The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Part of the Hurst and Co Publishers Hand Painted Burnt Leather Classics published from approx. 1904 to 1913. This book cover is leather with the design hand painted and hand burnt into genuine ooze-calf, a special process that resulted in a soft, granulated finish. Even now after more than 100 years, the leather is still soft! The text was originally translated by Edward Fitzgerald from a manuscript of Persian verse attributed to Omar Khayyam, a 12th-centruy Persian mathematician and philosopher. "The Rubaiyat" contains pithy observations of complex subjects such as love, death and the existence of God and an afterlife.