'
"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes
prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p.
"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes
prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p.
Omar Khayyam - Rubaiyat
After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan
became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians,--a party of
fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil
eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In A. D.
1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which
lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was
from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the
Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through
the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin,
which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark
memorial, is derived from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the
Indian bhang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch
of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the
dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur.
One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam ul
Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend. [1]
"Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to
ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he
said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune,
to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life
and prosperity. ' The Vizier tells us, that when he found Omar was
really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted
him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkals of gold from the treasury of
Naishapur.
"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the
Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in
Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the
Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise
for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon
him. '
"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one
of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali
era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names)--'a
computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and
approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style. ' He is also the
author of some astronomical tables, entitled 'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and
the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise
of his on Algebra.
"His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and
he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before
Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian
poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we
have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil presser,' etc. [2] Omar
himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines:--
"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned;
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!
'
"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes
prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and D'Herbelot
alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam. [3]--
"'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of
the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira,
517 (A. D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled,--the very paragon of his
age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates
the following story: "I often used to hold conversations with my
teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me,
'My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses
over it. ' I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were
no idle words. [4] Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I
went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden,
and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden
wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was
hidden under them. "'"
Thus far--without fear of Trespass--from the Calcutta Review. The
writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was
reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at
Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to
have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the
present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.
Though the Sultan "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean
Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in
his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated
and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith
amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and
formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their
Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the
most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's
material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to
Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of
Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and
delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float
luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on
the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for
either.
became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians,--a party of
fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil
eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In A. D.
1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which
lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was
from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the
Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through
the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin,
which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark
memorial, is derived from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the
Indian bhang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch
of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the
dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur.
One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam ul
Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend. [1]
"Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to
ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he
said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune,
to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life
and prosperity. ' The Vizier tells us, that when he found Omar was
really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted
him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkals of gold from the treasury of
Naishapur.
"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the
Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in
Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the
Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise
for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon
him. '
"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one
of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali
era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names)--'a
computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and
approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style. ' He is also the
author of some astronomical tables, entitled 'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and
the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise
of his on Algebra.
"His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and
he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before
Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian
poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we
have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil presser,' etc. [2] Omar
himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines:--
"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned;
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!
'
"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes
prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and D'Herbelot
alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam. [3]--
"'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of
the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira,
517 (A. D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled,--the very paragon of his
age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates
the following story: "I often used to hold conversations with my
teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me,
'My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses
over it. ' I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were
no idle words. [4] Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I
went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden,
and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden
wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was
hidden under them. "'"
Thus far--without fear of Trespass--from the Calcutta Review. The
writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was
reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at
Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to
have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the
present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.
Though the Sultan "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean
Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in
his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated
and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith
amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and
formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their
Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the
most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's
material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to
Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of
Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and
delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float
luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on
the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for
either.
