet of Turkish origin. In his quatrains, the themes of wine, pleasure, and death stand out, reinterpreted as symbols of individual freedom.In this context, the article investigates not only Khayyam’s poetic identity, but also how his ideas were reproduced through various ideological discourses during different l periods. Thus, it is argues that Khayyam is not a stable one, but rather possesses a variable and dynamic structure depending on the historical, cultural, and intellectual context.

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