In order to understand the trajectory of the life of the Persian mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam, it is necessary to start from the historical name of his hometown, Khorasan. This name in Persian means “land from which the sun arrives,” indicating the east. Today, Razavi Khorasan is a province in northeastern Iran; its capital Mashhad is a site of pilgrimage for Shia Muslims, and the region is famous for handwoven carpets with exquisite patterns. But in the past, the name Khorasan extended across a much wider area, including the modern province vast tracts of southern Turkmenistan and northern Afghanistan, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Amu Darya River in the north, from the edge of the deserts of central Iran to the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan in the south. Some Arab geographers have even contended that this region reached all the way to the borders of India.