Edward FitzGerald came from the very wealthy Anglo-Irish Purcell family. A vegetarian who did not like vegetables, nor cared for wine, he was inspired to learn Persian by Edward Byles Cowell, an older intimate, who reportedly disapproved of the superficially-hedonistic slant that his admirer gave the Quatrains.

The young FitzGerald translated them first into mediæval Latin!
The recently-discovered manuscript he worked from was one of collections of quatrains of varying number and quality, traditionally ascribed to Khayyám, though none has ever been securely identified as a work of the great 12th-century mathematician.

FitzGerald never actually spoke Persian, nor did he hear it enunciated by native speakers.

Now numbering over 300, many rubáiyát 'migrated' like hadith from anonymous sources.
The earliest manuscript dates from the XVth century. They were the result of literary accretion: any acerbic, sceptic or neo-Epicurean/Diogenean quatrain would almost automatically become one of Khayyám's. The collections were assembled alphabetically and according to end-rhyme.

FitzGerald changed that format, turning a large selection of the rubáiyát into a single long poem beginning with dawn and ending with the arrival of eternal night. In the mid-19th century the thoughts which FitzGerald expressed through Khayyám were revolutionary, and would not even have been put down in a private letter, let alone a brilliant poem of religious, moral, philosophical and intellectual rebellion.
The very first quatrain can easily be seen as anti-monarchist, and the whole tenor of the poem is anti-dogma, anti-religious, even anti-Islamic - which makes the current popularity of Persian collections of the Rubaiyát in Iran decidedly enantiodromic.

It is also a work of literary genius, constructed (in its various editions) with great care and subtlety (with Shakespearean and Biblical references, for example), not to mention a beauty of expression which shows up Ginsberg's Howl (for example) as the utterance of a spoiled and backward infant.

The references to Wine and the Grape can be seen as neo-Epicurean,
but, within the Sufi tradition they are metaphorical and mystical:
the drinking of wine represents the absorption of Understanding (which is a process rather like intoxication), but it also represents itself, for Sufis understand that there is more than one Way, and a little insight might be inspired by the fermented juice of the grape as well as much benefit in mystical companionship.

FitzGerald is also saying that the seeker-after-truth would find more substance in the grape than in the teachings of the mullahs and imams, or even of the Prophets. Since we are clay and return to clay, he pointed out, we are ideally suited to contain liquids (and each other) rather than gas.

Drunkenness is the Sufi term (or code) for Wisdom.
The Tavern of Omar Khayyám is the heart, but may also correspond to the
Tekke or Lodge of the Bektashis - or to the small fellowship of the Aware or Wise.

The first stanza can be interpreted thus:

Awaken from the Unawareness you have been 'educated' into
and let the dawn of Awareness strangle the arrogance of mere knowledge.
Let the cruel light of Wisdom, gentle at first, irradiate your consciousness.

On the other hand, 'The Beloved' might not be Understanding, or a light in our spiritual darkness, a spark in the cramped prison of our awareness - but quite simply a young boy, desired in the natural and Ancient Greek way.

The first edition was published at FitzGerald's expense in London in 1859, and was ignored.
Not one copy was sold.
It was not until Dante Gabriel Rossetti picked up a single remaindered copy for sale at one penny
(returning the next day to buy another, to find that the price had doubled !)
that the work gradually, by word of mouth, entered the public ken, and became the publishing sensation of the 19th century. The most lavish edition was a single copy, bound elaborately with gold leaf, ivory, rubies, pearls, topazes, diamonds, etc. which sank with the Titanic.

more on khayyám

A comparison of different translations of the Rubáiyát

See also my page on the Bektashi Order of Sufis

and the page on
Omar Khayyám and the tradition of Diogenes of Sinope

Click here for a site comparing all five versions of FitzGerald's translation