September 12-14
A statue of the poet Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) is due to be installed in Manhattan soon, its Iranian sculptor said Monday.
Hossain Fakhimi said his two-meter tall statue was dispatched from Tehran to New York on Monday evening.
The decision to erect the statue as a symbol of Persia was made by Manhattan municipal officials during President Rohani’s trip to New York last September, he said.
The Iran Times asked New York City about the statue and where it was to be installed, but had received no answer by press deadline this week.
Fakhimi said he has made two copies of the statue, one of which will be installed in Khayyam’s hometown of Neishabur and the other in Florence, Italy.
“I have conducted two years of studies before starting the carving of the statues, since it was important for me to know different aspects of Khayyam’s character,” Fakhimi told the Mehr news agency.
Khayyam, a Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet was renowned in his own country and in his own time for his scientific achievements, but is chiefly known to the English-speaking world through the 1859 translation by the English writer Edward Fitzgerald of a collection of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat (quatrains).